Facial expression, twitching
of a muscle, movements of the head, these were the things he watched
for as his cue in answering questions by indicating the right card.
There was a teacher in our school once who wore old-fashioned
spectacles. When he wanted us to answer a question in a certain way
he unconsciously looked over his spectacles; but when he wanted a
different answer he raised his spectacles to his forehead. So we
ranked high in our daily grades, but met our Waterloo when the
examination came around. That teacher, of course, had never heard of
the horse Hans, and so was not aware that in the process of watching
his movements we were merely proving that we had horse-sense. He
probably attributed our ready answers to the superiority of his
teaching, not realizing that our minds were concentrated upon the
subject of spectacles.
Of course, a horse balks now and then, and so does a boy. I did a
bit of balking myself as a boy, and I am not quite certain that I
have even yet become immune. Doctor James Wallace (whose edition of
"Anabasis" some of us have read, halting and stumbling along through
the parasangs) with three companions went out to Marathon one day
from Athens.
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