Sir Knight Alfred C. Baker asks "If he can become a member of the Camera Club, and what are the duties of a member?" We shall be very glad to enroll Sir Alfred a member of our Camera Club, and as he says he owns two or three cameras, and finishes his own pictures, he will doubtless be a great addition to our club. The duties of a member have never been exactly defined, but we expect our members to take an active interest in the work, and they are requested to send to the club any new or improved way of doing anything in photography. We also want each one of our members to become a specialist along some special line of photographic work. We hope soon to organize a correspondence and exchange club. Sir Alfred would like to correspond on photography with some of the members of the club. He has also a Kombi camera which he would like to sell or exchange.
THE MERRIEST TIME.
The merriest time? Why, kite-time,
Or the time for playing ball;
Or maybe you like rolling hoop
The very best of all.
But, "Here's my own opinion,"
With a little laugh, cries Moll.
"The best is when I take a walk,
And carry my parasol.
"When muffs are packed in camphor,
And tippets put away,
When you needn't always wear your cloak
In the middle of the day.
"Yes, I declare, the merriest time."
With a dimpling laugh, says Moll,
"Is when I go to take a walk,
And carry my parasol."
M. E. S.
A MESSENGER-BOY'S ADVENTURE.[1]
BY EDWARD W. TOWNSEND.
Danny Cahill had been a district messenger for a year, and it seemed to him that he had been on every street and across every park in the great city of New York. Mr. Kean, who had helped him to become a newsboy, had secured him a position in a down-town messenger office, where he could easily learn his duties, and gradually became acquainted with the city, for most of his "calls" there were from offices which wanted messengers for short errands, and he was only occasionally sent far up town. But after six months he was transferred to an office in the fashionable part of the city, near Fifth Avenue, and then he began to go on long journeys which gave him rides on the elevated roads from one end of the city to the other; "from the Battery to the Harlem River," as the saying is.
The work was hard, though, and more so for Danny, because, after or before his long hours on duty, he went every day or night to the school in the Newsboys' Lodging-house where he lived. If he had been on night duty, no matter how late he had been up, nor how many miles he had walked, he was at school the next morning, and if on day duty, he did not go to bed until he had attended the night class. I cannot say that Danny liked this, for he would much rather have gone with the other boys on their pleasure excursions about the city, but Mr. Kean had urged Danny to put in all the time he could spare in school. He promised him that if he did so he would find him a better position when he was far enough advanced to take one.
One evening, when it was nearly time for Danny to go off duty, a messenger call came in the office, and as he was "next" he had to answer it. It took him to a big fashionable house where he had often been before, and he expected as usual to have a short errand with a note to some neighboring house or shop. But when a servant let him into the big hall he was soon joined by a maid who gave him a bundle to carry, and told him he was to take it, and pilot her to the Tenement Mission, "wherever that may be," said the maid, crossly.