The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-12
SPIRIT OF TIE PRESS.
UPON CURRENT ToPIos-ooMPLED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGRAPH.


thoughts of love, middle-aged mems appa-
rently run as fast to conventions. They herd
together during every May and June on the
slightest pretext of union. They meet and
koo-too each other as Quakers, Presbyterians,
prize-fghters, or patriots; and now as photo
graphers. Some spark of good, we suppose,
is struck out of all this friction; certain cor
dial emulation and guild-spirit, if nothing
better. That improvement and new ideas
may come from this great annual Association
of Photographers is matter in which we
are all personally concerned.
The convention, we learn, was large and en-
thusiastic; delegates and specimens were pre-
sent from all parts of Europe; our own large
houses in every State contributed their best
inventions. The staid Quaker City glimmered
with lenses and graphoscopes. The smell of
collodion and blue lights filled the air. There
is probably no mechanical art which has made
such rapid advance as this since the days of
Daguetre and Niepce, as is shown by the
numberless inventions and the exquisite soft
ness and beauty of the specimens exhibited
in Philadelphia; but in an aesthetic point of
view the profession, we are forced to hint,
has Jagged far behind. In the cities where
success would pay men with real artistic
talent to adopt the business, they have fre-
quently done so; but outside of these
large markets il is, usually left to any young
fellow who can command money enough to
buy camera and expertness enough to han
die it, Photography, like wood engraving,
while it offers field for great artist, suffers
from the fact that the process is easily
learned, the materials are cheap, and the
poorest workman will always find work and
wages. The average operator, as we all know
to our cost, has no knowledge of the first
rules concerning light or shade, nor any glim-
mer of the idea that-there might be skill in
placing and draping his victim which
would secure a beautiful and attractive pic
ture out of the most meagre and inhar-
monious materials. He plumps him into
chair of torture in q room heated
to 80 deg, screws his head into vice, and
then placidly offers to swat until he has as
sumed his best expression" Hawthornes
morbid fancy that the secret devil in every
man peered out of his face somewhere in a
photograph may have had its foundation in
fact: the treatment human nature undergoes
in that chamber of horrors brings whatever is
diabolical in it to the light. There is an old
story of Greek artist to whom came an un-
hopeful subject in the shape of a man blind,
lame, and with q broken arm. He painted
him taking aim with bow-kneeling on the
lame leg, closing the blind eye, drawing back
the broken arm. Our modern photographer
would have scorned such art as sheer COM
pounding of felony.
Seriously, this is no matter for jesting. We
, may leave what footsteps on the shores OF
time we please in the shape of character or
good deeds, but our real selves, our faces, are
'inexorably in the charge of these minions of
the sun for pesterity; and whether we will or
not, they choose that every wrinkle and smirk
shall go down unfinchingly. For the great
majority of us, twenty years after we are
dead, the only trace left of US on earth will
most likely be photograph in some dusty
album. Is it unnatural that we should wish
this to be at least the just shadow of what we
were? The most practical Gradgrind among
us would fain look with a cheerful face into
that golden age to come, unknown world of
strangers though it be, and not scowl back to
it grisly ghost. We beseech the convention
to scatter some notions of true art among its
members. Kryolite and velvet cases and in
visible rests are no doubt excellent things,
but subtle sense of grace, and fitness, aud
beauty is not altogether to be despised.
Have mercy upon us, Messieurs Photo
graphers; you have the Immortality of this
generation in your keeping; for the love OF
Justice do not any longer confirm the Dar-
winian theory by sending us down to unborn
ages in the presentment of race of gorillas
THE DEMOCRATIC SCYLLA AMI
CHARYBDIS.
From Harpers Weekly, edited By G. ". Curtis.
'sMr. Orator Puff had two tones in hi
voice." and consequently, as the affecting
narrative informs us, he could not escape
from the pit. The Democratic party, witt
the same vocal variety, is in imminent peri
of similar catastrophe. Its Northern voic
and its Southern voice sing different tunes
and as it's object is to lull the pnblic int
gentle slumber, it is naturally angry to hnt
that the discord only more thoroughly arouse
the country. Mr.. Vallandigham had scarcel
blandly alluded to the fact that the goos
hung high when Mr.. jefferson Davis savagel
retorted that not only did he not "accept tn
situation" but that he accepted nothing.
So, also, while Tammany Hall complacentl
heard the praises layished upon 1t by the fire
eating Mobile Register, it was confounded b
the vigorous observation of the same journs
that, of course, Tammany would not expeC
to nominate its candidate! Alas for th
''great statesman" of New York, the execr
tive Vgent of the Erie Ring"
Indeed, a more laughable tragi-comica
spectacle has not been lately seen than th
present situation of the Democratic party.
is engaged in the praiseworthy bat not hop'
full attempt to dissolve oil in water, and t
minele in sweet silence gunpowder aud fire
1t is divided into two factions, the Norther
and the Southern. The cleverest of tn
Northern leaders are anxious to break th
chain that binds them to the corpse of SLAYER
and to the disastrous past of their party
party false to the country, to liberty, and
human nature. But they have no platform
propose except aequiescence in Republics
action and denunciation of Republican
This, being a tacit confession of the tot
failure of their own party and repudiati'
of all its traditions, does not warmly cor
mend itself to the mass of the Democrat
voters. 1t seems to tAem, and very nat
rally, an insincere course; and they deciar
with animation, that such eounsels are offer
by those who have no faith in Democrat