16 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
shooting, fishing, and riding, and had a 
passion for raising all sorts of fowls, 
which sources of interest and amusement 
fully occupied my time. It was one of 
my fancies to be ridiculously fond of 
dress ; to hunt in black satin breeches, 
wear pumps when shooting, and to dress 
in the finest ruffled shirts I could obtain 
from France.’’ 
The evidences of vanity regarding his 
looks and apparel, sometimes found in 
his journal, are probably traceable to 
his foster-mother’s unwise treatment of 
him in his youth. We have seen how 
his father’s intervention in the nick of 
time exercised a salutary influence upon 
him at this point in his career, directing 
his attention to the more solid attain- 
ments. Whatever traces of this self-con- 
sciousness and apparent vanity remained 
in after life, seem to have been more the 
result of a naive character delighting in 
picturesqueness in himself as well as in 
Nature, than they were of real vanity. 
