Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/73



, Audubon gave up the struggle of trying to be a business man. He says: "I parted with every particle of property I had to my creditors, keeping only the clothes I wore on that day, my original drawings, and my gun, and without a dollar in my pocket, walked to Louisville alone."

This he speaks of as the saddest of all his journeys——"the only time in my life when the wild turkeys that so often crossed my path, and the thousands of lesser birds that enlivened the woods and the prairies, all looked like enemies, and I turned my eyes from them, as if I could have wished that they had never existed."

But the thought of his beloved Lucy and her children soon spurred him to action. He was a good draughtsman, he had been a pupil of David, he would turn his talents to account.