PHOTOGRAPHIC FAILURES
One of the advantages or disadvantages, as the case may be, of many photographic portraits, is, that they fade away by degrees, and thus keep pace with those fleeting impressions or feelings under which it is sometimes usual for one to ask another for his or her miniature. It may be a strong recommendation of cheap photography, that its pictures will last as long as the ordinary run of small affections, and, indeed, a superior specimen of the art may be warranted to retain its outline throughout a flirtation of an entire month’s durability. We had our own portrait taken by the cheap process a short time ago, when we received the above copy of the state of the portrait through a period of an entire fortnight.
The three specimens shown above represent our portrait when recently done; the same after it had been in existence a week, and the same after the expiration of an entire fortnight. The following pathetic ballad was appended to the specimens which we have given above:—
Behold thy portrait!—day by day,
I’ve seen its features die;
First the moustachios go away,
Then off the whiskers fly.
That nose I loved to gaze upon,
That bold and manly brow,
Are vanish’d, fled, completely gone—
Alas! where are they now?
