372 Gkinnell, Audubon Park. [July 



RECOLLECTIONS OF AUDUBON PARK. 



BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL. 



Plates XVII-XVIII. 



The interest which we all feel in John James Audubon, and in 

 those connected with him, must plead my excuse for writing this 

 and for the too frequent use of the first person singular. 



I spent my boyhood in Audubon Park, and what I have to say 

 relates to members of the Audubon family and chiefly to the 

 woman to whom — quite as much as to her husband — we owe the 

 greatest work on ornithology that America has produced. I 

 should like to give you some impression of the personality of 

 Madam Audubon and her son, John Woodhouse, and to make 

 you see the surroundings of their later lives somewhat as I recall 

 them. 



Lucy Bakewell Audubon was a fit mate for her great husband, 

 for her steadfastness and determination supplied qualities which 

 in some degree he lacked. I believe that of the two she was the 

 stronger — as she was the better balanced — character. If she did 

 not have her husband's vivacity, charm, versatility and artistic 

 talent, she possessed characteristics more important: the force to 

 keep him up to his work, the faith to cheer his heart when dis- 

 couraged, the industry and patience to earn money that he might 

 continue his struggle, and the unyielding will to hold the family 

 together. It was largely through her assistance and support that 

 at last he won success. 



A few years after the death of Audubon my father moved to 

 Audubon Park. I was a very small boy about far enough ad- 

 vanced in polite learning to know A from B. At that time Madam 

 Audubon conducted a little school for her grandchildren, which 

 was attended also by some of the neighbors' children, of whom 

 I was one. It was my first attendance at a school. 



Except for two houses with the plots of land about them, the 

 whole tract of Minnie's Land, or Audubon Park, then belonged to 

 Madam Audubon. Victor, the eldest son, was bedridden as the 

 result of an accident, and John Woodhouse, a man of great energy, 



