CHAPTER I
A NEW ART BEGUN
As a boy I lived on a farm near Clarendon,
Orleans County, N. Y., and for some reason,
about the time I was thirteen, I got interested
in birds. I was out of place on the farm for I was
much more interested in taxidermy than in farming.
As a matter of fact, by the time I was sixteen I announced
to the world that I was a taxidermist. I had
borrowed a book which had originally cost a dollar,
and from that book I learned taxidermy up to a point
where I felt justified in having business cards printed
stating that I did artistic taxidermy in all its branches.
I even went so far as to take several lessons in painting
from a lady who taught art in Clarendon, in order
that I might paint realistic backgrounds behind the
birds that I mounted. So far as I know, that was the
first experiment of painted backgrounds used for
mounted birds or animals. I believe that my first
attempt in this direction is still in existence in Clarendon
but I have been a little afraid to go to see it.
In the fall of the year in which I was nineteen, after the crops were in, I set out to get a wider field for my
