Once again he was at his dear Mill Grove. In his room "the walls were festooned with all sorts of birds' eggs, carefully blown out and strung on a thread. The chimney piece was covered with stuffed squirrels, raccoons, and opossums, and the shelves around were likewise crowded with specimens, among which were fishes, frogs, snakes, lizards and other reptiles." Lucy's father, concluding that the study of natural history might not bring pecuniary support for his daughter, suggested to Audubon that he obtain some knowledge of commercial pursuits. Love seldom asks about ways and means; too seldom, in fact, for subsequent happiness. Audubon entered the counting-house of Mr. Benjamin Bakewell of New York, and soon lost some hundreds of pounds by a bad speculation in indigo. The drying of bird's skins in his rooms was so disagreeable to his neighbors that a message was sent him, through a constable, insisting on his abating the _nuisance_! Finance did not seem the specialty of the young man, and he returned to Mill Grove. Dear as the place was to him, he sold it, invested the capital in goods, married Lucy Bakewell, April 8, 1808, when he was twenty-eight years old, and started for the West. They were twelve days in sailing down the Ohio River in a flat-bottomed float, called an ark. He engaged in trade at Louisville, and the young couple were extremely happy. Fortunate it was that they had these few months of comfort, for hardship was soon to test their affection. The war of 1812 so crippled business that he and his partner decided to go to Hendersonville, while Lucy and her infant son went home to her father for a year. If Mr. Bakewell ever regretted the choice which his daughter had made, she did not, and never failed, when days were darkest, to encourage him to write and win renown. When all others bemoaned his lack of business success, and his devotion to a non-paying pursuit, she alone was his comforter, and was willing to suffer poverty if thus his great work might be done. There was no success at Hendersonville, and the goods were taken to St. Geneviève. Here the partner married, and Audubon sold his interest to him, purchased a horse, and started across the country to see his wife, who had meantime come back from Pennsylvania to Hendersonville, Ky. In this trip he came near losing his life. He says: "I found myself obliged to cross one of the wild prairies which, in that portion of the United States, vary the appearance of the country. The weather was fine, all around me was as fresh and blooming as if it had just issued from the bosom of nature. My knapsack, my gun, and my dog were all I had for baggage and company. But although well moccasined, I moved slowly along, attracted by the brilliancy of the flowers, and the gambols of the fawns around their dams, to all appearance as thoughtless of danger as I felt myself."