22 Audubon s Western Journal 



realized that they needed contact with boys of 

 their own age; but the home education was never 

 given up. Both she and Mr. Audubon were 

 excellent musicians, great readers, and most 

 desirous that their children should be prepared, 

 as fully as possible, to enter the world as educated, 

 and even accomplished men. Drawing was an 

 important matter always, and both sons, Victor 

 and John, became well skilled in this art, but in 

 different lines, the first in landscape, the second in 

 delineating birds and quadrupeds — or as the 

 scientists say today, mammals — the latter being 

 his specialty, though the first intention was that he 

 should be a portrait painter. 



The boys while children were usually together, 

 and were sent to school at the same time, though 

 Victor was three years the elder, but at times they 

 were separated. Victor was a quiet, studious boy, 

 and a great favorite with the elder members of his 

 mother's family, the Bakewells, while John, who 

 was full of mischief, very restless, always most 

 successful in getting his young cousins as well as 

 himself into all sorts of scrapes, was naturally less 

 in demand. When Mr. and Mrs. Audubon were 

 wandering from place to place, Victor was fre- 

 quently with relatives in Louisville, and at an 

 early age became a clerk in the office of Mr. 

 Nicholas Berthoud, who had married a sister of 

 Mrs. Audubon. He was in this position when 



