AUDUBON’S LETTERPRESS 451 
secretaryship a delay arose in preparing your diploma, which 
will however be forwarded in a few days. 
Upon balancing his accounts with The Birds of 
America at about this time, Audubon thought it was 
truly remarkable that $40,000 should have passed 
through his hands for the completion of the first volume. 
Who would believe that once in London I had only a 
sovereign left in my pocket, and did not know to whom to 
apply for another, when at the verge of failure; above all, 
that I extricated myself from all my difficulties, not by borrow- 
ing money, but by rising at four o’clock in the morning, work- 
ing hard all day, and disposing of my works at a price which 
a common labourer would have thought little more than suffi- 
cient remuneration for his work? To give you an idea of my 
actual difficulties during the publication of my first volume, it 
will be sufficient to say, that in the four years required to 
bring that volume before the world, no less than fifty of my 
subscribers, representing the sum of fifty-six thousand dol- 
lars, abandoned me! And whenever a few withdrew I mwas 
forced to leave London, and go to the provinces, to obtain 
others to supply their places, in order to enable me to raise 
the money to meet the expenses of engraving, coloring, paper, 
printing . . .; and that with all my constant exertions, fa- 
tigues, and vexations, I find myself now having but one hundred 
and thirty standing names on my list. 
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