7^8 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 



speak of the departure and return of birds with the seasons, and would de- 

 scribe their haunts, and, more wonderful than all, their change of livery ; thus 

 exciting me to study them, and to raise my mind toward their great Creator." 



He left Louisiana, however, while still a child, and after a brief residence 

 in St. Domingo was taken to France. His father was desirous he should be- 

 come a sailor like himself, and among the branches of education prescribed 

 for him were music, drawing, and dancing. He played skilfully on the violin, 

 flute, and guitar, and his terpsichorean skill served him well at the crisis of 

 his fate, for his voyage to England to publish his great work was rendered 

 possible by gaining two thousand dollars by dancing lessons. His drawing 

 master was the great chief of the classical school, — David, the celebrated 

 painter. At his home at Nantes he indulged in his nest-hunting propensi- 

 ties. He began to collect and try to preserve the specimens. But the 

 preparation of the birds, after death, was onerous, and required constant care, 

 and was subject to decay as the beauty of the plumage vanished. " I 

 wished," was the longing of the boy naturalist, " all the productions of nature, 

 but I wished life with them." The sequel is told in rather a dramatic way: 

 " I turned to my father and made known to him my disappointment and 

 anxiety. He produced a book of illustrations. A new life ran in my veins. 

 I turned over the leaves with avidity ; and although what I saw was not 

 what I longed for, it gave me a desire to copy nature." To copy nature- 

 it is in three words the story of his future life. He worked so assiduously 

 that he completed drawings of no less than two hundred French birds. His 

 pencil, he says, " gave birth to a family of cripples. So maimed were most 

 of them that they resembled the mangled corpses on a field of battle, com- 

 pared with the integrity of living men." One expression strikes us as of 

 singular force and felicity : " The worse my drawings were, the more beauti- 

 ful did the originals seem." 



His father, although desirous to see his son in his country's service, wisely 

 recognized the bent of his genius, and sent him to superintend his property 

 in America. He landed in New York, and it is strange to read that he 

 caught the yellow fever by walking to what is now Greenwich Street in that 

 city. On his recovery he took possession of his Mill Grove farm. " A blessed 

 spot," as he describes it, " where hunting, fishing, and drawing occupied my 

 every moment." In his autobiographical sketch he tells in unaffected lan- 

 guage his first meeting with his wife, Lucy Bakewell, the daughter of an 

 English neighbor. She taught him English, but to the last he retained his 

 French accent, and with his intimate friends preserved the graceful French 

 use of the second person singular; and in his letters and memoranda French 



