"If you could take me in the evening—"
"But, madame, it is impossible—"
"Why? You say that your invention reproduces the face, feature by feature. I prefer my features of the evening over those of the morning."
"Madame, it is the light itself which pencils the image, and without it I can do nothing."
"We will light a chandelier, a lamp, do anything to please you."
"No, madame, the light of day is imperative."
"Will you please tell me why?"
"Because the light of the sun exhibits an intense activity, sufficient to decompose the iodide of silver. So far, I have not been able to take a photograph except in full sunlight."
Both remained obstinate, the lady maintaining that what could be done at ten o'clock in the morning could also easily be done at ten o'clock in the evening. The inventor affirmed the contrary.
So, then, all you have to do, gentlemen, is to forbid the light to blacken iodine, or order it to blacken lime, and condemn the photographer to develop his negative in full light. Ask Electricity why it will pass instantaneously from one end to the other of an iron wire a thousand miles long and why it refuses to traverse a thread of glass half an inch long. Beg the night-blooming flowers to expand in the day, or those that only bloom in the light not to close at dusk. Give me the explanation of the respiration of plants, diurnal and nocturnal, and of the production of chlorophyll and how plants develop a green color in the light; why they breathe in oxygen and exhale carbonic acid gas during the night, and reverse the process during the day. Change the equivalents of simple substances in chemistry, and order combinations to be produced. Forbid azotic acid to boil at the freezing temperature, and command water to boil at zero. You have only to ask these accommodations and nature will obey you, gentlemen, depend upon it.