"As an example, take two somewhat timid, highly bred young horses, and put them side by side at the tail of a flying pack of hounds. Both their riders are equally good men as far as nerve, hands, and seat are concerned; but the one is a cut-and-thrust, whip-and-spur sort of fellow, while the other is a cool, quiet, deliberate customer, of sweet manners but iron will. As they cross the first half-a-dozen flying fences, side by side, it wants a keen eye to mark any difference in the execution. The difference, as a rule, will consist only in the different ways in which the horses land after their jumps,--the one will pitch a little heavily, a little 'abroad,' a little as if he got there somehow, but did not quite know how; whilst the other will land lightly, exactly in the right spot, and precisely as if the two partners were one. "How comes this? One horse is being steered by physical power and science only; the other by a wonderful force, which joins together in one two minds and two bodies. "Now, see the test. Yonder waves a line of willows, and both riders know that the biggest and nastiest water jump in the county is ahead of them. Both equally mean to get over; but if they do, it will be in two different fashions: the one will compel his horse to jump it by sheer physical force; the other will jump it, if it is jumpable at all, as the 'senior partner' of the animal he bestrides. Down they go, sixty yards apart, and each, say, has picked a place which it is only just possible for a horse to cover; neither horse can turn his head; for, at the last stride, the velvet hands have become grips of iron. Splash goes Number 1; he went as far as he could: but that last two feet wanted just an impetus which was absent. How about Number 2? The rider has fixed his eye, and his mind with it, on yonder grassy spot on the other side of the water, and, sure enough, the fore-feet are simply 'lifted' into it by something inward, not outward; but only the fore-feet. Still, the calculation of the strung-up mind has entered into that, the stirrups have been cast loose in the 'fly,' and the moment the hoofs touch the bank, the rider is over his horse's head, with reins in hand; a second more, the horse is beside him; yet another, and they are away forward, without losing more than a minute. "Assheton Smith expressed in _some_ manner--but only in _some_ manner--what I mean in his well-known dictum, 'Throw your heart over a fence, and your horse is sure to follow.' "I could give hundreds of instances and anecdotes of this magnetic power of the rider over the horse, but one will suffice to prove my point.