"'Is the master at home?' I asked of a pretty maid servant, who answered my tap at the door; and who, after informing me that he was, led me into a room on the left side of the broad hall. It was not, however, a parlour, or an ordinary reception room that I entered, but evidently a room for work. In one corner stood a painter's easel, with the half-finished sketch of a beaver on the paper; in the other lay the skin of an American panther. The antlers of elks hung upon the walls; stuffed birds of every description of gay plumage ornamented the mantel-piece; and exquisite drawings of field mice, orioles, and woodpeckers, were scattered promiscuously in other parts of the room, across one end of which a long, rude table was stretched to hold artist materials, scraps of drawing paper, and immense folio volumes, filled with delicious paintings of birds taken in their native haunts. "'This,' said I to myself, 'is the studio of the naturalist,' but hardly had the thought escaped me when the master himself made his appearance. He was a tall thin man, with a high-arched and serene forehead, and a bright penetrating grey eye; his white locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders, but were the only signs of age, for his form was erect, and his step as light as that of a deer. The expression of his face was sharp, but noble and commanding, and there was something in it, partly derived from the aquiline nose and partly from the shutting of the mouth, which made you think of the imperial eagle. "His greeting as he entered, was at once frank and cordial, and showed you the sincere true man. 'How kind it is,' he said, with a slight French accent and in a pensive tone, 'to come to see me; and how wise, too, to leave that crazy city.' He then shook me warmly by the hand. 'Do you know,' he continued, 'how I wonder that men can consent to swelter and fret their lives away amid those hot bricks and pestilent vapours, when the woods and fields are all so near? It would kill me soon to be confined in such a prison house; and when I am forced to make an occasional visit there, it fills me with loathing and sadness. Ah! how often, when I have been abroad on the mountains, has my heart risen in grateful praise to God that it was not my destiny to waste and pine among those noisome congregations of the city.'" Another visitor to Audubon during his last days writes: "In my interview with the naturalist, there were several things that stamped themselves indelibly on my mind. The wonderful simplicity of the man was perhaps the most remarkable. His enthusiasm for facts made him unconscious of himself. To make him happy you had only to give him a new fact in natural history, or introduce him to a rare bird. His self-forgetfulness was very impressive. I felt that I had found a man who asked homage for God and Nature, and not for himself.