AUDUBON'S iENEID 303 



days I was being led to the development of the talents I loved, 

 and which have brought so much enjoyment to us all. . . . 



At Shippingport Audubon was welcomed by his 

 brother-in-law, Nicholas A. Berthoud. Wasting no 

 time in vain regrets, he began doing portraits in crayon, 

 and with such success that he was able to rent a modest 

 apartment and have his family about him again. From 

 no charges for his tentative efforts the price was grad- 

 ually raised until he received five dollars or more a 

 head ; with the spread of his fame orders filled his hands, 

 and he was called long distances to take likenesses of 

 the dying or even of the dead. Audubon's facility in 

 portraiture was a valuable resource, and it kept him 

 from the starving line at many a pinch in later years. 



Through the influence of friends the naturalist was 

 offered a position as taxidermist at a museum which had 

 just been started at Cincinnati; here his family joined 

 him in the winter of 1819-20, and here he remained for 

 nearly a year. The published accounts of this Cincin- 

 nati experience are strangely confused and have led to 

 aspersions of bad faith which were, we believe, quite 

 undeserved. "I was presented," said Audubon, "to the 

 president of the Cincinnati College, Dr. Drake, and 

 immediately formed an engagement to stuff birds for 

 the museum there, in concert with Mr. Robert Best, an 

 Englishman of great talent," adding that his salary was 

 large ; so industrious were they, to continue his account, 

 "that in about six months we had augmented, arranged, 

 and finished all that we could do," but they found to 

 their sorrow "that the members of the College museum 

 were splendid promisers and very bad paymasters." * 



1 Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, 

 p. 36. 



