Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/77

Rh of his drawings in hopes of getting a recommendation. Yanderlyn at first treated him as a mendicant and ordered him to leave his portfolio in the entry. After some delay, in company with a government official, he consented to see the pictures. "The perspiration ran down my face," says Audubon, "as I showed him my drawings and laid them on the floor." He was thinking of the expedition to Mexico just referred to, and wanted to make a good impression upon Yanderlyn and the officer. This he succeeded in doing, and obtained from the artist a very complimentary note, as he did also from Governor Robertson of Louisiana. In June, Audubon left New Orleans for Kentucky, to rejoin his wife and boys, but somewhere on the journey engaged himself to a Mrs. Perrie who lived at Bayou Sara, Louisiana, to teach her daughter drawing during the summer, at sixty dollars per month, leaving him half