HIAWATHA'S PHOTOGRAPHING.
Author's Preface.
("In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practised writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours together, in the easy running metre of 'The Song of Hiawatha.'")
FROM his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood.
Made of sliding, folding rosewood,
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
This he perched upon a tripod—
Crouched beneath its dusky cover—
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence—
Said, "Be motionless, I beg you!"
Mystic, awful was the process.
All the family in order,
Sat before him for their pictures;
Each, in turn, as he was taken,
Volunteered his own suggestions,
His ingenious suggestions.
First the Governor, the Father,
He suggested velvet curtains
Looped about a massy pillar;
And a corner of a table,
Of a rosewood dining-table.
He would hold a scroll of something,
Hold it firmly in his left hand;
He would keep his right hand buried
(Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat;
He would contemplate the distance
With a look of pensive meaning,
As of ducks that die in tempests.
Grand, heroic was the notion:
Yet the picture failed entirely—
Failed because he moved a little,
Moved, because he couldn't help it."
* * * *
Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little,
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of 'passive beauty.'
Her idea of passive beauty
Was a squinting of the left eye,
Was a drooping of the right eye,
Was a smile that went up sideways
To the corner of the nostrils."
After having taken each member of the family in succession, with the most dismal results:—
Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
('Grouped' is not the right expression),
And, as happy chance would have it,
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.
Then they joined, and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As 'the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.'
* * * * *
But my Hiawatha's patience,
His politeness and his patience,
Unaccountably had vanished,
And he left that happy party.
Left them in a mighty hurry,
Stating that he would not stand it,
Stating in emphatic language
What he'd be before he'd stand it.
Thus departed Hiawatha.
From Rhyme? and Reason? by Lewis Carroll, 1883.
These disjointed extracts give but a poor idea of this most amusing poem, the comical effects of which are much heightened by Mr. A. B. Frost's humorous illustrations.