The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-04-15
BILL NYEON THE PHOTOGRAPH
HABIT.
Mans Seven Ages - ApOlogizing
for Early Photographs.

No doubt the photograph naoit, winch
once deformed, is one Of the most bane-
full and productive of the most intense
suffering in after years of any with
which we are familiar. Some times il
.eems to me that my whole life has
been one long. abject apology for pho
toeraphs that I have shed abroad
throughout distracted country.
Men pass through seven distinct
stages of being photographed, each one
exceeding all previous efforts in that
line.
First he is photographed as pratt
Ting. uald-headed baby, absolutely des-
titute of eyes, but making up for this
efficiency by a wealth OF mouth that
would make a negro minstrel olive
green with envy. We often wonder
what has given the average photog-
rapher that wild, hunted look about
the eyes and that joyless sag about the
knees. The chemicals and the indoor
life alone have not done all this. 1t is
the great nerve tension and mental
strain used in trying TO photograph a
squirming and dark red child with
white eyes in such manner as to please
its parents.
An old-fashioned dollar store album
with cerebro-spinal meningitis, and
filed with pictures of half-suffocated
children in heavily starched white
dresses. is the first thing we seek on en-
tering a home, and the last thing from
which we reluctantly part.
The second stage on the downward
road is the photograph OF the boy with
fresh-cropped hair, and in which the
stuff and protuberant thumbs take a
leading part.
Then follows the portrait OF the lad,
with strongly marked freckles and
look OF hopeless melancholy. With the
aid Of a detective agency / have sue
ceeded in running down and destroying
several of these pictures. which were
attributed to me.
Next comes the young man, twenty
one years of age. with his front hair
plastered smoothly down over his ten
der, throbbing dome Of thought. He
does not care so much about the eX-
preston on the mobile features, so long
as his left hand, with the new ring on il,
shows distinctly, and the string of jing-
ling, langling charms on his watch chain
including the cute little basket cut out |
of peach stone, stand out well in the !
foreground. IL the young man would !
stop for a moment TO think that some |
day he may become eminent and |
of himself, he would hesitate |
about doing this. Soon after, he has a |
tintype taken, in which a young lady |
sits in the alleged grass, while he stands |
behind her, with his hand lightly touch. |
ing her shoulder. as though he might |
be feeling of the thrilling circumference |
OF the buzz saw. He carries this picture |
in his pocket for months. and looks at /
1t whenever he may be unobserved.
Then, ali at once, he discovers that !
the young lady's hair is not done up /
that way any more. and that her hat /
doesn't seem to fit her. He then, in a
tickle moment, has another tintype /
made. in which another young woman
with more recent hat and later couture
is discovered holding his bat in her lap.
This thing continues till one day he
comes into the studio with his wife, and
tries to see how many children can be
on one negative by hold
ing one on each knee and using the
older ones as background.
The last stage in his eyentful career,
the old gentleman allows himself to be
Sadly the thought
comes back to you in after years, when
his grave is green in the quiet valley,
and the worn and weary hands that
have toiled for you are forever at rest;
how patiently he submitted while his
daughter pinned the clean, stiff. agon-
izing white collar about his neck, and
brushed the little flakes of "dander"
from the velvet collar Of his best coat;
how he toiled up the long, dark, lone
some stairs, not with the egotism of a
half century ago, but with the light of
rest at last in his eve,
as he would go to the dingy
law Office to have his will drawn, he Il
meekly leaves the outline of his kind
Did face for those he loved and for whom
be has so long labored.
1t is picture At which the thought
less may smile. but il is full of pathos,
and eloquent for those who knew him
best. His attitude is stiff and his coat
lunches mp in the back. but his kind
Did heart asserts itself through the gen.
lie eyes, and when he has gone away at
last we do not criticize the picture any
more. but beyond the old coat that
lunches up in the back, and that lasted
him so long, we read the history of a
noble life.
Silently the old finger marked album,
wing so unostentatiously on the equity
centre table, points out the mile stones [
rom infancy To age, and back of the
OF a struggling photographer
8 portrayed the laughter and the tears,
The JOY and the grief, the dimples and
he gray hairs OF one mans lifetime
Bill Nye, in Boston Globe.