Once, trying to invent water wings made from bundles of pond iris, he tied them to his arms but was turned upside down by more buoyancy than he calculated, and would have drowned (he was a nonswimmer) had not his friends rescued him by pulling him from the lake with his five-foot-long bow tie. He memorized hundreds of phrases in Romany, the language of the passing Gypsies; he learned bookbinding; he taught himself to embellish his own writings with elegant little drawings, flourishes, and curlicues, rather like the monkish illuminators of the Middle Ages.
of Prof. Murray in his youth.
