Hello and welcome to Homeschool Story Time: Week 36.
This week’s story is about a little dog who is very smart.
How did he get so smart?
Well, his mistress taught him in a very special way.
Read on to find out what that was.
Minos
by Elizabeth Sill
I read, the other day, an account, taken from an English paper, of a wonderful little dog, called Minos. He knows more arithmetic than many children. At an exhibition given of him by his mistress, he picked out from a set of numbered cards any figure which the company chose to call for. When six was called, for instance, he would bring it; and then, if some one said, “Tell him to add twelve to it.”—”Add twelve, Minos,” said his mistress. Minos looked at her, trotted over to the cards, and brought the one with eighteen on it.
Only once was he puzzled. A gentleman in the audience called out, “Tell him to give the half of twenty-seven.” Poor Minos looked quite bewildered for a moment; but he was not to be baffled so. He ran off, and brought back the card with the figure on it. Was not that clever?
He has photographs of famous persons, all of which he knows by name, and will bring any one of them when told to. He can spell too; for when a French lady in the company wrote the word “esprit,” and handed it to him, he first looked at it very hard, and then brought the letters, one by one, and placed them in the right order.
When Minos was born, he was very sickly and feeble; and his mother would not take care of him, and even tried to kill him. But little Marie Slager, daughter of the lady who has him now, took him and brought him up herself.
From that time he was her doll, her playfellow, her baby. She treated him so much like a child, that he really seemed to understand all that was said to him. She even taught him to play a little tune on the piano.
Almost all performing animals are treated so cruelly while they are being trained, and go through with their tricks in so much fear, that it is quite sad to see them. But the best thing about Minos’s wonderful performances is, that they were all taught him by love and gentleness.
Remember this, boys, when you are trying to teach Dash or Carlo to fetch and carry, or draw your wagon: there is no teacher so good as love.
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Many blessings,
