As a child, though small and slender, he was strong and active and delighted in the open air life which was indeed his second nature; and he was proficient in swimming, shooting, fishing and all out-door sports and pleasures, while still a boy. He was rather averse to the needful studies which kept him from the woods and streams, but which his mother never permitted him to neglect. She was, herself, the teacher of her sons in their earlier years, and a most thorough one, as later generations can testify, sending them to school only when she realized that they needed contact with boys of their own age; but the home education was never given up. Both she and Mr. Audubon were excellent musicians, great readers, and most desirous that their children should be prepared, as fully as possible, to enter the world as educated, and even accomplished men. Drawing was an important matter always, and both sons, Victor and John, became well skilled in this art, but in different lines, the first in landscape, the second in delineating birds and quadrupeds—or as the scientists say today, mammals—the latter being his specialty, though the first intention was that he should be a portrait painter. The boys while children were usually together, and were sent to school at the same time, though Victor was three years the elder, but at times they were separated. Victor was a quiet, studious boy, and a great favorite with the elder members of his mother's family, the Bakewells, while John, who was full of mischief, very restless, always most successful in getting his young cousins as well as himself into all sorts of scrapes, was naturally less in demand. When Mr. and Mrs. Audubon were wandering from place to place, Victor was frequently with relatives in Louisville, and at an early age became a clerk in the office of Mr. Nicholas Berthoud, who had married a sister of Mrs. Audubon. He was in this position when his father sailed for England in 1826, while John remained in Louisiana with his mother at Bayou Sara, where she was then teaching.