LIFE AT “MILL GROVE” 111 
spirits until his wedding day. This was the more re- 
markable in a youth coming from a country which flowed 
with good wine, where school children are still served 
with watered wine for lunch, and where the cooks, as 
Goldsmith believed, could concoct seven different dishes 
out of a nettle-top, and who, if they had enough 
butcher’s meat (a want that has since been abundantly 
supplied), would be the best purveyors in the world. 
Audubon attributed his iron constitution to this simple 
regimen, which had been followed, he said, from his 
earliest recollection, though he admitted that while in 
France it was extremely annoying to all about him; 
for this reason he would not dine out when his peculiar 
habits were likely to be the subject of unpleasant com- 
ment. ‘To follow this account of himself: 
Pies, puddings, eggs, milk and cream, was all I cared for 
in the way of food, and many a time I have robbed my ten- 
ant’s wife, Mrs. Thomas, of the cream intended to make butter 
for the Philadelphia market. . . . All this time I was as fair 
and rosy as a girl, though as strong, indeed stronger than most 
young men... and why have I thought a thousand times, 
should I not have kept to that delicious mode of living, and why 
should not mankind in general be more abstemious than man- 
kind is? 12 
William Gifford Bakewell, a younger brother of 
Lucy, has left this interesting record of a visit paid to 
“Mill Grove” in the summer of 1806: 
Audubon took me to his house where he and his companion, 
Rozier, resided, with Mrs. Thomas, for an attendant. On en- 
tering his room, I was astonished and delighted to find that it 
was turned into a museum. The walls were festooned with all 
” For this and the preceding quotation, see Maria R. Audubon, Audubon 
and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, pp. 18 and 27. 
