The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-07-13
A PHOTOGRAPHIC MANIA.
Hordes Of Women Who are Dew
otees of the Craze for a
Camera.
Description Of tho Inception, De-
velopement and Collapse of
the Mania.
Notable Women who Follow the Fad---
Practicing ON the Babies---Mrs.
Cleveland's Shyness.

Especial Correspondence of The INDEPENDENT'l
Nxw YoRK, July 9.-It is impossible to
tell over night who may be attacked by the
mania. You may go to sleep
neditating peacefully on the prospect of
cool wave and wake up with thoughts of
aim rolls and snap shots and developers and
the alleged ease 81 pressing the button
while beneaceI/ providence does all the
rest scurryin<S like SO many microbes
through 1our brain.
TIE Hirus works with unbelievable rapid
~ In ten minutes you see an iceman who
would make capital character study for a
villain. In two hours you are listening
eagerly to instructions about focus and ex-
posure. In six hours you are training con-
fdently on Brighton Beach belle emerR-
ing from tho water in wet bathing suit.
In twelve hours you are fitting the pan
hopefully in an improvised dark room,
most likely the bathroom, with blankets
twelve hours and five minutes
YOU are examining your first plate
In twelve hours and six minutes you are ex-
claiming: ''FogRed"' in accents of wild
despair. In twelve hours and ten minutes
you are drinking lime juice and water, Ia
Beau Brummel, and exclaiming to your in
terested family that "it's curious what an
amount of interest some people will take in
such things.'
Such is the run of an ordinary attack of
the disease, acute but brief. Some people
have it harder. Mrs. Thomas G. Platt has
had it very hard, indeed. This lady was one
of the first victims of the camera epidemic.
Il was four years ago or whereabouts that
she began to use her husband as a model
and immortalized the ex-senator in all sorts
of dignifed and undignified positions and
occupations. When she got fine series of
views of him loading stones on barrow,
wheeling the barrow and laying walk
somebody suggested, labor vote, transpar-
encies, use in campaign
Loads are too small,'' said Tom Plat.
astutely, "make the workingman grin"
The pictures of immigrants that Mrs.
Platt took at the barge Office and on the
Burgunda month ago and other steamers
She has been down the bay with labor in
specto1 and interpreter half dozen times
and has now q collection of turbaned Syr-
ians and chunky little Italian girls in long
earrings. and tall and stalwart Irish girls
and weather-beaten old women from the
Hungarians and representatives of ever,
nation that sends its surplus population T.
our shores that ia surpassed only by tn
photographic art gallery of Mrs. Bruc
tsmay. The immigrants have shown them
selves willing to pose for her, once satisfied
ehe vas not aiming at them new sort o
dynamite gun, but on her last visit
Russian Jew in long cloak o
The hue Of his long gray beard in
eie1ed With 20 much dignity that his fac
shcsld not be stolen. that Mrs. Platt CAV
~ word che would destroy the negative
NJ lennine old Russian may have bee
l0oiine forward to the day when his de-
amdants should be the Vanastorbilts Q
1ooned n their origin.
IA 1E1es Ismsy photographs sb'rh~