John James Audubon | Page 4

here that I may be able to pay constant attention to thy studies; thou shalt have ample time for pleasures, but the remainder must be employed with industry and care."
But the father soon left him on some foreign mission for his government and the boy chafed as usual under his tasks and confinement. One day, too much mathematics drove him into making his escape by leaping from the window, and making off through the gardens attached to the school where he was confined. A watchful corporal soon overhauled him, however, and brought him back, where he was confined on board some sort of prison ship in the harbour. His father soon returned, when he was released, not without a severe reprimand.
We next find him again in the city of Nantes struggling with more odious mathematics, and spending all his leisure time in the fields and woods, studying the birds. About this time he began a series of drawings of the French birds, which grew to upwards of two hundred, all bad enough, he says, but yet real representations of birds, that gave him a certain pleasure. They satisfied his need of expression.
At about this time, too, though the year we do not know, his father concluded to send him to the United States, apparently to occupy a farm called Mill Grove, which the father had purchased some years before, on the Schuylkill river near Philadelphia. In New York he caught the yellow fever: he was carefully nursed by two Quaker ladies who kept a boarding house in Morristown, New Jersey.
In due time his father's agent, Miers Fisher, also a Quaker, removed him to his own villa near Philadelphia, and here Audubon seems to have remained some months. But the gay and ardent youth did not find the atmosphere of the place congenial. The sober Quaker grey was not to his taste. His host was opposed to music of all kinds, and to dancing, hunting, fishing and nearly all other forms of amusement. More than that, he had a daughter between whom and Audubon he apparently hoped an affection would spring up. But Audubon took an unconquerable dislike to her. Very soon, therefore, he demanded to be put in possession of the estate to which his father had sent him.
Of the month and year in which he entered upon his life at Mill Grove, we are ignorant. We know that he fell into the hands of another Quaker, William Thomas, who was the tenant on the place, but who, with his worthy wife, seems to have made life pleasant for him. He soon became attached to Mill Grove, and led a life there just suited to his temperament.
"Hunting, fishing, drawing, music, occupied my every moment; cares I knew not and cared naught about them. I purchased excellent and beautiful horses, visited all such neighbours as I found congenial spirits, and was as happy as happy could be."
Near him there lived an English family by the name of Bakewell, but he had such a strong antipathy to the English that he postponed returning the call of Mr. Bakewell, who had left his card at Mill Grove during one of Audubon's excursions to the woods. In the late fall or early winter, however, he chanced to meet Mr. Bakewell while out hunting grouse, and was so pleased with him and his well-trained dogs, and his good marksmanship, that he apologised for his discourtesy in not returning his call, and promised to do so forthwith. Not many mornings thereafter he was seated in his neighbour's house.
"Well do I recollect the morning," he says in the autobiographical sketch which he prepared for his sons, "and may it please God that I never forget it, when for the first time I entered Mr. Bakewell's dwelling. It happened that he was absent from home, and I was shown into a parlour where only one young lady was snugly seated at her work by the fire. She rose on my entrance, offered me a seat, assured me of the gratification her father would feel on his return, which, she added, would be in a few moments, as she would despatch a servant for him. Other ruddy cheeks and bright eyes made their transient appearance, but, like spirits gay, soon vanished from my sight; and there I sat, my gaze riveted, as it were, on the young girl before me, who, half working, half talking, essayed to make the time pleasant to me. Oh! may God bless her! It was she, my dear sons, who afterwards became my beloved wife, and your mother. Mr. Bakewell soon made his appearance, and received me with the manner and hospitality of a true English gentleman. The other members of the family were soon introduced to me, and Lucy was told to have