Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/84

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52
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

through the hole into which the pin fitted."

Audubon reached Natchez on March 24, 1822, and remained there and in the vicinity till the spring of 1823, teaching drawing and French to private pupils and in the college at Washington, nine miles distant, hunting, and painting the birds, and completing his collection. Among other things he painted the "Death of Montgomery" from a print. His friends persuaded him to raffle the picture off. This he did, and taking one number himself, won the picture, while his finances were improved by three hundred dollars received for the tickets. Early in the autumn his wife again joined him, and presently we find her acting as governess in the home of a clergyman named Davis.

In December, there arrived in Natchez a wandering portrait painter named Stein, who gave Audubon his first lessons in the use of oil colours, and was in-