nd rest--to return without
illusions, without encumbrance, but with renewed zest, to the sordid
world of the actual, the world of every day. Herein is the real use of
the ideal; all other is fanaticism and folly."

THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED

"An album," said my uncle, as he sat and turned over my collection of
physiognomy, "is, I think, the best reading in the world. You get such
sidelights on the owner's heredity, George; distant cousins caricature
his features and point the moral of his nose, and ancestral faces
prophesy his fate. His friends, moreover, figure the secret of his
soul. But what a lot we have to learn yet in the art of being
photographed, what grotesque and awkward blunders your common sitters
make! Why, for instance, do men brush their hair so excessively when
they go before the lens? Your cousin here looks like a cheap chess
pawn about the head, whereas as I know him his head is a thing like a
worn-out paint-brush. Where but in a photograph would you see a
parting so straight as this? It is unnatural. You flatten down all a
man's character; for nothing shows that more than the feathers and
drakes' tails, the artful artlessness, or revolutionary tumult of his
hair. Mind you, I am not one of those who would prohibit a man wearing
what he conceives to be his best clothes to the photographer's. I like
to see the little vanity peeping out--the last moment's folly of a
foolish tie, nailed up for a lifetime. Yet all the same, people should
understand that the camera takes no note of newness, but much of the
cut and fit. And a man should certainly not go and alter his outline
into a feminine softness, by pouring oil on his troubled mane and
plastering it down with a brush and comb. It is not tidiness, but
hypocrisy.

"We have indeed very much to learn in this matter. It is a thing that
needs teaching, like deportment or dancing. Plenty of men I have
noticed, who would never do it in real life, commit the sin of being
over-gentlemanly in an album. Their clothes are even indecently
immaculate. They become, not portraits, but fashion-plates. I hate a
man who is not rumpled and creased a little, as much as I do a brand
new pipe. And, as a sad example of sin on the other hand, on the side
of carelessness, I have seen renderings of a very august personage
indeed, in a hat--a _hat_! It was tilted, and to add to the atrocity,
he was holding a cigar. This I regard as horrible. Think!