Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/162

 “It’s true!” she cried. “You know so many queer things like that.”

“He is physically incapable of speaking the words of men and that renders him mentally incapable of understanding man’s vocabulary except from repetition and association; but he can read tone inflection and know the spirit behind the words. However he is intelligent enough to learn any trick or work within his physical limitations. Each lesson would have to start from some basic fact which he already knows and be gradually developed from that. For example we could easily train him to be a liaison courier and to carry messages between us,”

“How?” she asked. “Please show me.”

“Starting from these few facts; he knows the words ‘go’ coupled with this motion—the outward swing of my arm. I taught him that in handling horses and cows. His present natural inclination is to travel back and forth between us. We would make use of that. At first he would not know where to go but he would know that I was sending him away. From habit he would retum to you. You could send him back to me by coupling the same words and motions with my name. Aside from the fact that he knows my name he would