AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE 299 



the world forgot. There, in the direst misery, he died 

 in 1840, at the age of fifty-six, without a word of cheer 

 or a tear of regret. His body was barely saved from 

 the dissecting table and given decent burial through the 

 loyalty and promptitude of one of his few remaining 

 friends, Dr. William Mease, who with undertaker 

 Bringhurst, broke into the room where his body lay and 

 let it down through a window by ropes. 12 Even his will 

 was ruthlessly violated, and all of his effects, in eight 

 dray-loads, were hurried off to the public auction rooms 

 and sold in bargain lots, his books and all else bringing 

 but a mere pittance, not even enough to pay his land- 

 lord and the administrator of his estate. 



Thus died the "eccentric naturalist" whom Audubon 

 had portrayed, and for whom the world in general had 

 shown scant sympathy. Rafinesque, nevertheless, pos- 

 sessed a mind of extraordinary acumen and an energy 

 and versatility little short of marvelous. He dipped 

 into every field of knowledge, looking for precious 

 metal, but much that he brought to the surface was 

 dross. His restless versatility alone would probably 

 have ruined him, for nothing short of an analysis of 

 the globe with all of its contents would have satisfied 

 his ambitious spirit. His was the ardor of the traveler 

 and the explorer, with a passionate love for nature sel- 

 dom equaled, but without the incentive and the patience 

 of the investigator or a balance-wheel in the judgment. 

 His ambition in early life was to become the greatest 

 naturalist of his age ; had his early training and environ- 



12 The landlord, to whom Rafinesque had been in arrears for rent, had 

 locked his body in the room and refused permission for its burial, think- 

 ing to find a market for it in one of the medical schools of the city. 

 Rafinesque was buried in a little churchyard, then outside of the limits 

 of the city, known as Ronaldson's cemetery, now at Ninth and Catharine 

 Streets. See Call and Fitzpatrick, Bibliography, Nos. 198 and 228. 



