ng.

All that is not your business. Your sole concern is to keep your
body in position, and your mind fixed on making your horse obey
you, doing nothing of his own will. Stop him now and then by
leaning back, and drawing on the reins, not with your body but
with your hands. Then lean forward and go on, but if he should
remain planted as fast as the Great Pyramid, if when started he
should refuse to pay any attention to the little taps of your
left heel and the touches of your whip, nay, if he should lie
down and pretend to die, like a trick horse in a circus, don't
cluck. No good riding master will teach a pupil to cluck or will
permit the practice to pass unreproved, and riding-school horses
do not understand it, and are quite as likely to start at the
cluck of a rider on the other side of the ring as they are when a
similar noise is made by the person on their own backs.

But now, just as you have shortened your reins for the fortieth
time or so, your master rides up beside you. You told him of your
little three-lesson plan, and being wise in his generation, he
smilingly assented to it. "Shall we trot?" he asks, in an
agreeable voice. "Shorten your reins, now! Don't pull on them!
Right shoulder back! Now rise from the saddle as I count, 'One,
two, three, four!' Off we go!'" You would like to know what he
meant by "off!" "Off," indeed! You thought you were "off" the
saddle. You have been bounced up and down mercilessly, and have
gasped, "Stop him!" before you have been twice around the ring,
and not one corner have you been able to turn properly. As for
your elbows, you know that they have been flying all abroad, but
still--it was fun, and you would like to try again. You do try
again, and you would like to try again. You do try again, and, at
last, you are conscious of a sudden feeling of elasticity, of
sympathy with your horse, of rising when he does, and then your
master looks at you triumphantly, and says: "You rose that time,"
and leaves you to go to some other pupil. And then you walk your
horse again, trying to keep in position, and you make furtive
little essays at trotting by yourself, and find that you cannot
keep your horse to the wall, although you pull your hardest at
his left rein, the reason being that, unconsciously, you also
pull at the right rein, and that he calmly obeys what the reins
tell him and goes straight forward. Then your master offers to
help you by lifting you, grasping your right arm