"Audubon, ere half an hour had elapsed, found an opportunity of telling us that he had never seen us in a higher state of preservation--and in a low voice whispered something about the eagle renewing his youth. We acknowledged the kindness by a remark on bold bright birds of passage that find the seasons obedient to their will, and wing their way through worlds still rejoicing in the perfect year. But too true friends were we not to be sincere in all we seriously said; and while Audubon confessed that he saw rather more plainly than when we parted the crowfeet in the corners of our eyes, we did not deny that we saw in him an image of the Falco Lencocephalus, for that, looking on his 'carum caput,' it answered his own description of that handsome and powerful bird, viz. 'the general color of the plumage above is dull hair-brown, the lower parts being deeply brown, broadly margined with greyish white.' But here he corrected us: for 'surely, my dear friend,' quoth he, 'you must admit I am a living specimen of the Adult Bird, and you remember my description of him in my First Volume.' And thus blending our gravities and our gayeties, we sat facing one another, each with his last oyster on the prong of his trident, which disappeared, like all mortal joys, between a smile and a sigh. "How similar--in much--our dispositions--yet in almost all how dissimilar our lives! Since last we parted, 'we scarcely heard of half a mile from home'--he tanned by the suns and beaten by the storms of many latitudes--we like a ship laid up in ordinary, or anchored close in shore within the same sheltering bay--with sails unfurled and flags flying but for sake of show on some holyday--he like a ship that every morning had been dashing through a new world of waves--often close-reefed or under bare poles--but oftener affronting the heavens with a whiter and swifter cloud than any hoisted by the combined fleets in the sky. And now, with canvas unrent, and masts unsprung, returned to the very buoy she left. Somewhat faded, indeed, in her apparelling--but her hull sound as ever--not a speck of dry rot in her timbers--her keel unscathed by rock--her cut-water yet sharp as new-whetted scythe ere the mower renews his toil--her figure-head, that had so often looked out for squalls, now 'patient as the brooding dove'--and her bowsprit--but let us man the main-brace; nor is there purer spirit--my trusty frere--in the Old World or the New. "It was quite a Noctes. Audubon told us--by snatches--all his travels, history, with many an anecdote interspersed of the dwellers among the woods--bird, beast, and man.