Part 3 (1/2)
JOHN HENRY ON AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY
Peaches, my wife, acquired the amateur photography bug last week, and it was really surprising how quickly she laid the foundation of a domestic Rogue's Gallery.
She bought a camera and went after everybody and everything in the neighborhood.
She took about eight million views of our country home before she discovered that the camera wasn't loaded properly, which was tough on Peaches but good for the bungalow.
Like everything else in this world picture pinching from still life depends entirely on the point of view.
If your point of view is all right it's an easy matter to make a four dollar dog-house look like the villa of a Wall Street broker at Newport.
Ten minutes after my wife had brought the camera home she had me set up as a statue all over the lawn, and she was snapping at me like a Spitz doggie at a peddler.
I sat for two hundred and nineteen pictures that forenoon, so I suppose if she snapped like a Spitz I must have looked like a Setter.
Anyway, before I was through setting I felt like a hen, but when she tried to coax me to climb up on a limb of a tree and stay there till she got a picture of me looking like an owl, I swore softly in three languages, fell over the back fence, and ran for my life.
When I rubbershoed it back that afternoon my wife was busy developing her crimes.
The proper and up-to-date caper in connection with taking snap shots these days is to buy a developing outfit and upset the household from pit to dome while you are squeezing out pictures of every dearly beloved friend that crosses your pathway.
My wife selected a spare room on the top floor where she could await developments.
A half hour later ghostly noises; began to come from that room and mysterious whisperings fell out of the window and b.u.mped over the lawn.
When I reached the front door I found that the gardener had left, the waitress was leaving, the baby had discharged the nurses and the nurse was telephoning for a policeman.
”Where is Mrs. Henry?” I asked Mary, the nurse.
”She is still developing,” said Mary.
”What has she developed?” I inquired.
”Up to the present time she has developed the cook's temper and she has developed the baby's appet.i.te, and a couple of bill collectors developed a pain in the neck when they couldn't see her; and if things go on in this way I think this will soon develop into a foolish house!” said Mary, the nurse.
A half hour later while I was hiding under the hammock on the front porch, not daring to breathe above a whisper for fear I would get my picture taken again, my wife rushed out exclaiming, ”Oh, joy!
Oh, joy! John, I have developed two pictures!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Oh, joy! John, I have developed two pictures”]
I wish you could have seen the expression on Peaches' face.
In order to develop the films a picturesque a.s.sortment of drugs and chemicals have to be used.
Well, my wife had used them.
A silent little stream of wood alcohol was trickling down over her left ear into her Psyche knot, and on the end of her nose about six grains of b.i.+.c.hloride of potash was sending out signals of distress to some spirits of turpentine which was burning on the top of her right eyebrow.
Something dark and lingering like iodine had given her chin the double cross and her ap.r.o.n looked like the remnants of a porous plaster.