for hours making a sketch of this bird and feeling
as rich as if he had discovered some rare gem.

After twenty years the work was published. Every specimen, from the
tiny humming-bird to the largest eagles and vultures, was sketched
life size and colored in the tints of nature. There were four hundred
and seventy-five of these plates, furnishing a complete history of
the feathered tribes of North America, for they showed not only the
appearance of the birds but represented also the manners and home
life of this world of song. The humming-bird poised before the crimson
throat of the trumpet flower, the whippoorwill resting among the
leaves of the oak, the bobolink singing among the crimson flowers
of the swamp maples, the snow-bird chirping cheerily among the
snow-touched berries of the holly, were not sketches merely but bits
of story out of bird history. So also are those pictures of the swan
among the reeds of the Great Lakes, of the great white heron seizing
its prey from the waters of the Gulf, and of the golden eagle winging
its way toward the distant heights that it inhabits.

The work was published by subscription in London in 1829 under the
title, "The Birds of North America." The price was eighty guineas.
Later on a smaller and cheaper edition was issued. The work now is
very rare. Audubon had the gratification of knowing that his labors
were understood and appreciated by the world of science. When he
exhibited his plates in the galleries of England and France, whither
he went to obtain subscriptions, crowds flocked to see them, and the
greatest scientists of the age welcomed him to their ranks. _The Birds
of America_ was his greatest work, though he was interested somewhat
in general zoology and wrote on other subjects.

Audubon died in New York in 1851. The great zoologist Cuvier called
_The Birds of North America_ the most magnificent monument that art
has ever erected to ornithology. The Scotch naturalist Wilson said
that the character of Audubon was just what might have been expected
from the author of such a work, brave, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing,
and capable of heroic endurance.

CHAPTER III

WASHINGTON IRVING

1783-1859

"Left his lodging some time ago and has not been heard of since, a
small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat,
by the name of Knickerbocker. . . . Any information concerning him
will be thankfully received."

Such was the curious adver