FINAL WORK DAYS 283 



mg. This is my tenth working-day. I have finished seventeen 

 articles, and arranged notes for another. I have used as many 

 of your notes as I could. Maria copies carefully. She lops 

 off to the right and the left with your notes and mine: she 

 corrects, criticizes, abuses, and praises us by turns. Your 

 father's notes, copied from his journal, are valuable — they con- 

 tain real information; some of the others are humbug and 

 rigmarole ; but you have done so well as to surprise us. . . . 



I hope that if nothing untoward happens, the Second Vol- 

 ume will be finished in a month, and the Third Volume next win- 

 ter. 



About thirty years later, when Victor Audubon's 

 sister-in-law ^* was making a disposition of his literary 

 effects, a bundle of manuscripts was saved and given 

 to Mr. George Bird Grinnell. Included in it were a 

 number of Audubon's letters, which are now reproduced, 

 as well as a considerable section of the printer's copy of 

 The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, Volume 

 I; this was in various handwritings, including little of 

 Bachman's himself, much of Victor's and of John G. 

 Bell's ; a little of this copy also was made by the second 

 Mrs. Bachman and by other and unknown hands, pos- 

 sibly those of one of Bachman's daughters and of his 

 son-in-law, Reverend John Haskell, all of whom are 

 known to have assisted in this labor. 



When we recall the disadvantages under which John 

 Bachman worked, it must be acknowledged that he was 

 deserving of all the credit which he received. Born of 

 Swiss and German stock at Rheinbeck, New York, in 

 1790, he clearly remembered walking in the mock 

 funeral procession that was held in his village when the 

 country was mourning the death of Washington in 1799. 



^Miss Eliza Malloiy, who in 1874 was living in the Victor Audubon 

 house. 



