94 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
The naturalist tells us that his father hoped that he 
would follow in his footsteps, or else become an engineer, 
and he saw that his son was instructed in the elements 
of mathematics, geography, fencing and music. But as 
Lieutenant Audubon was continually on the move, su- 
pervision in those matters fell to the over-indulgent step- 
mother, with the result that, instead of doing his duties 
at school, young Audubon took to the fields. Every 
night, he said, he would return with his lunch basket well 
laden with the spoils of the day—birds’ nests, eggs, and 
curiosities of every sort destined for the museum into 
which his room had already been transformed. He was 
then in the “collecting stage,” when that sense of pos- 
session dominates the heart of the boy, which, if well 
directed, can be turned to excellent account. 
Lieutenant Audubon encouraged his son’s taste for 
natural history and for drawing, but did not regard such 
accomplishments as a substitute for what he considered 
more serious subjects. He himself had suffered too 
much from lack of a formal education and was resolved 
to give his children the best opportunities within their 
reach. “Revolutions,” he once remarked, according to 
his son, “were not confined to society, but could also 
take place in the lives of individuals,”’ when they were all 
“too apt to lose in one day the fortune they had before 
possessed; but talents and knowledge, added to sound 
mental training, assisted by honest industry,” could 
“never fail, nor be taken from any one when once the 
possessor of such valuable means.” 
When the elder Audubon returned from one of his 
periodic cruises, “my room,” said the naturalist, “made 
quite a show,” and the father complimented him on his 
good taste; but upon being questioned in regard to the 
progress made in his other studies, he could only hang his 
