8 On the trail of vanishing birds 



for a debut piano recital at Steinway Hall. We met at a party, 

 and afterward we sat on a park bench in Washington Square and 

 talked for half the night. It was snowing, but we didn't seem to 

 notice it. We talked and talked, on and on, endlessly. By some 

 strange miracle each of us seemed to have things to say that the 

 other wanted very much to hear, and although we had met purely 

 by chance the lives of both of us were changed from that mo- 

 ment on. 



In the summer of 1930, I had a talk with Dr. Chapman, the 

 illustrious head of the Bird Department of the American Museum 

 of Natural History, with whom I had corresponded during my 

 high-school days. He said that I could work with him as a volun- 

 teer, without pay, on the chance that a regular job might be avail- 

 able in about six months or so. At the moment I had just enough 

 of a cash reserve to get me downtown on the subway five cents 

 and I told him so. He then suggested that I go to 1974 Broad- 

 way and see Dr. Pearson, who was then president of the Audubon 

 Society. There might be something for me there. I was determined 

 that if I had to give up the sea I must find employment that was 

 close to my heart. Dr. Pearson saw me and we talked for a full 

 hour. He asked me endless questions, and as he was a former 

 college biology teacher some of them, touching on the extent of 

 my formal education, were more than a little embarrassing. But 

 he had also been a personal friend of Seton's, and although Seton's 

 name was never mentioned, somehow or other the reflected glow 

 of a hundred campfires must have shown through. When I left 

 Pearson's office I was a staff member on a trial basis and tem- 

 porarily assigned to the job of assembling the library, then stored 

 in several dozen huge packing cases in the basement. I reached the 

 street walking on air and hurried to a friend's apartment to write 

 the good news to Evelyn, who was at her parents' home in St. 

 Louis. Now we could make plans. 



It was five years later, shortly after John Baker had taken over 

 the executive duties of the Society, that the research program 

 was first set in motion. This vigorous, imaginative, and urgent 

 undertaking was the natural outgrowth of a grave need for more 



