How easy it was to get them! It is what a man thinks a woman will
be willing to do that she seldom does. But she made a confession.
When she first found that I was a smallish student of birds, she
feared I would not like Audubon, since men so often sneer at those
who do in a grand way what they can do only in a poor one. I had
another revelation of Georgiana's more serious nature, which is
always aroused by the memory of her father. There is something
beautiful and steadfast in this girl's soul. In our hemisphere vines
climb round from left to right; if Georgiana loved you she would,
if bidden, reverse every law of her nature for you as completely
as a vine that you had caused to twine from right to left.

Sylvia enters school the 1st of September, and Georgiana is to be
at home then to see to that. How surely she drives this family
before her--and with as gentle a touch as that of a slow south wind
upon the clouds.

Those poor fist drawings of Audubon! He succeeded; we study his
early failures. The world never studies the failures of those who
do not succeed in the end.

The birds are moulting. If man could only moult also--his mind
once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions!
How fine we should all look if every August the old plumage of our
natures would drop out and be blown away, and fresh quills take the
vacant places! But we have one set of feathers to last us through
our threescore years and ten--one set of spotless feathers, which
we are told to keep spotless through all our lives in a dirty world.
If one gets broken it stays; if one gets blackened, nothing will
cleanse it. No doubt we shall all fly home at last, like a flock