212 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
almost all his friends he had occasionally, arising from 
a collision of opinion, some slight misunderstanding, 
which was soon passed over, leaving no disagreeable 
impression. But an act of disrespect he could ill brook, 
and a wilful injury he would seldom forgive.” 
In 1801, while teaching and studying German at 
Milestown, Pennsylvania, Wilson had another unfor- 
tunate love affair, in this instance with a woman already 
married. To this he alluded in letters written in the 
summer of that year to his friend Orr, with whom he 
later quarreled. On August 7, 1801, he wrote: “The 
world is lost forever to me and I to the world. No time 
nor distance can ever banish her image from my mind. 
It is forever present with me, and my heart is broken 
with the most melancholy reflections.” 3 
At Gray’s Ferry, however, Wilson soon found in the 
estimable William Bartram, then in his sixty-first year, 
the sympathetic adviser, kind teacher, and judicious 
friend that he most needed, for though Wilson took the 
initiative in his ornithological plans, it was the kindly 
Bartram who eventually extended a helping hand. Both 
Bartram and Lawson, the engraver, urged him to devote 
his leisure to drawing, as a foil to his melancholic tenden- 
cies. Wilson did not hesitate long, for on June 1, 1808, 
he confided to a friend in Scotland that he had begun to 
make a “collection of our finest birds.” Early in 1804 
his purpose was clearly fixed, and on March 12 of that 
year he wrote to Alexander Lawson: “I am most 
earnestly bent on pursuing my plan of making a collec- 
tion of all the birds in this part of North America... 
I have been so long accustomed to the building of airy 
castles and brain windmills, that it has become one of 
my earthly comforts, a sort of rough bone, that amuses 
me when sated with the dull drudgery of life.’ A 
