LIFE AT "MILL GROVE" 111 



spirits until his wedding day. This was the more re- 

 markable in a youth coming from a country which flowed 

 with good wine, where school children are still served 

 with watered wine for lunch, and where the cooks, as 

 Goldsmith believed, could concoct seven different dishes 

 out of a nettle-top, and who, if they had enough 

 butcher's meat (a want that has since been abundantly 

 supplied), would be the best purveyors in the world. 

 Audubon attributed his iron constitution to this simple 

 regimen, which had been followed, he said, from his 

 earliest recollection, though he admitted that while in 

 France it was extremely annoying to all about him; 

 for this reason he would not dine out when his peculiar 

 habits were likely to be the subject of unpleasant com- 

 ment. To follow this account of liimself: 







Pies, puddings, eggs, milk and. c.ream, was all I cared for 

 in the way of food, and many a time I have robbed my ten- 

 Cant's wife, Mrs. Thomas, of the cream intended to make butter 



V 



for the Philadelphia market. . . . All this time I was as fair 

 and rosy as a girl, though as strong, indeed stronger than most 

 young men . . . and why have I thought a thousand times, 

 should I not have kept to that delicious mode of living, and why 

 should not mankind in general be more abstemious than man- 

 kind is? 12 



William Gifford Bake well, a younger brother of 

 Lucy, has left this interesting record of a visit paid to 

 "Mill Grove" in the summer of 1806: 



Audubon took me to his house where he and his companion, 

 Rozier, resided, with Mrs. Thomas, for an attendant. On en- 

 tering his room, I was astonished and delighted to find that it 

 was turned into a museum. The walls were festooned with all 



12 For this and the preceding quotation, see Maria R. Audubon, Audubon 

 and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, pp. 18 and 27. 



