The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-03-20
Bill Nye. in Boston Globe.t

THE BANEFUL RATHER
 tBill Nye, in Boston Globe.
 No doubt the photograph habit, when once formed, is one of the most baneful and productive of the most intense suffer ing in after years of any with which we are familiar. Some times it seems to me that my whole life has been one long, ab. ject apology for photographs that have shed abroad throughout distracted country.
 Man passes through seven distinct stages of being photographed, each one exceeding all previous efforts in that line.
 First he is photographed as prattling baid-headed baby, absolutely destitute oi eyes, but making up for this deficiency by wealth of mouth that would make a negro minstrel olive green with envy. We often wonder what has given the average photographer 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. ltis 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 it's parents.
 An old-fashioned dollar store album with cerebro spinal meningitis and filled with pictures of half-suffocated children ln heavily -starched white dresses, is the hrst thing we seek on entering a home, and the last thing from which we reluct- antly part.
 The second stage on the downward road is the photograph of the boy with fresh. cropped hair, and in which the stiff and protuberant thumb takes a leading part
 Then follows the portrait of the lac with strongly marked freckles and a look of hopeless melancholy. With the aid of detective agency have succeeded in run. ming 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 plas,ered smoothly down over his tender throbbing dome of thought. He does not care SO much about the expression on the mobile features, so long as his left hand, with the new ring on it, shows distinctly, and the string ei juggling charms on his watch chain, including the cute little baske, cut out of peach stone, stand out well in the foreground. Ii the young man would stop to think for moment that some day he may become eminent and ashamed of himself, he would hesitate about doing this. Soon after, he has a tintype taken in which young lady sits in the alleged grass, while he stands be- hind her with his hand lightly touching her shoulder as thougs he might be feel, ing of the shrilling clrcu Inf nence of a buzz saw. He carries this picture in his pocket for months, and looks at it when ever he may be unobselved.
 Then, all at once, he discovers that the young lady's hair is not done up hat way any more, and that her hat doesn't seem to fit her. He then, in fckle moment has another tintype made, in which an. other young woman, with a more recent hat and later coffure, is discovered hold ing his hat 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 photographed on one neg ative by holding one on each knee and using the older ones as back ground.
 
 the old gentleman allows himself to be photographed, because he is afraid he may not live through another long, hard winter, and the boys would like a picture of him while he is able to climb the dark, narrow stairs which lead to the artists room.
 Sadly the thought comes back to you Tn 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 sub mit,ed while his daughter pinned the clean, s,iff, agonizing white collar abou, his neck and brushed the little flakes of " dander" from the velvet collar of his best coat how he toiled up the long dark, lonesome stairs, not with the ego tism of half century ago, but with the light of anticipated rest at last. in his eye, obedient as he would 20 to the dingy law office to have his will drawn. he meekly leaves the outlines of his kind old face for those he loved aAd for whom he has 90 long labored,
 It is picture at which the thought. less may smile but 1t is full of pathos, and eloquent for those who knew him best. His attitude is stiff and his coat lunches up in the back, but his kind old heart asserts itself through the gentle eyes, and when he has gUne away at last we do net criticize the picture any more. but beyond the old coat that lunches up in the back, and that lasted him 90 loog. we read the history of . noble life.
 Silently the old 6nger.marked album,