PART II.
ETIQUETTE IN THE SADDLE.
There is a large class of excellent people who feel a decided impatience at the very name of etiquette. "It is all nonsense," they say, and they will give you various infallible receipts for getting on without such an objectionable article. One admonishes you to be "natural," and your manners will leave nothing to be desired. Another sagaciously defines politeness to be "kindness kindly expressed," and intimates that if your heart is right your deportment cannot fail to be so too. All these philosophizings, however, give little comfort to the bashful young person just venturing into society, for unfortunately few of us are so happily constituted as always to think, much less to say and do, exactly the right thing at the right time, and the most unobservant presently discovers, very likely at the cost of no small mortification, that the usages of society, even when apparently arbitrary, cannot be disregarded with impunity. In the etiquette of the saddle, however, common-sense takes so decidedly precedence of the arbitrary and con-
