Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.

Almost every day, instead of going to school when I ought to have gone, I usually made for the fields, where I spent the day.

There is the morass, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, whereby one treads down the forests of Labrador; and the unexpected bunting or sylvia which perchance, and indeed as if by chance alone, you now and then see flying before you, or hear singing from the ground creeping plant.

On landing at New York I caught the yellow fever by walking to the bank at Greenwich to get the money to which my father's letter of credit entitled me. The kind man who commanded the ship that brought me from France, whose name was a common one, John Smith, took particular charge of me, removed me to Morristown, N. J., and placed me under the care of two Quaker ladies who kept a boarding - house. To their skilful and untiring ministrations I may safely say I owe the prolongation of my life.

My drawings at first were made altogether in watercolors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish.

Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.

I wish I had eight pairs of hands, and another body to shoot the specimens.