42 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
“< As we were straightened to the very 
utmost, I undertook to draw portraits at 
the low price of five dollars per head, in 
black chalk. . I drew a few gratis, and 
succeeded so well that ere many days 
had elapsed I had an abundance of 
work.’’ 
His fame spread, his orders increased. 
A settler came for him in the middle of 
the night from a considerable distance 
to have the portrait of his mother taken 
while she was on the eve of death, and a 
clergyman had his child’s body exhumed > 
that the artist might restore to him the 
lost features. 
Money flowed in and he was soon 
again established with his family in a 
house in Louisville. His drawings of 
birds still continued and, he says, be- 
came at times almost a mania with him ; 
he would frequently give up a head, 
the profits of which would have supplied 
the wants of his family a week or more, 
“‘to represent a little citizen of the 
feathered tribe.”’ 
