FINAL WORK DAYS 267 



to every member of his family Do not forget me near your 

 Sweet heart. 



Your ever faithfully attached & 



Sincere friend 



J. J. A. 



In July, 1845, a destructive fire devastated a large 

 section of the city of New York, including the ware- 

 house in which the copperplates of Audubon's Birds 

 were stored; many believed that the plates had been 

 ruined, and one of these was the writer who after wit- 

 nessing the event gave the following dramatic account : 6 



But who had lost most of all that pale crowd that hung like 

 ghosts around the scene, and gazed with watery eyes, and blue 

 compressed lips, over the ruin? An erect old man, with long 

 white hair, glanced his strong bright eye as coldly over the 

 glowing, smoking desolation, as an eagle would, who watched 

 the sunrise chasing mists up from the valley. J. J. Audubon 

 looks over the grave of the labor of forty years ! 



The Plates of the Birds of America are buried beneath 

 those smoldering piles ! Ye money changers dare not break the 

 stillness with a sob, though the last cent of your sordid hoards 

 be gone! ... go away! Ye have lost nothing! . . . Yet 

 that dauntless old man is not dismayed ; he and Fate knew each 

 other's faces in battle long ago. Let those who know how to 

 love and venerate such labors to sympathize with such griev- 

 ous calamities, exhibit it in their prompt patronage of the new 

 work now issuing The Quadrupeds of America and in the 

 care which shall be taken to preserve the volumes of the Plates 

 of the Birds, now in existence the value of which will be five- 

 fold increased ! 



When Baird heard the untoward news, he wrote 

 from Carlisle, August 4, 1845: "It is with sincerest re- 



6 Charles Winterfield (Bibl. No. 150), The American Review, vol. ii 

 (1845). 



