16 IN THE DAYS OP AUDUBON 



hour will come; and whether you are living or dead, I 

 will bless you then." 



Audubon drew the pictures of birds and painted them, 

 but he outgrew his own work every year. 



On New-year's day he destroyed the pictures that 

 he had made the year before. They did not meet his 

 ideal. His father saw that he needed the training in the 

 best schools of art. 



He showed the old Knitter of Nantes his new pictures 

 with delight. 



" I have brought you to-day," he would say to her, " a 

 new portfolio of birds." 



"Where is your last year's portfolio?" 



" I put it into the fire on New-year's day." 



"My boy, you are doing well; you are growing." 



His father sought a teacher for him. 



David, the painter of colossal battre scenes and of 

 great historical events, a man of the Revolution, an en- 

 thusiast and a colorist, was then a leader of Trench art. 

 Pupils came _ to him from many cities, and he helped make 

 many of them famous. Among them came this boy 

 from the Louisiana plantation, where the nonpareils 

 haunted magnolias and mocking-birds trilled in the blaz- 

 ing air. 



He did not come to learn to paint tragedies. He had 

 a tender heart. To kill a bird for science was to him 

 a tragedy, and he shrunk from it. But he could learn 



