rcise for the occupants by compelling them thus to make
the circuit of each other, as the two fat noblemen at the French court
vindicated themselves from the charge of indolence by declaring that
each promenaded twice round his friend every morning.

In view of this distaste for pedestrian exercise, it seems strange
that the present revival of athletic exercises has not yet reached to
horsemanship, the traditional type of all noble training, _chevalerie_,
chivalry. Certainly it is not for the want of horse-flesh, for never
perhaps was so much of that costly commodity owned in this community;
yet in New England you shall find private individuals who keep a
half-dozen horses each, and livery-stables possessing fifty, and never a
proper saddle-horse among them. In some countries, riding does half the
work of physical training, for both sexes; Sir Walter Scott, when at
Abbotsford, never omitted his daily ride, and took his little daughter
with him, from the time she could sit on horseback; but what New-England
man, in purchasing a steed, selects with a view to a side-saddle? This
seems a sad result of the wheel-maker's trade, and one grudges St.
Willegis the wheel on his coat-of-arms, if it has thus served to tame
down freeborn men and women to the slouching and indolent practice
of driving,--a practice in which the human figure appears at such
disadvantage, that one can hardly wonder at Horace Walpole's coachman,
who had laid up a small fortune by driving the maids-of-honor, and
left it all to his son upon condition that he never should take a
maid-of-honor for his wife.

An exercise to which girls take almost as naturally as to dancing is
that of rowing, an accomplishment thoroughly feminine, learned with
great facility, and on the whole safer than most other sports. Yet until
within a few years no one thought of it in connection with women, unless
with semi-mythical beings, like Ellen Douglas or Grace Darling. Even now
it is chiefly a city accomplishment, and you rarely find at rural or
sea-side places a village damsel who has ever handled an oar. But once
having acquired the art, girls will readily fatigue themselves with its
practice, unsolicited, careless of tan and freckles. At Dove Harbor it
is far easier at any time to induce the young ladies to row for two
hours than to walk in the beautiful wood-paths for fifteen minutes;--the
walking tires them. No matter; for a special exercise the rowing is the
most valuable