CHAPTER VI.

ESTABLISHED AS AN ENGRAVER.

DEPRIVED of the agreeable companionship to which he had been accustomed, he was restless and unhappy; and after a slight attack of the epidemic, from which be quickly recovered, he resolved to pay a visit to the West Indies.  He accordingly set sail in the following March, and spent several months with his uncle, Dr. Alexander Anderson, who was king's botanist in the island of St. Vincent.
The peaceful beauty of nature was as balm to his troubled feelings, and during his long rambles he acquired a great fondness for plants and flowers, of which the tropics are so prodigal.  This taste remained with him through life, and on his return to New York be was a frequent visitor at the Elgin Botanical Garden, established in the early part of this century by Dr. David Hosack.  The garden covered twenty acres, extending westward from  the present line of Fifth Avenue, and along that avenue

from Forty-seventh to Fifty-first Street.  This tract was afterward given by the legislature, which had purchased it from Dr. Hosack, to Columbia College, in whose possession it still remains.
Anderson’s uncle offered him a lucrative position, but be declined it, having resolved to devote himself entirely to engraving.  He was in poor health and extremely melancholy--so much so, that for weeks together he would shun all society; then, rushing to the opposite extreme, would enter into all kinds of dissipation.  The balance wheel of his life was broken.  He found a new one in his second wife, a sister of her whom he had lost.  She gave him what he so much needed--a settled home and a fixed purpose.  His was one of those natures that must have congenial companionship to appear at its best.  This he now had, and he entered with spirit into his work.  The only break in the daily routine was the occasional stroll in the country, in search of plants and flowers, or some subject for his pencil.
It was during this period of elation, following the previous depression, that he poured out his feelings in the quaint verses given on the next page, arranging them for his favorite tune, "Whistle o'er the lave o't":