[Illustration]
ON the day when the circus came to Hazenfield; one of the elephants
broke loose and strolled up Main Street; and when they chased him he
knocked down three lamp-posts, the stone boy on the drinking-fountain,
upset a trolley car, broke the insurance company’s sign, smashed the
helmet of Policeman Ryan, and fell into a hole in front of the barber’s.
There never had been so much excitement in Hazenfield, and the motorman,
Policeman Ryan, and the barber hope there never will be again.
When it was all over, that is to say, when they got the elephant out of
the hole, which you must know was no easy matter, and Hazenfield had
quieted down again, there were many comments on the incident.
“I never expected an elephant,” said the motorman.
“I’m glad it wasn’t your head,” said Policeman Ryan’s wife, when she saw
the helmet.
“I thought he was coming in to get shaved!” said the barber.
Allan Hartel, the Doctor’s son, said, “If I’d only had a camera!”
Allan recalled how Main Street cleared, or tried to clear, when the
elephant was first discovered; and the way the elephant swung his trunk,
and dropped into a hobbling trot before he struck the trolley car. He
recalled the frantic movement of the motorman as he caught sight of the
big, lumbering beast at the corner.
“If I’d only had a camera!” He recalled the brave way that Policeman
Ryan stepped out into the street, waving his club, and the way he dodged
when the elephant swung at him with his trunk.
“If I’d only had a camera!” He recalled the way the elephant dropped on
his knees in the hole. He recalled the funny wrinkling of the elephant’s
hind legs as if he had on a pair of trousers that were too large for
him. “If I’d only had a camera!”
I suppose that the way he felt about this elephant affair had a good
deal to do with the fact that after that Allan always liked so much to
photograph elephants. But I must not get ahead of my story.
To properly go on with the story I must tell you that about six weeks
after the elephant got himself in a hole, and the circus people, with
derrick and tackle, got him out again (you never saw an elephant more
truly ashamed of himself than that elephant), Little McConnell saw Allan
Hartel come out of the express office with a package.
Now you, reader, will guess at once that this was a camera, but
McConnell had no suspicion of this fact.
“Hello!” called McConnell, “what have you got there?”
McConnell was thirteen, two years younger than Allan. He was called
Little McConnell to distinguish him from his brother, who was called Big
McConnell. It would be hard to say why no one ever called him Percy—his
first name. Even Allan always called him simply McConnell. He was the
kind of boy, somehow, that you always call by his last name and never
know why.
McConnell and Allan had been chums for a long time, and McConnell
certainly should have known what was in the bundle had he not been up to
Greenby visiting his aunt for two weeks, and had not Allan kept a
certain little enterprise a secret from everybody before that. But when
Allan said, “Guess,” he was much puzzled for a moment. Then he made the
most successful guess he ever had made in his life.
“Not a camera?” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” admitted Allan.
“When did you buy it?” McConnell felt as if he must have been left out
of Allan’s confidence somehow.
“I didn’t buy it,” Allan replied.
“Then who gave it to you—your father?”
“It wasn’t given to me,” returned Allan.
“Well,” said McConnell, a little annoyed, “that is just a trick. You’d
have to buy it or have it given to you—wouldn’t you?”
“No,” said Allan; “there’s another way.” “Oh, yes—you could find it.”
“Then there is still another way,” Allan insisted.
“You don’t mean to steal it, do you?”
“No,” said Allan; “there is one other way.”
“I give it up,” said McConnell. “That conundrum beats me,” and he went
over the thing on his fingers: “buy it, have it given to you, find it,
steal it,—what else is there?”
“Win it,” said Allan.
McConnell laughed. “Cheney says ‘win’ when he means steal.”
“I can’t help that,” insisted Allan; “I did win it.”
“How? What was the game?”
“It wasn’t a game. I wrote a composition. There were a lot of prizes.
One of them was a camera.”
“You always were lucky,” said McConnell. Then to show that he wasn’t
envious, he added: “I’m glad you did win it. I was thinking the other
day that everybody seemed to have a camera except us. Is it a ‘press the
button’?”
“It’s both. You can press the button or stand it on legs, either one. It
hasn’t any legs, now. They come separately. I don’t believe I’ll care
much for them. I can rest it on something.”
“Yes,” McConnell assented; “when they’re on legs they sometimes get
broken when some one kicks against one of the legs. Let’s see, what is
it they call the legs?”
“Do you mean tripod?”
“Yes, that’s it, tripod. I wonder why it isn’t tri_ped_,” mused
McConnell, as they continued their walk toward Allan’s house. “We say
biped and quadruped for two legs and four legs.”
[Illustration:
“McConnell and Allan had been chums for a long time.”
]
Allan could not explain; and he was thinking about the camera. “Don’t
you want to help me fix up a dark-room out in the stable?”
“That’s just what I do want,” exclaimed McConnell. “I want to learn the
ropes. You see, I think that when Bill hears about your having a camera
he’ll help me to get one somehow. It seems to me,” McConnell continued
enthusiastically, “I’d almost swap my wheel for one!”
Allan was thinking about the dark-room. “Jo Bassett has his in the
kitchen. I mean he develops there at night, and Owen has his in the
attic. I wanted father to let me have the little place by his office,
you know, where all the bottles are, but he said, No, sir! I’d have to
doctor my plates where he wasn’t doctoring his patients, for he didn’t
want either the plates or the patients to get the wrong doses.”
The boys laughed.
“Is the stuff dangerous that they put on the plates?” asked McConnell.
“I guess not,” answered Allan, “unless you drink it. Father says there
are two sides to a person, the inside and the outside, and he says we
mustn’t use things on the wrong side. He’s going to help me about the
bottles.”
“But you must take the pictures first,” said McConnell. He was impatient
to see the camera, and to have it aimed at something. “Couldn’t
we—couldn’t you take something to-day?”
“It’s too late now,” said Allan, regretfully. “We need a lot of light,
and there’s scarcely any left. But we’ll get everything ready, so far as
we can, for to-morrow.” When they reached Allan’s house the Doctor was
just getting into his carriage at the door. “Hello!” he called; “so it
has come, Allan?”
“Yes, sir,” and Allan swung his package in the air.
“Good!” exclaimed the Doctor. “I shall want to see it when I get back.”
The boys made short work of the bundle when they reached indoors.
Wrapped in strong paper and nestling in “excelsior” was the shiny,
leather-covered box, with holes, and buttons, and levers, and gauges,—a
mysterious box, which the boys proceeded to examine from its six sides
with great reverence.
With the aid of the printed instructions, and what knowledge the boys
had acquired from seeing other Hazenfield cameras (especially Owen
Kent’s), the mysteries began one by one to seem less mysterious. It was
great fun to watch the images of the room, of the window, of the street,
in the little “finder.” “Isn’t the picture going to be any bigger than
that?” asked McConnell, in a disappointed tone.
“Oh, yes,” said Allan; “that is only to show where the picture will come
on the plate back here. It’s only a miniature of the real picture.” “And
it isn’t upside down, either,” remarked McConnell, peering into the
little opening at the top of the box.
“Somebody told me,” said Allan, “that was because there was a little
piece of looking-glass on the inside that twisted the thing around.”
Presently they found that by opening a lid and looking through the box
from the back the real image from the lens fell on the “focussing
glass,” this time upside down.
McConnell laughed. “That always seems so funny.” He twisted his head in
an effort to get a natural view of the room on the glass. Then he ran
across the room and stood on his head against the wall. “Do I look right
side up now?” he demanded of Allan.
“Yes,” laughed Allan, peering into the box. “You look right side up, but
you don’t look very natural.”
[Illustration:
“‘Do I look right side up now?’”
]
“Suppose you turned the camera upside down,” suggested McConnell, coming
back.
Allan laughed again. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good,” and he
turned the camera to show McConnell that the picture was still
hopelessly inverted.
McConnell thought that he liked the “finder” picture better. “It’s too
bad,” he said, “that it isn’t bigger.”
Allan had been reading about cameras. “There are special cameras,” he
said, “that have finders on top as large as the focussing glasses at the
back.”
McConnell thought that he would like one of that sort.
“What’s the use?” asked Allan. “The little finder tells you just what
you are going to get. It’s the picture boiled down—well!” Allan shook
the box. “I hope something hasn’t broken already.” A rattling sound came
from the inside of the box.
“Maybe it was broken in the express,” ventured McConnell. But
investigation proved that the rattling sound was produced by a loose
screw under the front cover of the box, which the directions showed was
to be used when the camera was placed on legs. Having opened the front
of the box to make this investigation, Allan was now able to closely
examine the lens.
“That’s the diaphragm,” said Allan, pointing to the disk of metal
protruding from the barrel of the lens.
“The what?”
“Diaphragm,” repeated Allan.
“How do you spell it?”
“I don’t think I can spell it. What do you always want to spell things
for? It begins with a d-i-a and then gets all mixed up—ho, here it is in
the directions, if you must spell it—‘d-i-a-p-h-r-a-g-m.’”
“What does it do?”
Allan was turning the disk. “Look,” he said; and they saw that the
diaphragm had three holes in it, and that any one of these holes could
be brought opposite the centre of the lens.
“I don’t see how anything could possibly get through that!” exclaimed
McConnell, staring at the smallest opening.
“Why,” said Allan, “Owen says you can photograph through a
pinhole—_with_ a pinhole, I think he said.”
“He didn’t mean without a lens, did he?” demanded McConnell,
incredulously.
“That’s an old trick, McConnell,” said Dr. Hartel in the doorway. “I
photographed with a pinhole when I was a lad.”
“You did!” cried Allan. “You never told me about it.”
“I don’t see how the picture ever squeezes through,” said McConnell.
“Light is wonderful,” mused Allan, prying further into the box.
“Everything in nature is wonderful,” said the Doctor, “when you come to
know about it. Your lens is wonderful, but not more wonderful than the
hole among the leaves of a tree that photographs the sun on the ground
underneath. It isn’t any more wonderful than the way the plate catches
and keeps the image.”
“The plate!” repeated Allan. “I had forgotten about that! We can’t make
pictures unless we have something to make them on.”
“I suppose you can get them at the photographer’s, can’t you?” asked the
Doctor, examining the camera.
“Wincher’s stationery store sells cameras,” said McConnell, “and I guess
they sell plates too.” Every little matter associated with the camera
had an exciting interest for the boys that day. McConnell came around in
the evening after Allan had run down to the stationer’s to get a package
of plates.
“Open by ruby light only,” read Allan on the box.
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “you’ll have to think about your dark-room.”
“The dark-room!” This seemed like one of the most interesting things
about the whole affair.
“Though the box might have said, ‘by ruby light or no light,’” replied
the Doctor. “There is no objection to your opening it by no light if you
want to.”
“But we couldn’t see,” protested McConnell.
“You could feel, though,” the Doctor explained. “An old photographer
told me that he always preferred to load his plate-holders in the dark.
He trusted his touch with no light more than he did with a weak red
light with which he sometimes let his eyes deceive him.”
“Deceive him how?” asked Allan.
“By letting him get a plate wrong side up.”
“Oh!” said Allan. He hadn’t thought to consider that the plates had a
right and a wrong side.
“When you come to open your box,”—then the Doctor paused a moment.
“Suppose, boys, that we go and load the plate-holders. We’ll go up to
your room, Allan.”
“But how about the ruby light?”
“Oh, we shall soon fix that. Where is your bicycle lamp?”
Allan fetched the well-worn headlight of his wheel, and when it was
lighted, the boys remarked that the side glasses were a rich red.
“But what shall we do with the front glass?” and Allan struggled to
think of some way to color the front glass.
“Wait a moment,” said the Doctor. “You will get a regular ruby lamp if
you need one, but I think I can show you an emergency method of using
any lamp of this sort.” He found a piece of reddish powder-wrapper in
his chemical closet, and this he fastened over the front of the lantern;
then taking a larger sheet of manila paper he made a cylinder of this
about the size of an ordinary Chinese lantern.
“That,” he said, “is a safety shield to keep out any rays of white light
that may escape from any of these smaller ventilating holes of the
lamp.” The Doctor placed the lamp inside the shield. “Yellow paper is
the next best shield to red. They got along with yellow light when
photographic plates were less sensitive. Now they often use both yellow
and red glass in combination. Well, I guess we are ready to load up.”
Allan led the procession up to his room, carrying the
plate-holders—there were four of these—and the lamp. McConnell came next
with the manila paper shield, and the Doctor followed in the rear with
the box of plates. On the way the procession met Mrs. Hartel who had
been putting little Ellen to bed.
“What is this strange procession?” she cried.
“This is the kodak contingent,” laughed the Doctor; “a company of
kodakers just going into camp.”
“And you, Allan, are you the captain?” asked Mrs. Hartel.
“Yes,” the Doctor replied for him, “he is the captain—Captain Kodak;
that is quite a good name for him now.”
“Well,” Mrs. Hartel called after them, “I hope you will always preserve
good order in your camps—and especially great cleanliness. You know what
I mean by that, Harry,” Mrs. Hartel said to the Doctor. “I don’t want
any chemicals on the bed-spread.”
“Oh, we’re going out to the stable to do that,” Allan called back.
“To do what?—put chemicals on the bed-spread?”
“No, no!” expostulated Allan, at the door of his room,—“I mean to use
the chemicals.”
They cleared a little table in Allan’s room and placed the lamp in the
centre of it, with the yellow paper shield in position. A soft,
yellowish light filled the room and made the three faces look strangely
unusual.
“This makes me think of a conspiracy,” said Allan.
“Or three robbers in a cave,” said McConnell.
“Now, you understand, boys, that I don’t really know very much about
photography,” said the Doctor. “When I was studying medicine I had a
room-mate who was a photographic crank, and I once saw him do something
of this sort, though he used a small stable lantern with a red bandanna
handkerchief tied about it. This ought to be much safer, and it needs to
be, for plates are much more sensitive, even to red and yellow light,
than they used to be. I suppose that some day they will make
photographic plates so sensitive that we shall have to develop them
absolutely in the dark.”
“That would be harder than loading them in the dark, wouldn’t it?”
“Decidedly harder. Now, boys, let us get out the plates. Probably I
shall do something that I shouldn’t do, and you will learn afterward not
to do it. But I am better than no help at all, am I not?” the Doctor
added laughingly.
“Yes, indeed!” Allan admitted.
The Doctor had used the point of his knife in cutting through the paper
in the bottom of the box. Then they found that the plates were hidden in
three boxes, one within the other.
“We must not expose the plates too long even to this faint light,” the
Doctor remarked, as he opened one of the plate-holders. Then he took out
one of the plates and showed the boys that the plate was coated on one
side with a yellowish substance; then, still keeping it in shadow, he
let each of the boys feel both surfaces. The coated surface had a smooth
feeling.
“The plain glass side feels sticky, doesn’t it?” said McConnell.
“In the dark,” said the Doctor, “you can easily tell the difference,
though you should always feel the plates near the margin, because the
moisture of the fingers may leave a stain that will afterward appear in
the developed plate. My chum once photographed me sitting by the window,
and a finger mark which fell on my face—that is to say, on which my face
fell, for I think the carelessness was before the picture was taken—made
me look like a very disreputable citizen indeed. My chum said I looked
like a surprised pirate. Now, if you know how a surprised pirate looks,
you can fancy my appearance. But usually you won’t need to feel the
plates to place them properly, for each maker packs his plates in a
certain way. This maker packs them face to face. That, I should judge,
is the usual way, now. And here goes for the plate-holders.”
When the plate-holders each had their two plates in position, back to
back, the Doctor said it would be well to remember that the four
remaining plates in the package must not be confused with the others
when the time came for developing or changing plates. But, he added, “I
know well enough that you will have to make all these mistakes to know
how to avoid them.”
“Did you do that with your prescriptions, father?” asked Allan, with a
grin that was not concealed even by the half darkness.
What the Doctor might have answered it is hard to say, for just then
Mrs. Hartel knocked at the door to say that Owen had come. In fact, Owen
was then at the door.
“Come in,” called the Doctor, the plate-box being safely closed.
“Hello, Owen,” shouted Allan from behind the lantern. “I didn’t go after
you because I thought it was your night at the Choral.”
“There wasn’t any meeting to-night,” Owen said, “and I just happened to
hear from Cheney that you had a camera. What is it?”
“A Wizard,” said Allan, “and a little beauty. I wish it was daylight. I
hate to wait until to-morrow.”
“What kind of a lamp is that?” asked Owen, puzzled by the object on the
table.
“That,” replied the Doctor, smiling at the group of boys, “is the famous
Hartel Adjustable Lamp.”
Owen saw the joke.
“I suppose we’ll fix up something better in the stable,” said Allan.
“In the stable?” Owen looked interested. “That’s a good idea. Won’t you
let me see your Wizard?”
They all trooped downstairs again. “Here come the kodakers!” cried
McConnell. There they found Mrs. Hartel and Edith Coles, Allan’s cousin,
studying the camera by the sitting-room lamp. Edith was an orphan niece
of Mrs. Hartel who had been a member of the Hartel household for six
years. She was now of about Allan’s age, and always was much interested
in everything that Allan did. Returning from the home of a girl friend
where she had been spending the afternoon and early evening, she was as
much delighted over the camera as if it were some good fortune of her
own.
[Illustration:
“‘And is it all loaded and ready?’ asked Edith?”
]
“I want to be a kodaker, too!” she exclaimed laughingly in response to
McConnell’s jubilant announcement.
“I guess Allan will let you join his company,” the Doctor said.
Owen was called upon as the most experienced in new cameras to tell
Edith and the rest all about the Wizard; to explain the focussing scale,
which Dr. Hartel said Captain Kodak really should call a “range-finder”;
to point out features of the shutter, through which the picture could
jump in the fraction of a second, or which could be set so that a long
exposure might be given when there was not sufficient light for a
“snap-shot”; to show the action of the slides in the plate-holders, the
use of the diaphragm, and more other things about the camera than you
would have supposed could be said about a box so small and innocent
looking.
“And is it all loaded and ready?” asked Edith, looking down at Allan and
McConnell, who were bending over the camera in some new investigation.
“Yes,” said Allan.
“It is a pity not to be able to try it now in some way.”
“Edith,” remonstrated Mrs. Hartel, “you are always impatient.”
“Well,” said the Doctor, “I guess they all are—I think I am myself. The
only difference is that Edith speaks out.”
“You could make a flash light,” Owen suggested. At this moment the
clatter of a bell could be heard in the adjacent street and some one ran
rapidly past the house.
“A fire!” shouted McConnell.
There was a pause during which every one listened breathlessly. Allan
and McConnell were already at the gate. “It _is_ a fire!” Allan reported
in a moment, “over by the East Church.”
“There is something to photograph!” exclaimed the Doctor.
“Could I?” cried Allan, with an appealing look to Owen,—“at night?”
“Why, I should think night was a good time to photograph fire,” Edith
declared.
“It has been done,” Owen admitted.
“I’ll try it!” Allan caught up the camera. “Won’t you come, Owen, and
help?”
They all were at the door in a moment.
“Allan!” called the Doctor. “You’ve forgotten your hat!”
“Be careful where you go,” warned Mrs. Hartel, as she pressed the hat on
the boy’s head with a motherly firmness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------