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The last vestige of my pride and assurance was centred on my business card, and without a word I handed him this evidence of my skill and art as a taxidermist. The card seemed to justify my belief in it, for the great man asked me when I could go to work and offered me the munificent sum of $3.50 a week. I discovered a boarding house where I could get a room and my meals for $4 a week and on this basis I began to learn the art of taxidermy and to run through my slender resources.

The art of taxidermy as practised at Ward's Natural Science Establishment in those days was very simple. To stuff a deer, for example, we treated the skin with salt, alum, and arsenical soap. Then the bones were wired and wrapped and put in his legs and he was hung, upside down, and the body stuffed with straw until it would hold no more If then we wished to thin the body at any point, we sewed through it with a long needle and drew it in. Now to do this, no knowledge of the animal's anatomy or of anything else about it was necessary. There was but little attempt to put the animals in natural attitudes; no attempt at grouping, and no accessories in the shape of trees or other surroundings. The profession I had chosen as the most satisfying and stimulating to a man's soul turned out at that time to have very little science and no art at all.