Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/74

42 "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, became 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."