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indoor exercises usually were directed by a French major with a stern face and a resonant bass voice.  Watching me crazily galloping in a circle of 10-foot radius, with both hands high in the air, he would bellow "Plus vite! Plus vite!".

The French style of riding was quite different from ours.  I found it awkward and uncomfortable at first.  Even with longer practice I think I should have preferred the American way.  At Fort Oglethorpe Captain Sands had taught us to ride as cowboys do.  The deep McClellan saddle was standard in the American mounted services, and stirrups were let out almost to leg length.  The French rode the way the jockeys ride racehorses.  They used the shallow English-style saddle and the stirrups were shortened, though no so far as jockeys shorten them.  The Frenchman posted to his horse's trot, letting the shocks be absorbed by his leg muscles instead of his liver.  At Fort Oglethorpe I had never felt that I was a better than average rider.  At Saumur I did not shine, though I did manage never to fall off.

One class hour each week was given to a subject called "Hippology".  It dealt with the care and feeding of horses.  An artillary officer did not have to feed, room or shoe horses, but his men did.  So the officer had to know enough to judge whether the horses were being properly cared for or not.  He had to inspect the battery's horses from time to time, so he had to know what to look for.

In an earlier letter I told you of one humiliation I suffered at Saumer when we had to ride bicycles and I was the only man in our section who had never been on one.  I was again humiliated in the class in Hippology.  Each of us was required to run at a horse from behind, place our hands on his rump and vault into riding position astride his back.  I was the only man in our section, perhaps the only one in the whole school, who could not do it.  The instructor did not let me give up easily but I never could make it.  Back in high school I had been a complete failure at a game we played, a variation of leapfrog.  The idea was to take a running jump from a mark on the ground, and clear the back of a boy standing humped over six or eight feet away.  If everyone made it the jump distance was increased a foot