s was a graceful droop
over a sofa, chin on elegant hand. When I was at Dribblebridge--I was
a bright young fellow then--I collected a number of local photographs,
ladies chiefly, and the thing was very noticeable when I put them in a
row over my mantleshelf. The local 'artist' was intensely fond of that
pose. But fancy the local leader finding her cook drooping over the
same sofa as herself! Nowadays, I see, you get merely the heads of
your girls, with their hair flossed up, intense light from above, and
faces in shadow. I think it is infinitely better.

What horrible things hands become in a photograph! I wonder how it is
that the hand in a photograph is always four shades darker than the
arm. Every girl who goes to be photographed in evening dress should be
solemnly warned to keep her hands out of the picture. They will look
as though she has been enamelling the grate, or toying with a bucket of
pitch. There is something that sins against my conception of womanly
purity in those dark hands."

My uncle shut the album. "Yes, it is a neglected field of education,
an important branch of deportment altogether forgotten. Our well-bred
ease fails us before the camera; we are lucky if we merely look stiff
and self-conscious. I should fancy there would be an opening for some
clever woman to teach people how to dress for the occasion and how to
sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of
nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of
self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the
instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant.
They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the
review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our
faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp
our individualities upon our photographs, and are mere 'dumb-driven
cattle' in the matter. We sin against ourselves in this neglect, and
act against the spirit of the age. Sooner or later this haphazard
treatment of posterity must come to an end." He meditated for a
moment. Then, as if pursuing a train of thought, "That Mrs Harborough
is a very pretty woman, George. Where did you happen to meet her?"

BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS

Bagshot was rather proud of his new quarters until my uncle called upon
him. Up to then he felt assured he was doing right; had, indeed, not
the faintest doubt in the m