By and by his best friends said he acted like a crazy man. Only his wife and family stood by him. Finally when his money was gone, and there were two children growing up, things looked rather desperate. But Lucy, his wife, said: "You are a genius, and you know more about birds than any one living. I am sure all you need is time to show the world how clever you are. I will earn money while you study and paint!"
So Audubon traveled to seek out the haunts of still more birds, while Lucy went as governess in rich families, or opened private schools where she could teach her own two boys as well as others. She earned a great deal of money, and when he had made all his pictures and was ready to publish the books, she had nearly enough to pay the expense, and gave it to him.
"No," he said, "I am going to earn part of this myself. I will open a dancing class." He had danced beautifully ever since he was a child and could not understand how people could be so awkward and stupid as his class of sixty Kentuckians proved to be. In their first lesson he broke his bow and almost ruined his beautiful violin in his excitement and temper. "Why, watch me," he cried, and he danced to his own music so charmingly that the class clapped their hands and said they would do their best to copy him. By and by they did better, and before he left them, they quite satisfied him. And what was fortunate for him, they had paid him two thousand dollars. With this and Lucy's earnings, he went to England and had the famous drawings published. When they were done, he exhibited them at the Royal Institute, charging admission, and earned many pounds more.
Audubon was a lovable, courteous man, never too poor to help others, very modest and gracious. He adored his wife, and as his books (he wrote many volumes of his travels, which I hope you will read some day) brought in quite a fortune, the two, with their sons, and their grandchildren, spent their last days in great comfort, on a fine estate on the Hudson River.
ROBERT FULTON
When Robert Fulton was a little boy in Pennsylvania, he never minded being called to his lessons with his mother, for she was a famous Irish beauty, and Robert loved to look at her. She was good-natured too and told him far more interesting stories than he found in the lesson books. It was quite a different matter when Robert was sent, at the age of eight, to a school kept by Caleb Johnson, a Quaker gentleman.
With Mr. Johnson, Robert found lessons rather stupid affairs. He missed the stories his mother always wove in with the books they read together. Besides, Robert had taken some toys and old clocks to pieces, and he was busy planning how he could make some himself, if he but had the tools. Sometimes Caleb Johnson spoke to him two or three times before Robert heard him. The old Quaker thought the boy was wasting precious time, so he feruled him every day.
This was way back, just before the Revolutionary War, and in those days every school-teacher kept a stout stick on his desk, called a ferule, with which to slap the naughty pupils' hands. The ferule always made the hand burn and sting, and if the teacher were harsh, he sometimes blistered a boy's hand. One time, after the Quaker had used the ferule on Robert until his own arm ached, he cried: "There, that will make you do something, I guess."