60 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
“T arrived at Bayou Sara with rent 
and wasted clothes, and uncut hair, and 
altogether looking like the Wandering 
Jew.” 
In his haste to reach his wife and 
child at Mr. Percy’s, a mile or more 
distant through the woods, he got lost 
in the night, and wandered till daylight 
before he found the house. 
He found his wife had prospered in 
his absence, and was earning nearly 
three thousand dollars a year, with 
which she was quite ready to help him 
in the publication of his drawings. He 
forthwith resolved to see what he could 
do to increase the amount by his own 
efforts. Receiving an offer to teach danc- 
ing, he soon had a class of sixty organ- 
ised. But the material proved so awk- 
ward and refractory that the master in 
his first lesson broke his bow and nearly 
ruined his violin in his excitement and 
impatience. Then he danced to his own 
music till the whole room came down in 
