When the eager learner had mastered a new piece, he was all alive until he could recite it to Wilson, who used to encourage and reward him with gifts of the plates of his great work on American Ornithology, which was then passing through the press. The service thus rendered was of inestimable value. The picture is beautiful: the wise and loving old man leaning in spontaneous benignity and joy over the aspiring and grateful child,--forming his taste, moulding his mind and heart. In a case like this, nothing can be more charming than the relation of teacher and pupil. It is that proper and artistic relation of experienced age and docile youth immortalized by antique sculpture in the exquisite myth of Cheiron and Achilles. Forrest never forgot his indebtedness to his early benefactor, but in his last days was fond of citing, with admiring pathos, the dying words of his old friend: "Bury me where the sun may shine on my grave and the birds sing over it." Things were going on with the Forrest household in this modest and hopeful way, when the heaviest calamity it had ever known befell it. The death of its head, and the consequent cessation of his salary, left the family destitute of the means of support. The good and judicious mother showed herself equal to the emergency. Drying her tears and holding her heart firm, she undertook to fulfil the offices of both parents. With such help as she could get, she bought a little stock or goods and opened a millinery-shop. In the mean time the two older sons were earning a little at their trades, and the two older daughters assisted their mother. They made bonnets, and various articles of needle-work, while she worked, in her spare hours, at binding shoes. In the later years of the proud fame and wealth of Forrest, as these scenes floated back into his memory, his heart visibly swelled under his breast, and tears filled his eyes. The youngest daughter, then eleven, was kept at school. But it was found necessary to abandon the plan of educating Edwin for the clerical profession. Reluctantly his mother took him from school, and put him at service, first, for a short time, in the printing-office of the "Aurora," under Colonel Duane, where he was known as "Little Edwin," then in a cooper-shop on the wharf, and finally in a ship-chandlery store on Race Street. This was in 1819, when he was thirteen years old.