Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/92

60 "I arrived at Bayou Sara with rent and wasted clothes, and uncut hair, and altogether looking like the "Wandering Jew."

In his haste to reach his wife and child at Mr. Percy's, a mile or more distant through the woods, he got lost in the night, and wandered till daylight before he found the house.

He found his wife had prospered in his absence, and was earning nearly three thousand dollars a year, with which she was quite ready to help him in the publication of his drawings. He forthwith resolved to see what he could do to increase the amount by his own efforts. Receiving an offer to teach dancing he soon had a class of sixty organised. But the material proved so awkward and refractory that the master in his first lesson broke his bow and nearly ruined his violin in his excitement and impatience. Then he danced to his own music till the whole room came down in