iends, who
assured him the time might come when he should be a great American
naturalist, which had such weight with him that he felt a certain degree
of pride in the words, even then, when he was about eighteen years of
age.

"The store at Louisville went on prosperously, when I attended to it;
but birds were birds then as now, and my thoughts were ever and anon
turning toward them as the objects of my greatest delight. I shot, I
drew, I looked on nature only; my days were happy beyond human
conception, and beyond this I really cared not." [How like Agassiz, who
said he had not time to make money.] As he could not bear to give the
attention required by his business, his business abandoned him. "Indeed,
I never thought of business beyond the ever-engaging journeys which I
was in the habit of taking to Philadelphia or New York, to purchase
goods; those journeys I greatly enjoyed, as they afforded me ample means
to study birds and their habits as I traveled through the beautiful, the
darling forests of Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania." Poor fellow, how
many ups and downs he had! He lost everything and became burdened with
debt. But he did not despair for had he not a talent for drawing? He at
once undertook to take portraits of the human head divine in black
chalk, and thanks to his master, David, succeeded admirably. He
established a large drawing school at Cincinnati, and formed an
engagement to stuff birds for the museum there at a large salary.

"One of the most extraordinary things among all these adverse
circumstances" he adds, "was, that I never for a day give up listening
to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or
delineating them in the best way I could; nay, during my deepest
troubles, I frequently would wrench myself from the persons around me
and retire to some secluded part of our noble forests; and many a time,
at the sound of the wood-thrushes' melodies, have I fallen on my knees
and there prayed earnestly to our God. This never failed to bring me
the most valuable of thoughts, and always comfort, and it was often
necessary for me to exert my will and compel myself to return to my
fellow-beings."

Do you not fancy that Audubon was himself a _rara avis_ and worthy of
admiration and study?

Such a man, in the language of a contemporary, should have a monument in
the old Creole country in which he was born, and whose birds inspired
his childish visions. It should be the most beautif