Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/105

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JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
73

(for I had none), but he had destroyed the matter."

During these days Audubon was very busy writing, painting, receiving callers, and dining out. He grew very tired of it all at times, and longed for the solitude of his native woods. Some days his room was a perfect levee. "It is Mr. Audubon here, and Mr. Audubon there; I only hope they will not make a conceited fool of Mr. Audubon at last." There seems to have been some danger of this, for he says: "I seem in a measure to have gone back to my early days of society and fine dressing, silk stockings and pumps, and all the finery with which I made a popinjay of myself in my youth. ... I wear my hair as long as usual, I believe it does as much for me as my paintings."

He wrote to Thomas Sully of Philadelphia, promising to send him his first number, to be presented to the Philadelphia Society—"an institution