It has not been the intention of the author of this little volume to present the reader with elaborate chapters of technical essays.

Entire libraries have been written on the care and management of the horse from the date of its foaling; book upon book has been compiled on the best and proper method of acquiring some degree of skill in the saddle. The author has scarcely hoped, therefore, to exhaust in 248 pages a subject which, after having been handled on the presses of nearly every publisher in this country and England, yet contains unsettled points for the discussion of argumentative horse-men and horse-women.

But it happens with riding—as, indeed, it does with almost every other subject—that we ignore the simpler side for the more intricate. We delve into a masterpiece, suitable for a professional, on the training of a horse, when the chances are we do not know how to saddle him. We stumble through heavy articles on bitting, the technical terms of which we do not understand, when if our own horse picked up a stone we probably would be utterly at a loss what to do.

We, both men and women, are too much inclined to gallop over the fundamental lessons, which should be conned over again and again until thoroughly mastered. We are restive in our novitiate period, impatient to pose as past-masters in an art before we have acquired its first principles.

Beginning with a bit of advice to parents, of which they stand sorely in need, it is the purpose of this book to carry the girl along the bridle-path, from the time she puts on a habit for the first attempt, to that when she joins the Hunt for a run across country after the hounds.

There is no intention of wearying and confusing her by a formidable array of purely technical instruction.

The crying fault with nearly all those who have handled this subject at length has been that of distracting the uninformed reader by the most elaborate dissertation on all points down to the smallest details.

This author, on the contrary, has shorn the instruction of all hazy intricacies, with which the equestrienne has so often been asked to burden herself, and brought out instead only those points essential to safety, skill, and grace in the saddle.

No space has been wasted on unnecessary technicalities which the woman is not likely to either understand or care to digest, but everything has been written with a view of aiding her in obtaining a sound, practical knowledge of the horse, under the saddle and in harness.