should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be
triumphant."

She wanted him to go to Europe, and, to assist toward that end, she entered
into an engagement with a Mrs. Percy of Bayou Sara, to instruct her
children, together with her own, and a limited number of outside pupils.

Audubon, in the meantime, with his son Victor, and his new artist friend,
Stein, started off in a wagon, seeking whom they might paint, on a journey
through the southern states. They wandered as far as New Orleans, but
Audubon appears to have returned to his wife again in May, and to have
engaged in teaching her pupils music and drawing. But something went wrong,
there was a misunderstanding with the Percys, and Audubon went back to
Natchez, revolving various schemes in his head, even thinking of again
entering upon mercantile pursuits in Louisville.

He had no genius for accumulating money nor for keeping it after he had
gotten it. One day when his affairs were at a very low ebb, he met a
squatter with a tame black wolf which took Audubon's fancy. He says that he
offered the owner a hundred dollar bill for it on the spot, but was
refused. He probably means to say that he would have offered it had he had
it. Hundred dollar bills, I fancy, were rarer than tame black wolves in
that pioneer country in those days.

About this time he and his son Victor were taken with yellow fever, and
Mrs. Audubon was compelled to dismiss her school and go to nurse them. They
both recovered, and, in October (1823), set out for Louisville, making part
of the journey on foot. The following winter was passed at Shipping Port,
near Louisville, where Audubon painted birds, landscapes, portraits and
even signs. In March he left Shipping Port for Philadelphia, leaving his