United States or Djibouti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


We were, however, partly doomed to disappointment I say, "partly," because, although Begglely returned alive, he came back entirely cured of his photographic craze. He said that every English-speaking man, woman, or child whom he met abroad had its camera with it, and that after a time the sight of a black cloth or the click of a button began to madden him.

Where on earth did you get the idea from?" At the first glimpse of the fifth he staggered. "Great Scott!" he cried with a shudder, "what a ghastly expression you've got into it! It isn't human!" Begglely was growing offended, but the father, who was standing by, came to his defence. "It's nothing to do with Begglely," exclaimed the old gentleman suavely. "It can't be his fault.

He took babies, and brought despair to fond mothers' hearts. He took young wives, and cast a shadow on the home. Once there was a young man who loved not wisely, so his friends thought, but the more they talked against her the more he clung to her. Then a happy idea occurred to the father. He got Begglely to photograph her in seven different positions. When her lover saw the first, he said

Our vicar, as excellent an old gentleman as ever breathed, Begglely presented to us as a beetle-browed savage of a peculiarly low type of intellect; while upon the leading solicitor of the town he bestowed an expression of such thinly-veiled hypocrisy that few who saw the photograph cared ever again to trust him with their affairs.

The picture was invariably a revelation to him. Later, some evil-disposed person invented Kodaks, and Begglely went everywhere slung on to a thing that looked like an overgrown missionary box, and that bore a legend to the effect that if Begglely would pull the button, a shameless Company would do the rest. Life became a misery to Begglely's friends.

"What an awful looking thing! Who did it?" When Begglely showed him the second, he said "But, my dear fellow, it's not a bit like her. You've made her look an ugly old woman." At the third he said "Whatever have you done to her feet? They can't be that size, you know. It isn't in nature!" At the fourth he exclaimed "But, heavens, man! Look at the shape you've made her.

Everybody took up the idea with enthusiasm, and recommended Begglely as the "party." We had great hopes from that tour. Our idea was that Begglely would pull his button outside a harem or behind a sultana, and that a Bashi Bazouk or a Janissary would do the rest for us.

The consequence was that nearly everyone for three miles round sat or stood or leant or laid to Begglely at one time or another, with the result that a less conceited parish than ours it would have been difficult to discover. No one who had once looked upon a photograph of himself taken by Begglely ever again felt any pride in his personal appearance.

Nor, I maintain though I make no pretence of possessing the figure of Apollo is one of my legs twice the length of the other, and neither does it curve upwards. This I can prove. Begglely allowed that an accident had occurred to the negative during the process of development, but this explanation does not appear on the picture, and I cannot help feeling that an injustice has been done me.

What is a photographer? Simply an instrument in the hands of science. He arranges his apparatus, and whatever is in front of it comes into it." "No," continued the old gentleman, laying a constrained hand upon Begglely, who was about to resume the exhibition, "don't don't show him the other two."