When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

by C. A. Stephens

One obstacle and another had delayed the trip for several weeks, but on that sunny June day the word to go was given. With much care and attention to clean faces, and hair, our best clothes were donned, for to have one's picture taken was then one of the great occasions of a youngster's life. There was earnest advice given on all sides in regard to "smiling expressions." Little Wealthy, especially, was exhorted so much in this respect, that she actually shed tears before we started. A "smiling expression" sometimes comes hard. Nor was she alone in her anxiety. I remember being a good deal worried about it, and that I had secretly resolved—since the sitting was said to occupy less than a minute—to draw a long breath, set my teeth together hard, and hold on to my "smiling expression" for that one minute, at least, if I died for it afterwards.

Indeed, the young folks of this later generation will hardly be able to understand what an ordeal it was to sit for an ambrotype, in 1866.

Ambrotypes were the kind of pictures which Gram had in view. Moreover, she had no notion of investing in more than one likeness apiece for each of us. This ambrotype was to be kept in the family archives, for the benefit of generations to come; the idea of having a dozen taken, or even half a dozen, to give away to one's friends, had not at that time entered the minds of country people in that portion of New England.

We had at first intended to start by nine in the morning and arrive by ten or eleven, so as to have the benefit of the midday sun—an important requisite for an ambrotype. But it was eleven o'clock before all were properly ready, and Gram then decided to have our noon meal before setting off. We got off a few minutes past noon. All the doors of the farmhouse were locked, or otherwise fastened, the garden gate closed and the horses harnessed. The Old Squire with Gram led the way in the single wagon, and we six cousins, with Addison driving old "Sol," followed in the express wagon, three on a seat. We were conscious that we presented a curiously holiday appearance and laughed a great deal as we rattled along the road, although secretly each felt not a little anxious.

"Oh, but it's nothing!" Halstead exclaimed over and over. "All you have to do is to sit still a minute; the cammirror is the thing that does the work;"—for he was a little shaky on the pronunciation of the word camera, or the workings of it. To Addison and Theodora's great amusement, he went on to inform the rest of us in a superior tone, that the cammirror took a reflection from a person's face, much as a looking-glass does, and then threw it on a "mess of soft chemical stuff" which the artist had spread on a little pane of glass. "Being soft, the reflection naturally sticks in it," Halse continued. "Then all the fellow has to do is to harden it up—and there you are.

"But he has to be pretty careful, or you come out upside down," Halstead added. "I had a notion of buying one of those cammirrors once, before I came here, and starting in the business. I wish I had now. It is a sight better business than farming. I knew a fellow out at New Orleans that made thirteen dollars in one day, taking pictures."

"I wonder that you didn't get a 'cammirror,' Halse," Addison remarked. "You might have become a rich man in a few years."

"Oh, but it's dreadful unhealthy work," replied Halstead, in an offhand tone. "The chemical stuff they have to mix up gets into the lungs. It smells terribly. There's two kinds. The worst-smelling kind isn't the most unhealthy, though; the other kind you can but just smell at all, but one good whiff of it will about use a man up, if it gets fairly into his lungs. It doesn't answer for the artist fellow to breathe much when he is in the little dark place, where he spreads the chemical stuff on the glass. They generally hold their noses when they are in there."

"If that is true, we had all better be careful how we breathe much this afternoon," Addison observed, feigning a very anxious glance around.

Little Wealthy looked distressed, however, and erelong intimated a desire to ride with Gram in the other wagon. She and Theodora and I rode on the back seat of our wagon; and I heard Theodora whispering to her reassuringly, that Halstead's talk was all nonsense.