Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-12-04

get weaker one. 1t may be an honest
admission of your own weakness; but
that is not q crime. 1t is crime, how
ever. to try to lie to q horse; it Is not
only crime, but as shown before, 1t is
q great risk.
For take care to not change horses too
often. OF course we old express riders.
when covering from 100 TO 200 miles u
day, were compelled to change horses
every hour or two. or rs fast as We could
come to the stations. But am now ad-
visiug with those who hope TO learn to
ride.
So advise that. having a horse you
are not afraid of, you use that one horse,
and that one horse only, until you have
learned TO ride.
The BEST teacher? The best and only
true teacher on this earth is the horse
himself. Sit erect, your feet well down
loose aud leisurely. and so submit your
self to his motions. Ride alone till you
have learned TO ride; and then after you
have learned to ride | am sure you will
never make one of O party of gggling
and garrulous idiots who make up "the
riding school.
Take quiet country lane, either IN
Canada or Texas, take one companion il
you prefer it, and a horse that you can
trust and respect because he trusts and
respects you; cover one mile, two miles,
ten, as you have the strength and the
time, and my word of honor for it before
half year you Will be mentally, physi-
caliy, aye, morally, another being. But
l can t say that il with q crowd headed
By one of those ''rlding masters.
y
mean to say you will not harm him. The
faster you go, the better he will like it.
Only, rs in every other sort of laudsble
exercises. you should .'make haste
slowly Ride uphill and down-h
fast rs you like, so far as the strength of
your horse is concerned. For a horse
will 90 much farther and much faster up
and down a hlly road than on a contln-
uously Level one. The reason is he rests
his level-road muscles while on an up
hill road aud he rests his up-hill-road
muscles while on a down hill road. So
don't fear for che hills; your horse can
stand all the uphill and down bill you
can.
OF course, after you have learned to
ride your one first horse we'll, you can
perhaps fit in with stronger one. For
after you have really learned to ride one
horse, TO become part of him, to sit in
the air as boy sits bicy Gle, why you
can ride almost any other that walks.
Fremont WIS always partial TO his one
horse, aud would go on foot for time
rather than exchange him. He rode one
horse for years here in California. In
fact. he never gave him up till shot IN
der him Ill battle. He was surely one of
the finest horsemen ever seen. And yet
he must have learned it all on the plains
and without 'master. For you may
know he began life in the navy.
As for saddles, it is hard to say. Al
most any saddle is good, after you learn
to ride; excepting, always, the Arab
saddle. The :Arab steed' is found
only in books. The Arab saddle is q set
of forked sticks tied together with dirty
strings and hung with orass trnkets. 1t
smells bad always, and often covers
very core back on a pile of weary bones.
Anthony Trollope, who literally rode
entirely around the world, SO far as he
could find land, always used the lightest
sort of English "pig skim So did
Lord Houghton and all his hunting clan.
But they did not always ride securely.
remember when on visit to Frey ton
Hall, finding the present Lord Houshton
in bed with II broken leg, and his uncle,
Lord Crewe of Crewe, laid up at the
same time and place, both from
"cropper, or tumble out of the pig
skin, so vauuted aud blowed by the
English horsemen.
But, as said before, there never was
and there never will be an English horse-
man. These people are islanders.
sailors; the greatest sailors in the world
are these gallant Englishmen; but horse
men, never: and II is only sort of
Observation-Disclosures that makes them
stick to the horse.
So pray, my shoddy American friend,
with your first horse, don't try to imi-
tate the English merely because SIT is
English, you KNOW
For example, England is breezy and
cool laud, with much mud and no flies
or mosquitoes. But this vast land of
ours is hot, dry, dusty, ana filed with
flies and mosquitoes that torment horses
almost to madness. The horse needs his
tail here as much as he needs his teeth.
God gave it him; and if you have the
ghost of heart, you will let him keep it.
Lord, Lord If this low class OF Ameri-
cans could only see how the honest
English laugh at them for this cruel bit
of snobbery as prnctised on their helpless
horses! But enough of this.
JOAQUIN MILLER.