The next year he dropped tennis completely and became an ardent amateur photographer, whereupon all his friends implored him to return to tennis, and sought to interest him in talk about services and returns and volleys, and in anecdotes concerning Renshaw. But he would not heed them.
Whatever he saw, wherever he went, he took. He took his friends, and made them his enemies. He took babies, and brought despair to fond mothers’ hearts. He took young wives, and cast a shadow on the home. Once there was a young man who loved not wisely, so his friends thought, but the more they talked against her the more he clung to her. Then a happy idea occurred to the father. He got Begglely to photograph her in seven different positions.
When her lover saw the first, he said—
“What an awful looking thing! Who did it?”
When Begglely showed him the second, he said—
“But, my dear fellow, it’s not a bit like her. You’ve made her look an ugly old woman.”
At the third he said—
“Whatever have you done to her feet? They can’t be that size, you know. It isn’t in nature!”
At the fourth he exclaimed—
“But, heavens, man! Look at the shape you’ve made her. Where on earth did you get the idea from?”