if not,
wear the regulation close, dark cloth habit throughout the year,
be uncomfortable, and lose half the benefit of your summer rides
from becoming overheated, to say nothing of being unable to "keep
trotting" as long as you could if suitably clothed for exercise.
But might you not, if your habit were thin, catch cold while your
horse was walking? You might if you tried, but probably you would
not be in a state so susceptible to that disaster as you would if
heavily dressed.

There is little danger that the temperature will change so much
during a three hours' ride that you cannot keep yourself
sufficiently warm for comfort and for safety, and if you start
for a long excursion, you must use your common sense. The best
and least expensive way of solving the difficulty is to have an
ordinary habit, with the waist and skirt separate, and to wear a
lighter coat, with a habit shirt, or with a habit shirt and
waistcoat, whenever something lighter is desirable. This plan
gives three changes of dress, which should be enough for any
reasonable girl.

But still, you do not know what color you can wear? Black is
suitable for all hours and all places, even for an English fox
hunt, although the addition of a scarlet waistcoat, just visible
at the throat and below the waist, is desirable for the field.
Dark blue, dark green, dark brown are suitable for most
occasions, and a riding master whose experience has made him
acquainted with the dress worn in the principal European
capitals, declares his preference for gray with a white
waistcoat.

Among the habits shown by English tailors at the French
exhibition of 189, was one of blue gray, and a Paris tailor
displayed a tan-colored habit made with a coat and waistcoat
revealing a white shirt front. London women are now wearing white
waistcoats and white ties in the Park, both tie and waistcoat as
stiff and masculine as possible.

This affectation of adopting men's dress, when riding, is
comparatively modern. Sir Walter gives the date in "Rob Roy,"
when Mr. Francis sees Diana for the first time and notices that
she wears a coat, vest and hat resembling those of a man, "a mode
introduced during my absence in France," he says, "and perfectly
new to me." But this coat had the collar and wide sharply pointed
lapels and deep cuffs now known as "directoire," and its skirts
were full, and so long that they touched the right side of the
saddle, and skirts, lapels, collar and cuffs we