Page:Audubon and His Journals.djvu/218

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174
AUDUBON

and partake of it with me; I then took to my brushes and finished my Otter entirely. I had been just thirteen hours at it, and had I labored for thirteen weeks, I do not think I should have bettered it. Nine o'clock—ten o'clock—and no Mr. Witham. I was to accompany him to Dr. Knox, whose lecture on Anatomy he was to hear. At last he came with many apologies, having already breakfasted, and giving me but ten minutes for my morning meal. We then hurried off, the weather beautiful, but extremely cold. We ascended the stairs and opened the door of the lecture room, where were seated probably one hundred and fifty students; a beating of feet and clapping of hands took place that quite shocked me. We seated ourselves and each person who entered the room was saluted as we had been, and during the intervals a low beating was kept up resembling in its regularity the footsteps of a regiment on a flat pavement. Dr. Knox entered, and all was as hushed as if silence had been the principal study of all present. I am not an anatomist. Unfortunately, no! I know almost less than nothing, but I was much interested in the lecture, which lasted three quarters of an hour, when the Dr. took us through the anatomical Museum, and his dissecting-room. The sights were extremely disagreeable, many of them shocking beyond all I ever thought could be. I was glad to leave this charnel house and breathe again the salubrious atmosphere of the streets of "Fair Edina." I was engaged most certainly to dine out, but could not recollect where, and was seated trying to remember, when the Rev. W. J. Bakewell, my wife's first cousin, and the son of Robert Bakewell the famous grazier and zoölogist of Derbyshire, came in to see me. He asked many questions about the family in America, gave me his card and invited me to dine with him next Monday week, which is my first unengaged day. I had a letter from Mr. Monroe at Liverpool telling me I had been elected a member of the Literary and Philosophical Societies of that