I then held this a few inches (40 centimetres) from her eyes and, pointing to each, said: "_One_ dot looks like 1," etc. And then I wrote a 2 on a slip of paper and asked her what number it stood for. At the start this gave her a good deal of trouble, and I had to do a great deal of talking. She saw the dot right enough, but would give no attention to the figure. I helped her twice to compare the two, and then set the sheet up near the place where she usually lay, taking for granted that in the course of the day her eye would be bound to rest on it so frequently that she would probably have retained the impression by the next day. And something of this kind must have happened; for on the following morning after having gone through the explanation once more, and put the sheet aside, I wrote the figures at random all over another sheet of paper when she actually "spotted" them all--with the exception of "7," and a comparison of the two sheets soon enabled her to put this right, too. There could be no doubt but that she had really mastered her lesson, for the replies were rapped out with absolute certainty. I next attempted two-figured numerals; nor was this very difficult, for in 32, for instance, the 3 was rapped by the left--the "decimal" paw--and therefore meant "30," while the "2" was added by two raps from the right paw; in fact, she memorized this without any trouble--and for a few days we practised "reading numbers" assiduously, so as to get her perfect. Here is an example: 20 + 14? Answer: 34. 24 + 32? Answer: 56. 11 + 15 + 2? Answer: 28 Here again the most surprising thing was the celerity with which the replies were given. I was at first inclined to _make_ her look at the paper attentively, but she would merely glance over it, then came a moment of quick thought--and the answer was ready. (I propose to return to this point again in the chapter on "Seeing.") In the course of such exercises it is no exaggeration to say that one does actually _see_, by an alteration in the eye, that the dog is thinking; the gaze is withdrawn, so to speak, as it is in the eye of a person engaged in the process of thinking; and then brightens when the result has been attained. I have often been so absorbed in contemplating this process in Lola that I have almost forgotten to continue the work we were engaged on. As the lessons progressed it became easy to teach her to read the letters, for she now knew what it was all about, and she soon picked up the figures requisite for any given letter. Personally, I always use the Latin script for writing, and it was therefore more convenient to teach her this form rather than the Gothic, but for the sake of simplicity I made use of the small characters only. I wrote these out on a sheet of paper, taking care to make them very large, and with the equivalent figure under each--thus: a e i o u au ei 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 and so on.