I give him 63 X 7. He
does the sum and writes the product on the board, followed by the
sign of division: 441 / 7. Instantly Hanschen, with a celerity
difficult to follow, gives three blows, or rather three violent
scrapes with his right hoof and six with his left, which makes
63, for we must not forget that in German they say not
sixty-three, but three-and-sixty. We congratulate him; and, to
evince his satisfaction, he nimbly reverses the number by marking
36 and then puts it right again by scraping 63. He is evidently
enjoying himself and juggling with the figures. And additions,
subtractions, multiplications and divisions follow one after the
other, with figures supplied by myself, so as to remove any idea
of collusion. Hanschen seldom blunders; and, when he does, we
receive a very clear impression that his mistake is voluntary: he
is like a mischievous schoolboy playing a practical joke upon his
master. The solutions fall thick as hail upon the little
spring-board; the correct answer is released by the question as
though you were pressing the button of an electric push. The
pony's flippancy is as surprising as his skill. But in this
unruly flippancy, in this hastiness which seems inattentive there
is nevertheless a fixed and permanent idea. Hanschen paws the
ground, kicks, prances, tosses his head, looks as if he cannot
keep still, but never leaves his spring-board.
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