a naturalist and an artist. The artist, as modest as he was odd, showed me
how he laid on the paint on his pictures, asked after my own pursuits, and
showed a friendly spirit which enchanted me. With a ramrod for a rest, he
prosecuted his work vigorously, and afterwards asked me to examine a
percussion lock on his gun, a novelty to me at the time. He snapped some
caps, and on my remarking that he would frighten his birds, he exclaimed,
'Devil take the birds, there are more of them in the market.' He then
loaded his gun, and wishing to show me that he was a marksman, fired at one
of the pins on his easel. This he smashed to pieces, and afterward put a
rifle bullet exactly through the hole into which the pin fitted."

Audubon reached Natchez on March 24, 1822, and remained there and in the
vicinity till the spring of 1823, teaching drawing and French to private
pupils and in the college at Washington, nine miles distant, hunting, and
painting the birds, and completing his collection. Among other things he
painted the "Death of Montgomery" from a print. His friends persuaded him
to raffle the picture off. This he did, and taking one number himself, won
the picture, while his finances were improved by three hundred dollars
received for the tickets. Early in the autumn his wife again joined him,
and presently we find her acting as governess in the home of a clergyman
named Davis.

In December, there arrived in Natchez a wandering portrait painter named
Stein, who gave Audubon his first lessons in the use of oil colours, and
was instructed 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