Two other ballads very popular at that time were The Battle of Trenton and The Massacre of Wyoming, while innumerable ones of lesser note were sung by fireside and camp-fire, all through the colonies.
In New York the first liberty pole raised in the country was planted by the Sons of Liberty, a band of patriotic Americans, who set it up again and again as it was cut down by the Tories, accompanying their work by singing every imaginable kind of ballad that would irritate the breast of the British sympathizers.
During the war of 1812, came the Star Spangled Banner, written to the accompaniment of shot and shell, while the author, Francis S. Key, was a prisoner on shipboard watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British, in the harbor of Baltimore. The song was born in the darkness of a night of terrible anxiety, and when the dawn broke and found the flag still floating over the fort, an earnest of the victory to come, its triumphant measures seemed the fitting pæan of American liberty.
The ballad of the camps had developed into the national anthem.
CHAPTER II
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
1780-1851
In the days when Louisiana was a province of Spain a little dark-eyed boy used to wander among the fields and groves of his father's plantation studying with eager delight the works of nature around him.
Lying under the orange-trees watching the mocking-bird, or learning from his mother's lips the names of the flowers that grew in every corner of the plantation, he soon came to feel that he was part of that beautiful world, whose language was the songs of birds and whose boundaries extended to every place where a blossom lifted its head above the green sod. To him, as he said years afterward, the birds were playmates and the flowers dear friends, and before he could distinguish between the azure of the sky and the emerald of the grass he had formed an intimacy with them so close and endearing that whenever removed from their presence he felt a loneliness almost unbearable. No other companions suited him so well, and no roof seemed so secure as that formed of the dense foliage under which the feathered tribes resorted, or the caves and rocks to which the curlew and cormorant retired to protect themselves from the fury of the tempest. In these words, recorded by himself, we read the first chapter of the life history of John James Audubon, the American naturalist and the author of one of the early classics of American literature.
In those early days his father was Audubon's teacher, and hand in hand they searched the groves for new specimens, or lingered over the nests where lay the helpless young. It was his father who taught him to look upon the shining eggs as 'flowers in the bud,' and to note the different characteristics which distinguished them. These excursions were seasons of joy, but when the time came for the birds to take their annual departure the joy was turned to sorrow. To the young naturalist a dead bird, though beautifully preserved and mounted, gave no pleasure. It seemed but a mockery of life, and the constant care needed to keep the specimens in good condition brought an additional sense of loss. Was there no way in which the memory of these feathered friends might be kept fresh and beautiful? He writes that he turned in his anxiety to his father, who in answer laid before him a volume of illustrations. Audubon turned over the leaves with a new hope in his heart, and although the pictures were badly executed the idea satisfied him. Although he was unconscious of it, it was the moment of the birth of his own great life work. Pencil in hand he began to copy nature untiringly, although for a long time he produced what he himself called but a family of cripples, the sketches being burned regularly on his birthdays. But no failure could stop him. He made hundreds of sketches of birds every year, worthless almost in themselves because of bad drawing, but valuable as studies of nature.
Meantime for education the boy had been taken from Louisiana to France, the home of his father, who wished him to become a soldier, sailor, or engineer. For a few hours daily Audubon studied mathematics, drawing, and geography, and then would disappear in the country, returning with eggs, nests, or curious plants. His rooms looked like a museum of natural history, while the walls were covered with drawings of French birds.
Learning mathematics with difficulty Audubon became easily proficient in fencing and dancing, and learned to play upon the violin, flute, flageolet, and guitar. His drawing lessons were his greatest delight, the great French artist, David, being his teacher and critic. Once, on the elder Audubon's return from a long sea-voyage, he was chagrined to find that although his son had probably the largest amateur natural-history collection in France, he had neglected his equations, angles, and triangles, and the lad was sent to his father's station, given one day to visit the ships and fortifications, and then set to the study of mathematics, and mathematics only.
For one year he wrestled with problems and theorems, counting himself happy if by any chance he could fly to the country for an hour to take up his acquaintance with the birds; and then the father admitted his son's unfitness for military pursuits and sent him to America to take charge of some property.
Audubon was then seventeen years of age, and had but one ambition in life—to live in the woods with his wild friends. As his father's estate was rented by a very orderly minded Quaker there was little for Audubon to do except enjoy himself. Hunting, fishing, drawing, and studying English from a young English girl he afterward married, filled the day, while he never missed the balls and skating parties for which the neighborhood was famous. He was the best marksman in the region, able to bring down his quarry while riding at full speed. He was the best skater to be found; at balls and parties he was the amateur master of ceremonies, gayly teaching the newest steps and turns that obtained in France. In the hunt it was Audubon—dressed, perhaps, in satin breeches and pumps, for he was a great dandy—who led the way through the almost unbroken wilderness. Add to this that he was an expert swimmer, once swimming the Schuylkill with a companion on his back; that he could play any one of half a dozen instruments for an impromptu dance; that he could plait a set of picnic dishes out of willow rushes; train dogs, and do a hundred other clever things, and it is easy to see why he was a general favorite.
His private rooms were turned into a museum. The walls were covered with festoons of birds' eggs, the shelves crowded with fishes, snakes, lizards, and frogs; the chimney displayed stuffed squirrels and opossums, and wherever there was room hung his own paintings of birds. It was the holiday of life for the young lover of nature, and he enjoyed it with good will.
Here the idea of his great work came to him as he was one day looking over his drawings and descriptions of birds. Suddenly, as it seemed to him, though his whole life had led to it, he conceived the plan of a great work on American ornithology. He began his gigantic undertaking as a master in the school of nature wherein he had been so faithful a student, for he now saw with joy that the past, which had often seemed idle, had been in reality rich with labors that were to bear fruit.
He began at once to put his work into scientific form, and nothing better illustrates his energy and ambition than the fact that he entered on it alone and unaided, though none knew better than he the toil and ceaseless endeavor necessary for its completion. Except in a very immature form, American ornithology at that time did not exist; it was a region almost as unknown to human thought as the new world which Columbus discovered. Season after season, from the Gulf to Canada and back again, these winged creatures of the air wended their way, stopping to hatch and breed their young, becoming acquainted with Louisiana orange-groves and New England apple-orchards, now fluttering with kindly sociability round the dwellings of men and again seeking lonely eeries among inaccessible mountain tops, pursuing their course at all times almost without the thought and cognizance of man. It was Audubon who was the conqueror, if not the discoverer of this aërial world of song, of which he