194 COUES: "Behind the Veil." 



tion from Mr. Wade to examine his unique collection of material for 

 new biographies of Wilson and Audubon. 



I have no desire or intention to offer any formal accoimt or valua- 

 tion of this material, but merely wish to gossip a little, perhaps in a 

 sentimental mood with which my readers will not be in entire 

 sympathy, if they expect the subject to be treated with the rigidity 

 of history. 



By way of whetting my appetite, I suspect, Mr. Wade handed me 

 a gun before I had been five minutes in his company. There was 

 apparently nothing remarkable about the arm — it was a cheap, 

 old-fashioned, single-barrelled flint-lock, altered to percussion — yet 

 it gave me a thrill, as I balanced it, brought it to shoulder, and 

 sighted along the barrel with my cheek pressed against the stock. 

 Wilson had done the same many a time. After his death, it passed, 

 directly or indirectly, into the possession of John Cassin ; when that 

 great and good ornithologist died, it became the property of Wm. 

 P. Turnbull ; at whose death it came into the hands of Willis P. 

 Hazard ; from whom Mr. Wade received it, with the necessary docu- 

 ments to attest its historj', including an account of how the powder- 

 horn that belonged with it was lost by a little fellow who went out 

 shooting with it once. 



We all remember Audubon's painting of the Red Fox caught in a 

 steel-trap — a vivid pictiu-e of terror and pain. The original draw- 

 ing of this engraving was lying on the table near the corner where 

 Wilson's gun stood, little injured by time. It is of life-size ; it is 

 dated and signed by the master's hand, with pencilled instructions 

 to the engraver to correct a faulty line here, deepen a shadow there, 

 lighten up in another place, etc. Those who are "inside" the en- 

 graving business understand from what kind of sketches the most 

 beautifully finished plates are not seldom produced. Coarse and 

 raw as this painting is, however, the power of art and the life are 

 there ; and the subsequent mechanical perfection of details no more 

 detracts from the artist's merit than do stage dii'ections lessen that 

 of the great player. 



After supper — to which I gave my whole mind, having had the 

 railroad luck of an unbroken fast for twelve hours, since a breakfast 

 with Mr. Allen in Cambridge — I sat down to a pile of Wilson's let- 

 ters, and other papers of his, nearly all, I think, unpublished. The 

 letters were mostly early ones, — 1803 et seq., — before he had ad- 

 vanced very far in his ornithological experiences. I never realized 



