In his sixteenth year he was sent to Paris to pursue his education. There he studied drawing under the revolutionary painter David. But his heart was ever in his native woods, and after a stay of eighteen months he gladly returned. His father now gave him a farm near Philadelphia, at the junction of the Pekioming Creek and the Schuylkill. Here he married, and entered into mercantile transactions, apparently with ill success. He was in the forests when he should have been in the counting-house, if he would succeed in business. His friends looked askance at him, as one who only made drawings when he might have made money. They were doubtless correct in their estimate of his capacity. That indomitable spirit which bore him thousands of miles through the untrodden wilderness, softened the earth or the branch of a tree for his bed; "bore bravely up his chin" when he swam the swollen stream, with his rifle and painting materials lashed above his head--was doubtless adequate, if directed to that end, to have gained any given amount of money. Pegasus made an indifferent plow-horse; and Audubon but a poor trader. So after ten years of this divided pursuit, one bright October morning found him floating down the Ohio in a skiff in which were his wife and child, his scanty wares, and a couple of negro rowers. He set up his household gods at Henderson, Kentucky, where he resided for some years, and engaged again, with a partner, in trade. Still he was accustomed to make long excursions, with no companion but his dog and rifle, a tin box strapped to his side containing his brushes and paints. All this while his collection of drawings, which was subsequently to constitute the "Birds of America," grew under his hand; yet strange to say, the thought of publishing never entered his mind. One spring day in 1810, a stranger entered the counting-room of Audubon, presented specimens of a book he was preparing, and requested his patronage. The stranger was Alexander Wilson, and the book was his "American Ornithology." Audubon was about to subscribe for it, when his partner asked him, in French, why he did so, assuring him that his own drawings were far better, and that he must be as well acquainted with the habits of American birds as the stranger could be. Wilson asked if Audubon had any drawings of birds. A large portfolio was exhibited: and the veteran ornithologist could not avoid the conclusion that his own efforts were far surpassed. He became sad, and though Audubon showed him every attention, loaned him drawings, and accompanied him through the neighboring woods, the thought of being excelled was more than he could bear. He departed, shaking the dust from his feet, and entered in his diary that "literature or art had not a friend in the place."