CHAPTER. 
A TAXIDERMIST AS A SCULPTOR 
FTER I had got over my first youthful en- 
A thusiasm about taxidermy and had seen how 
it was practiced, I recognized that, as it then 
was, it was not an art—that it was in fact little better 
than a trade. I had moments when I felt like aban- 
doning the whole thing. I used to study sculpture, 
particularly animal sculpture, in relation to taxi- 
dermy. I remember that when I was twenty-eight 
years old I came to New York and spent hours at 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the itch in my 
hands and brain to become a sculptor. But one thing 
restrained me. I had enough common sense to know 
that while I might become a sculptor and even a 
fairly successful one I could never contribute to that 
art what I could contribute to taxidermy. I believed 
then that I could start taxidermy on the road from a 
trade to an art. So I turned away from sculpture. 
Nevertheless, the idea of being a sculptor kept run- 
ning in my mind. And whenever it did, it depressed 
me. Finally, I gave up going near the Art Museum 
altogether. 
But the discipline that I inflicted on myself I could 
not inflict on other people. I had to make little clay 
groups as studies and models for the animal groups 
175 
