He knows how to seek and find words to define the
object or the picture placed before him. You show him, for
instance, a bouquet in a vase and ask him what it is.
"A glass with little flowers," he replies.
And his answers are often curiously spontaneous and original. In
the course of a reading-exercise in which the word Herbst,
autumn, chanced to attract attention, Professor William Mackenzie
asked him if he could explain what autumn was.
"It is the time when there are apples," Rolf replied.
On the same occasion, the same professor, without knowing what it
represented, held out to him a card marked with red and blue
squares:
"What's this?"
"Blue, red, lots of cubes," replied the dog.
Sometimes his repartees are not lacking in humour.
"Is there anything you would like me to do for you?" a lady of
his acquaintance asked, one day.
And Master Rolf gravely answered:
"Wedelen," which means, "Wag your tail!"
Rolf, whose fame is comparatively young, has not yet, like his
illustrious rivals of the Rhine Province, been the object of
minute enquiries and copious and innumerable reports. But the
incidents which I have just mentioned and which are vouched for
by such men as Professor Mackenzie and M. Duchatel, the learned
and clear-sighted vice-president of the Societe Universelle
d'Etudes Psychiques,[1] who went to Mannheim for the express
purpose of studying them, appear to be no more controvertible
than the Elbenfeld occurrences, of which they are a sort of
replica or echo.
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