In the upper middle classes nothing is more probable than the marriage of one of the daughters of the house with a man whose future lot may be cast in the colonies, where if a woman cannot ride she will be sorely at a loss. Unlike the ladies of high degree above alluded to, the daughter of a man in good position in the middle class will often not have opportunities of learning to ride until she is fifteen or sixteen, and by this time the youthful frame, supple as it may appear, has acquired (so to speak) "a set," which at first renders riding far from agreeable; because it calls into action whole sets of muscles and ligaments heretofore rarely brought into play, or rather only partially so. Hence the unpleasant stiffness that always follows the first essays of the tyro in riding of the age I speak of, and which painful feeling too often so discourages beginners that they give up the thing in disgust. Now this unpleasant consequence of the first lessons may be easily obviated by the following means. Bearing in mind that pain or stiffness is the result of want of _supplesse_, the first desideratum is to acquire this most desirable elasticity. To accomplish this, three months before the pupil is put on horseback she should begin a course of training in suppling and extension motions on foot, precisely similar to those drilled into a cavalry recruit in the army. No amount of dancing will do what is required. Even the professional _danseuse_, with her constant exercise of the _ronde de jambe_, never possesses that mobile action of the waist and play of the joints of the upper part of the figure so thoroughly to be acquired by the exercises I speak of, which also have the further greater advantage of giving development and expansion to the chest. I therefore respectfully advise every careful mother, who is desirous of seeing her daughters become accomplished horsewomen, before taking them to the riding master (of whom more hereafter), in the first place to employ a good drill master. Possibly, the young ladies may have had drill instruction at school; but experience tells me that such instruction is too often slurred over, or only practised at such long intervals that its effect is confined to causing the pupil to walk upright and carry herself well--a very desirable matter, but not all that is requisite as a preparation for riding.