No better illustration of the uses of these several seats than an English cavalry officer. On parade he will ride with the longest of stirrups compatible with not sitting on his crotch. To rise in the saddle is a forbidden luxury to the soldier. Despite some recent experiments in foreign service, and the fact that on the march the cavalry-man may be permitted to rise, nay, encouraged to do so, what more ridiculous than a troop of cavalry on parade, each man bobbing up and down at his own sweet will? The horse suitable for a trooper is a short, quick-gaited, handy animal, chosen largely for this quality, and made still more so by being taught to work in a collected manner by the _manège_. You can very comfortably sit him with a military saddle at a pretty sharp parade trot. Now, suppose our cavalry officer is going for a canter in Rotten Row,--he will at once shorten his stirrup-leathers a couple of holes; and if he were going to ride cross-country, he would shorten them still a couple more. Experience has taught him the peculiar uses of each position.
Some writers claim that one seat ought to suffice for all occasions. And so it can be made to do. This one seat may, however, not always be the best adapted to the work immediately in hand, or to the animal ridden. A slight change is often a gain. Every one has noticed that different horses, as well as different ground ridden over, vary the rider's seat in the same saddle.
But excellent as is the long hunting-seat in its place, one can conceive no more ridiculous sight than the English swell I once saw in Colorado, who had brought his own pigskin with him, and started out for a ten days' ride across the prairie on an Indian pony, the only available mount. The pony's short gait was admirable for a long day's jaunt in a peaked saddle, but so little suited to a cross-country rig, that the swell's condition at the end of the first fifty miles must have been pitiable. This unusual "tenderfoot" exhibition elicited a deal of very natural laughter, and its butt, who was an excellent but narrow-minded horseman, though he stuck with square-toed British pluck to his rig for a few days, came back to Denver equipped _à la_ cowboy. His Piccadilly saddle had been abandoned to the prairie-dogs.