Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/85

Rh by Audubon in turn in chalk drawing.

There appear to have been no sacrifices that Mrs. Audubon was not willing and ready to make to forward the plans of her husband. "My best friends," he says at this time, "solemnly regarded me as a mad man, and my wife and family alone gave me encouragement. My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant." She wanted him to go to Europe, and, to assist toward that end, she entered into an engagement with a Mrs. Percy of Bayou Sara, to instruct her children, together with her own, and a limited number of outside pupils.

Audubon, in the meantime, with his son Victor, and his new artist friend, Stein, started off in a wagon, seeking whom they might paint, on a journey through the southern states. They wandered as far as New Orleans, but