husetts is very likely to run past a leather factory, in
which case its waters are anything but agreeable. Whether or not
your habit shall have a pocket is a matter of choice. If it have
one, it should be small and should be on the left side, just
beyond the three flat buttons which fasten the front breadth and
side breadth of your habit at the waist. When thus placed, you
can easily reach it with either hand.

Fitting the habit over the knee is a feat not to be effected by
an amateur without a pattern, and the proper slope and adjustment
of the breadths come by art, not chance; but Harper's Bazaar
patterns are easily obtained by mail. The best tailors adjust the
skirt while the wearer sits on a side saddle, and there is no
really good substitute for this, for, although one my guess
fairly well at the fir of the knee, nothing but actual trial will
show whether or not, when in the saddle, the left side of the
skirt hangs perfectly straight, concealing the right side, and
leaving the horse's body visible below it. When your skirt is
finished, no matter if it be made by the very best of tailors,
wear it once in the school before you appear on the road with it,
and, looking in the mirror, view it "with a crocket's eye," as
the little boy said when he appeared on the school platform as an
example of the advantages of the wonderful merits of oral
instruction.

An elastic strap about a quarter of a yard long should be sewed
half way between the curved knee seam and the hem, and should be
slipped over the right toe before mounting, and a second strap,
for the left heel, should be sewed on the last seam on the under
side of the habit, to be adjusted after the foot is placed in the
stirrup. The result of this cutting and arrangement is the
straight, simple, modern habit which is so great a change from
the riding dress of half a century ago, with its full skirt which
nearly swept the ground. The short skirt first appears in the
English novel in "Guy Livingstone," and is worn by the severe and
upright Lady Alice, the dame who hesitated not to snub Florence
Bellasis, when snubbing was needful, and who was a mighty
huntress. Now everybody wears it, and the full skirts are seen
nowhere except in the riding-school dressing-rooms, where they
yet linger because they may be worn by anybody, whereas the plain
skirts fits but one person. It seems odd that so many years were
required to discover that a short skirt, held in place by a str