AUDUBON'S LETTERPRESS 451 



secretaryship a delay arose in preparing your diploma, which 

 will however be forwarded in a few days. 



Upon balancing his accounts with The Birds of 

 America at about this time, Audubon thought it was 

 truly remarkable that $40,000 should have passed 

 through his hands for the completion of the first volume. 



Who would believe that once in London I had only a 

 sovereign left in my pocket, and did not know to whom to 

 apply for another, when at the verge of failure; above all, 

 that I extricated myself from all my difficulties, not by borrow- 

 ing money, but by rising at four o'clock in the morning, work- 

 ing hard all day, and disposing of my works at a price which 

 a common labourer would have thought little more than suffi- 

 cient remuneration for his work? To give you an idea of my 

 actual difficulties during the publication of my first volume, it 

 will be sufficient to say, that in the four years required to 

 bring that volume before the world, no less than fifty of my 

 subscribers, representing the sum of fifty-six thousand dol- 

 lars, abandoned me! And whenever a few withdrew I was 

 forced to leave London, and go to the provinces, to obtain 

 others to supply their places, in order to enable me to raise 

 the money to meet the expenses of engraving, coloring, paper, 

 printing . . . ; and that with all my constant exertions, fa- 

 tigues, and vexations, I find myself now having but one hundred 

 and thirty standing names on my list. 



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