BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR 47 



as a small roll of clover butter. He died before 

 the day was over, for no cause whatever except 

 that he was so fat that he could not live. His 

 was a marked case of having been "killed by kind- 

 ness." Because he was a rare bird with us I sent 

 his body to a taxidermist, who afterwards told me 

 that the bird was so fat, his skin so thin and tender, 

 he could mount it only by preparing a form and 

 transferring to it little pieces not so large as his 

 thumb nail at a time, so his work did not last long. 



The more I studied and thought, the more clearly 

 I saw, no matter how much I enjoyed having my 

 home full of birds, I had no right to keep wild 

 creatures in captivity; so I never replaced any of 

 these birds. Long before I owned a camera or 

 wrote a word on any nature subject my bird family 

 was reduced to the parrot and canaries. I no 

 longer needed to keep my home full of birds in 

 order to enjoy all of the pleasure that might be 

 had from them, for God had taught me that my 

 gift endured, that all of the birds afield were mine, 

 and that the only way to know and to study them 

 rightly was as they lived, in the abandonment of 

 perfect freedom. 



Several years later I began writing on natural 

 history subjects, and immediately the question 

 of illustration arose. The editors who had ac- 

 cepted my work began to send me drawings of 

 mounted birds, articulated with wire, stuffed with 

 excelsior, and posed by men. It requires no great 



