Some time elapsed, during which I never heard of him, or of his work. At length, having occasion to go to Philadelphia, I, immediately after my arrival there, inquired for him and paid him a visit. He was then drawing a White-headed Eagle. He received me with civility, and took me to the Exhibition Rooms of Rembrandt Peale, the artist, who had then portrayed Napoleon crossing the Alps. Mr. Wilson spoke not of birds or drawings. Feeling, as I was forced to do, that my company was not agreeable, I parted from him; and after that I never saw him again. But judge of my astonishment some time after, when on reading the thirty-ninth page of the ninth volume of American Ornithology, I found in it the following paragraph:— "March 23, 1810.—I bade adieu to Louisville, to which place I had four letters of recommendation, and was taught to expect much of everything there; but neither received one act of civility from those to whom I was recommended, one subscriber, nor one new bird; though I delivered my letters, ransacked the woods repeatedly, and visited all the characters likely to subscribe. Science or literature has not one friend in this place." What actually happened at this meeting of the two naturalists will never be certainly known, beyond what can be gathered from their rather widely divergent accounts. It should be noticed, however, that the paragraph which Audubon quoted was extracted from Wilson's private diary; it was no doubt written on the spur of the moment, possibly to humor his own mood, and certainly with no thought of its later publication. It was inserted by George Ord in the biographical sketch of his friend appended to the ninth volume of the _American Ornithology_, which appeared in 1814, the year after Wilson's death. Audubon was not concerned, either directly or by implication, except in the last sentence, for it is evident that he was not one of those to whom Wilson had carried letters of introduction. Thus the matter stood until 1828, when Audubon's _Birds of America_ were being engraved in England. In all probability the incident would never have been noticed by Audubon, had not Ord seen fit to revive it when his life of Wilson[191] was issued as a separate volume in that year. In this edition of the biography Ord inserted fuller extracts from Wilson's journal, with the evident purpose of placing the rival of his friend in an unenviable light.