AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE 299 
the world forgot. There, in the direst misery, he died 
in 1840, at the age of fifty-six, without a word of cheer 
or a tear of regret. His body was barely saved from 
the dissecting table and given decent burial through the 
loyalty and promptitude of one of his few remaining 
friends, Dr. William Mease, who with undertaker 
Bringhurst, broke into the room where his body lay and 
let it down through a window by ropes.’ Even his will 
was ruthlessly violated, and all of his effects, in eight 
dray-loads, were hurried off to the public auction rooms 
and sold in bargain lots, his books and all else bringing 
but a mere pittance, not even enough to pay his land- 
lord and the administrator of his estate. 
Thus died the “eccentric naturalist” whom Audubon 
had portrayed, and for whom the world in general had 
shown scant sympathy. Rafinesque, nevertheless, pos- 
sessed a mind of extraordinary acumen and an energy 
and versatility little short of marvelous. He dipped 
into every field of knowledge, looking for precious 
metal, but much that he brought to the surface was 
dross. His restless versatility alone would probably 
have ruined him, for nothing short of an analysis of 
the globe with all of its contents would have satisfied 
his ambitious spirit. His was the ardor of the traveler 
and the explorer, with a passionate love for nature sel- 
dom equaled, but without the incentive and the patience 
of the investigator or a balance-wheel in the judgment. 
His ambition in early life was to become the greatest 
naturalist of his age; had his early training and environ- 
2 The landlord, to whom Rafinesque had been in arrears for rent, had 
locked his body in the room and refused permission for its burial, think- 
ing to find a market for it in one of the medical schools of the city. 
Rafinesque was buried in a little churchyard, then outside of the limits 
of the city, known as Ronaldson’s cemetery, now at Ninth and Catharine 
Streets. See :Call and Fitzpatrick, Bibliography, Nos. 198 and 228. 
