YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT SNAP SHOTS
When Aunt Martha gave friend wife that newfangled camera this Spring I
had a hunch that the dealers in photographic supplies would be joyously
shrieking the return of good times and hot-footing it to the bank with
the contents of my wallet.
Peaches just grabbed that camera and went after everybody and everything
in the neighborhood.
She took about 800 views of Uncle Peter's 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 friend wife had been given the camera she had me set
up as a statue all over Uncle Peter's lawn, and she was snapping at me
like a Spitz doggie at a peddler.
I sat for two hundred and nineteen pictures that forenoon and I posed
for every hero in history, from William the Conqueror down to Doctor
Cook, with both feet in a slushy little snowbank representing
nearly-the-North-pole.
[Illustration]
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 friend 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.
Friend wife selected a spare room on the top floor of Uncle Peter's home
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 bumped over the lawn.
When I reached the front door I found that the gardener had left, the
waitress was leaving, and the cook was telephoning for a policeman.
"Where is Mrs. Henry?" I asked Mary, the cook.
"She is still developing," said Mary.
"What has she developed?" I inquired.
"Up to the present time she has developed your Uncle's temper and she
has developed your Aunt's appetite, and a couple of bill collectors
developed a pain in the neck when she took their pictures, and, if
things go on in this way, I think this will soon develop into a foolish
house!" said Mary, the cook.
A half hour later, while I was hiding behind the pianola in the living
room, not daring to breathe above a whisper for fear I would get my
picture taken again, friend wife rushed in exclaiming, "Oh, joy! 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 assortment of drugs and
chemicals have to be used.
Well, friend 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
extract 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 apron looked like the remnants of a porous plaster.
Her right hand had red, white, green, purple, and magenta marks all over
it, and her left hand looked like the Fourth of July.
"John!" she yelled; "here it is! My goodness, I am so excited! See what
a fine picture of you I took!"
She handed me the picture, but all I could see was a woodshed with the
door wide open.
"A good picture of the woodshed," I said; "but whose woodshed is it?"
"A woodshed!" exclaimed friend wife; "why, that is your face, John. And
where you think the door is open is only your mouth!"
I looked crestfallen and then I looked at the picture again, but my
better nature asserted itself and I made no attempt to strike this
defenseless woman.
Then she handed me another picture and said, "John, isn't this
wonderful?"
I looked at the picture and muttered, "All I can see is Theodore, the
colored gardener, walking across lots with a sack of flour on his back!"
"John, you are so stupid," said friend wife. "How can you expect to see
what it is when you are holding the picture upside down?"
I turned the picture around, and then I was quite agreeably surprised.
"It's immense!" I shouted. "It's the real thing, all right! Why this is
aces! I suppose it is called, 'Moonlight on Lake Champlain'? Did this
one come with the camera or did you draw it from memory?"
"The idea of such a thing," friend wife snapped, "can't you see that
you're holding the picture the wrong way. Turn it around and you will
see what it is!"
I gave the thing another turn.
"Gee whiz!" I said, "now I have it! Oh, the limit! You wished to
surprise me with a picture of the sunset at Governor's Island. How
lovely it is! See, over here in this corner there's a bunch of soldiers
listening to what's cooking for supper, and over here is the smoke from
the gun that sets the sun--I like it!"
Then my wife grabbed the picture out of my hands and burst into speech.
"Why do you try to discourage my efforts to be artistic?" she volleyed
and thundered. "This is a picture of you holding Mrs. McIlvaine's baby
in your arms, and I think it's perfectly lovely, even if the baby is the
only intelligent thing in the picture."
When the exercises were over I inquired casually, "Where, my dear, where
are the other 21,219 pictures you snapped to-day?"
"Only these two came out good because, don't you see, I'm an amateur
yet," was her come-back.
Then she looked lovingly at the result of her day's work and began to
peel some bicarbonate of magnesia off her knuckles with the nutcracker.
"Only two out of 21,219--I think you ought to call it a long shot
instead of a snap shot," I whispered, after I had dodged behind a sofa.
She went out of the room without saying a word, and I took out my
pocketbook and looked at it wistfully.