During' the time that Aiuhilx)!! passed in Louis\-ille he made 

 constant excursions into the woods and fields. He was drawing 

 birds and studying their habits in life constantly. His heart was 

 with nature and the store was a burden. When he was forced 

 to go to Philadelphia or New York to purchase goods he enjoyed 

 the journeys only as he confessed as they afforded him the means 

 "to study birds and their habits as I traveled through the beautiful, 

 the darling forests of Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania." 



More than once xA.udubon allowed his pack horses "laden .with 

 goods and dollars'" to become lost to sight and in danger of being 

 lost beyond recovery while he stopped to watch the activities and 

 to admire the colorings of some woodland warbler. 



Pecuniary difficulties overtook the naturalist. He did not at- 

 tempt as a man of steadier business method might have attempted, 

 to find a really serious means of recouping his losses. In a letter 

 he says: "Your mother was well, both of you were lovely darlings 

 of our hearts, and the aft"ects of poverty troubled us not." The 

 naturalist continued to make his pictures of birds and quadrupeds 

 and while his friends and relatives doubtless thought that his 

 drawings and his forest excursions was a waste, possibly a willful 

 waste of time, they proved to be the basis of his future fame. 



The Mill in Kentucky. 



The Audubons went to Henderson, Ky., and then there was a 

 new business venture, a steam mill, which he declares to his sons 

 in a letter was "of all the follies of man one of the greatest, and 

 to your uncle and to me the worst of all our pecuniary misfortunes." 

 Audubon worked hard at his mill but he called it afterward the 

 "bad establishment." He parted finally with every particle of 

 property to his creditors paying the last dollar that he owed 

 and leaving Henderson with only his clothes and his original 

 drawings. Of his wife he says that she felt the pangs, "of our 

 misfortune but never for an hour lost her courage ; her brave and 

 cheerful spirit excepted all and no reproaches from her beloved lips 

 ever wounded my heart, ^^'ith her was I not always rich?" 



Drawing School in Cincinnati. 



Audubon as he expressed himself was not inclined to cut his 

 throat in foolish despair. He resorted to his talents and for some 

 time he drew portraits, managing thus to eke out a living, and still 

 giving over as much time as he could to the drawing of birds. He 

 obtained a position in a Cincinnati museum and he estal)lished a 



