IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
CHAPTER I 
A NEW ART BEGUN 
S A boy I lived on a farm near Clarendon, 
A Orleans County, N. Y., and for some reason, 
about the time I was thirteen, I got interested 
in birds. I was out of place on the farm for I was 
much more interested in taxidermy than in farming. 
As a matter of fact, by the time I was sixteen I an- 
nounced to the world that I was a taxidermist. I had 
borrowed a book which had originally cost a dollar, 
and from that book I learned taxidermy up to a point 
where I felt justified in having business cards printed 
stating that I did artistic taxidermy in all its branches. 
I even went so far as to take several lessons in paint- 
ing from a lady who taught art in Clarendon, in order 
that I might paint realistic backgrounds behind the 
birds that I mounted. So far as I know, that was the 
first experiment of painted backgrounds used for 
mounted birds or animals. I believe that my first 
attempt in this direction is still in existence in Claren- 
don but I have been a little afraid to go to see it. 
In the fall of the year in which I was nineteen, after 
the crops were in, I set out to get a wider field for my 
I 
