File:Idiot Savant A.jpg

old ; an epileptic, with attacks occurring at long intervals. Eyesight 
very defective ; other senses normal. Good bearing and attractive personality. An excellent musician — above the average — he is also 
most ready with his pencil and a wonderful caricaturist. Seeing the 
humorous side of everything, is quick to catch likenesses and pecu- 
liarities, and to note their association, and is equally quick in repro- 
ducing them. 

On one occasion in a class exhibit before an educational associa- 
tion, drawing with his usual facility, some pigs feeding, interrogated 
as to his subject, he replied without hesitation and without inter- 
rupting his work : " Pork and beans." Once I wanted him to design 
some original menu cards for a dinner party. He tried persistently 
for two days, but found no ideas that would materialize. Finally 
his teacher taking him to my library, showed him some steins and 
loving cups. He at once seized the idea, and sitting down, drew 
off-hand a wonderfully clever set of cards — rabbits, dogs, and pigs. 
One especially unique, represented a rabbit hilariously kicking the 
bottom out of a loving cup as he passed it. Learning that one of the 
expected guests had been a Heidelberg student and a duelist, he 
pictured for him two rabbits fencing. " Study hour in High Grade 
A," was the title of a rough sketch in which he showed the desks of 
his class-room, each seat filled by an animal, possessing some pecu- 
liarity of its occupant. Thus : a boy slow and stubborn, is portrayed 
as a mule ; another, surly, is a bear ; another is a monkey, " because he 
is funny and cuts up " ; a goose is a silly boy ; a pig, a greedy one, 
and a fox is one who is very sly. A girl, who is clever, is repre- 
sented as an owl, and a boy, constantly crowing over his own achieve- 
ments, as a rooster, etc. He himself having a peculiar walk appears 
as a lobster, " because a lobster walks kind of lop-sided," and the 
teacher, who was rather above medium height, as a giraffe. (Vide 
illustration.) The members of his band often figure in a variety of 
characters and called upon at the different seasons to contribute deco- 
ration for gifts, he will draw as rapidly as the suggestions are given. 

But little is known of family history, except that mother died of