198 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
called her husband away. “We lived,” said Audubon, 
“two years at Louisville, where we enjoyed many of the 
best pleasures which this life can afford; and whenever 
we have since passed that way, we have found the kind- 
ness of our former friends unimpaired.” It was while 
they were living at Gnathway’s hotel of the “Indian 
Queen,” in Louisville, that Victor Gifford Audubon, 
who was destined to become his father’s right hand in 
the publication of his most important works, was born 
on June 12, 1809. : 
When Audubon had reached his twenty-fourth year, 
nature, his fond nurse from infancy, was calling to him 
more loudly than ever before, but to most of his con- 
temporaries his devotion to natural history could have 
seemed little else than sheer madness, or, at best, an 
utter waste of time. By the year 1810 his portfolios 
were swelling with upwards of two hundred pictures of 
American birds, produced, to be sure, without any plan, 
and far inferior to the best of his later work, but still 
done to the size of life, in the natural colors, and far 
excelling in fidelity and charm anything that had been 
attempted before. At this time, however, the young 
traders needed money for more practical affairs, and 
Audubon’s father-in-law, William Bakewell of “Fat- 
land Ford,” consented to sell a portion of this estate, 
amounting to 170 acres, in order that his daughter, 
Lucy, might immediately realize her interest in it. From 
this sale nearly $8,000 was obtained; the money was 
deposited with Messrs. Robert Kinder & Company of 
New York, a firm with which Audubon and Rozier had 
dealt from the opening of their business at Louisville. 
This is clearly shown by the following interesting 
letter: ™ 
“See Note, Vol. I, p. 196. 
