Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/90

58 passage on a schooner bound for Erie, furnishing his own bed and provisions and paying a fare of one dollar and a half. From Erie he and a fellow-traveller hired a man and cart to take them to Meadville, paying their entertainers over night with music and portrait drawing. Reaching Meadville, they had only one dollar and a half between them, but soon replenished their pockets by sketching some of the leading citizens.

Audubon's belief in himself helped him wonderfully. He knew that he had talents, he insisted on using them. Most of his difficulties came from trying to do the things he was not fitted to do. He did not hesitate to use his talents in a humble way, when nothing else offered—portraits, landscapes, birds and animals he painted, but he would paint the cabin walls of the ship to pay his passage, if he was short of funds, or execute crayon portraits of a shoemaker and his wife, to pay for shoes to enable