77C JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 



At this time of his life his appearance was fascinating. " I measured," he 

 naively writes, " five feet ten and a half, was of a fair mien and quite 

 a handsome figure, large, dark, and rather sunken eyes, aquiline nose, and a 

 fine set of teeth; hair, fine texture and luxuriant, divided and passing down 

 behind each ear in luxuriant ringlets as far as the shoulders." He was an ad- 

 mirable marksman, an expert swimmer, a clever writer, possessing great ac- 

 tivity, prodigious strength, and was notable for the careful attention to the 

 care of his dress. " When I first knew Mr. Audubon," said a lady, "people 

 used to ask who was this gay young Frenchman who danced with all the 

 girls." Such was Audubon in 1 808. 



The life of the Apprentice was over; the life of the Journeyman was be- 

 ginning. " For a period of twenty years," writes Audubon, " my life was a 

 succession of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce, but they all 

 proved unprofitable, doubtless because my whole mind was ever filled with 

 my passion for rambling and admiring those objects of nature from which 

 alone I received the purest gratification. I had to struggle against the will of 

 all who at that period called themselves my friends. I must here, however, 

 except my wife and children. The remarks of my other friends irritated me 

 beyond endurance, and breaking through all bonds, I gave myself entirely up 

 to my pursuits. Any one unacquainted with the extraordinary desire which I 

 then felt of seeing and judging for myself, would doubtless have pronounced 

 me callous to every sense of duty, and regardless of every interest. I under- 

 took long and tedious journeys, ransacked the woods, the lakes, the prairies, 

 and the shores of the Atlantic. Years were spent away from my family. 

 Yet, reader, will you believe it, I had no other object in view than simply to 

 enjoy the sight of nature." 



It was while he was in business in Louisville that Audubon met Wilson, 

 the celebrated author of the "American Ornithology," in the year iSio. 

 Wilson called on him to solicit his patronage for his book. " Do not sub- 

 scribe, my dear Audubon," said a French friend, " your own drawings are 

 certainly far better." Neither at the moment appears to have had any pre- 

 vious knowledge of the pursuits of the other. Audubon examined the en- 

 gravings of Wilson with interest, and the latter was still more surprised to 

 witness such drawings of birds in the portfolio of a Western storekeeper. 

 Wilson asked if it was his intention to publish, and appeared still more per- 

 plexed when he learned that so patient a student had no such object. He 

 borrowed the drawings to examine during his stay in the town, and was in- 

 troduced to birds new to him in the neighborhood, in hunting with his 

 chance acquaintance. Audubon, who as yet had not " taken unto the height 



