Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1885 — How Southern Women Ride. [ARTICLE]

How Southern Women Ride.

' In this country the Southerner is the most constantly in the saddle, and a good rider in the sunny south is a thoroughly good rider. But I have often wondered at the number of poor ones it is possible to find in localities where everybody moves about in the saddle. Many men there, who ride all the time, seem to have acquired the trick of breaking every commandment in the decalogue of equitation. Using' horses as mere means of transportation, seems sometime to reduce the steed to a simple beast of burden, and eques-i trianism to the bald ability to sit. in a saddle as you would in an ox-cart I think I have seen more graceful equestriennes in the South than any-' where else—than even in England. Although the Southern woman refuses, to ride the trot, she has a proper substitute for it, and her seat is generally admirable. Though I greatly admire a square trot well ridden in a side-saddle, it is really the rise on this gait which makes so many crooked female riders among ourselves and our British cousins. This ought not to be so; but ladies are apt to resent too much severity in instruction, and without strict obedience to her master a lady never learns to ride gracefully and stoutly. In the South ladies ride habitually, and, moreover, a rack, sin-gle-fo.oh and. canter are not only graceful, but straight-sitting.paces for a w°* man.— Patroclus and Penelope.