Your lips to my cheek then you lay, little maid,
And you wonder I've nothing to say, little maid;
But I couldn't reply
Were I even to try
For the space of a year and a day, little maid.
You give me a shake of the head, little maid,
And I feel there's no more to be said, little maid;
But I know this is true,
That our earthly ones do—
And it's time one was tucked up in bed, little maid.
[PHOTOGRAPHIC LIES.]
PROVING THE USELESSNESS OF THE CAMERA AS A WITNESS.
There is a popular notion abroad that the art of photography is a first cousin to George Washington, and cannot tell a lie. The wider knowledge of the art, due to its adoption by hundreds of thousands of amateurs as a hobby, has largely shown the fallaciousness of this belief. Yet photographic fakes of a most absurdly simple nature still continue to impose upon the credulity of thousands of people, among the number being many who have gone so far as to accept such inventions as irrefutable evidence, in their ignorance of the possibilities of this, perhaps, the most elastic of all arts.
A striking instance of this is seen in the so-called "spirit" photographs, published some years ago by Mr. W. T. Stead. The brilliant editor of the Review of Reviews, a deep believer in spirit manifestations, argued that these photographs afforded the most conclusive proofs of the playful habit spooks have of returning to the scenes of their earthly labours.
He said that they were on the photographic plate, and, that being so, they must have been there "in the flesh," or "in the fog," as Mark Twain has it.
Unfortunately, this apparently conclusive argument was completely upset by Mr. Labouchere, who possessed a greater knowledge of the ways of photographs and photographers than his colleague, and explained how it was done.
As a matter of fact, the photographic ghost is an easily explained phenomenon, and any amateur can turn out creepy spooks by the thousand at the expense of a little time and patience.
A photograph is absolutely inadmissible as evidence of anything, unless it is proved conclusively that it was in nowise faked after being taken.