Sir Knight Bert A. Porter, Strong, Me., asks if directions have ever been given for copying pictures and mailing interior views; if a brass plate can be prepared so that a picture may be printed on it; and the best kind of paper to use to obtain clear lights. Directions for making interior views will be found in Nos. 805, 806. If one has not a copying-stand, the best substitute will be a board the width of the camera bed, and about five feet in length. At one end fasten a piece of board large enough to allow the picture being tacked to it, having it at exactly right angles with the long board. The camera is then attached to the board at the best point for making the picture. This simple method of arranging the picture and camera does away with the trouble of adjusting the camera and picture so that the lines will be parallel. Use orthochromatic plates if the picture is colored, but any good plate will do if the picture is black and white. Use a slow plate. Pictures may be made on wood, leather, porcelain, and textile fabrics, but pictures on metal are not successful by the ordinary process. Any good aristo-paper will give clear whites if properly toned and washed. Sir Knight Bert would like to correspond with any one who wishes to purchase a 5 by 8 camera.
A SOLDIER OF NAPOLEON.
Most of us nowadays, when thinking of the Napoleonic wars, consider them as a part of the remote past, and it is difficult to realize that there may be people still living who took part in the battles of Marengo, Jena, and Waterloo. But all of Napoleon's soldiers are not yet dead, and one man who fought under the great French general is said to be living now near Cleveland, Ohio. Whether that is true or not, it is a fact that only recently one of Napoleon's old warriors died at the Soldiers' Home, Kearny, New Jersey.
His name was Henry Mueller, and a picture of the old gentleman is given herewith. He was born in Germany in 1794, and when the French armies invaded Prussia Mueller was fifteen years old. With many of his compatriots, he was drafted into the Grand Army, and marched off to Russia to fight the Cossacks and the cold. He was at Moscow, and tramped all the way back in the disastrous retreat, suffering untold tortures, and seeing his fellow-soldiers falling in the snow almost at every step. But Mueller kept up, and lived to get back into Germany, and to fight at the battles of Bautzen, Leipsic, and finally in the great battle of Waterloo.
After Napoleon had been captured by the British and sent to the lonely island of St. Helena, and the great armies of Europe had been disbanded, Mueller took ship and came to the United States. Not long after his arrival in this country the Seminole and Mexican wars broke out, and the old spirit of the soldier was reawakened in Mueller, and he went again to the front, this time wearing the American uniform and fighting for the American flag. So much warfare had now made a confirmed soldier of the German, and so when the war of the rebellion broke out in 1861 he again took up his musket and fought through the entire war.
One of the most wonderful things of all these experiences is that Mueller was never seriously wounded, and managed to keep himself in such good health that he lived to be over one hundred years old, and spent his last days in peace and comfort in the Soldiers' Home, smoking his long German pipe on the lawn under the trees, and telling of his own personal experiences, which, to most of us, are part of a very remote history.