When Life Was Young Part 22

Supper was ready and Theodora had been blowing the horn for us, long and loud; in fact, we met her by the corn-field, whither she had at length come in search of us. I hastily told her of the capture, but the Old Squire said, "Don't tell your grandmother till the boys come with the cubs, then we will show them to her."

So we went into the house and leisurely got ready for supper. At length, Addison and Halse came to the kitchen door with their basket; and Gramp said, "Come here, Ruth, and see two little fellows who helped eat your old goose."

Gram came out looking pretty stern at the word goose, and when Ad pulled the bag partly away and showed the two fox cubs, casting up the whites of their roguish eyes at her, she exclaimed harshly, "Ah, you little scamps!"

"But, oh, aren't they cunning! Aren't they pretty!" exclaimed Theodora and Ellen.

"Well, they are sort of pretty," admitted Gram, softening a little as she looked at them. "I suppose they are not to blame for their sinful natures, more than the rest of us."

We then told her of our exploit, digging them out of the burrow. The Old Squire thought that the mother fox would not trouble the farm-yard further, now that her family was disposed of.

After supper, Addison gathered up boards about the premises and built a pen out behind the west barn, in which to inclose the young foxes. As nearly as I can now remember, the pen was about fifteen feet long by perhaps six feet in width, with board sides four feet high. We also covered the top of it with boards upon which we laid stones. A pan for water was set inside the pen, and we gave them, for food, the various odds and ends of meat and other waste from the kitchen. For a day or two we enjoyed watching them very much.

They did not thrive well, but grew poor and mangy; and I may as well go on to relate what became of them. After we had kept them in the pen about a month, a dog, or else a fox, came around one night and dug under the side of the pen, as if making an attempt to get in and attack them.

The outsider, apparently, was not successful in breaking in, and probably went away after a time, but it had dug a sufficiently large hole for the two young foxes to escape; they were discovered to be missing in the morning. Addison thought that it might possibly have been the mother fox.

One of these cubs--as we believed--came back to the pen under singular circ.u.mstances eight or nine months later. Having no use either for the old boards, or for the ground on which the pen stood, it was not taken away, but remained there throughout the autumn and following winter.

One day in April we heard two hounds baying, and as it proved, they were out hunting on their own account and had started a fox. We heard them from noon till near four in the afternoon, when Ellen, who was in the kitchen at one of the back windows, saw them, and, at a distance of twenty rods or less in advance of them, a small fox, coming at speed across the field, heading toward the west barn.

Addison and I were working up fire-wood in the yard at the time, and Ellen ran out to tell us what she had seen. We now heard the hounds close behind the barn, and getting the gun, ran out there. The fox, hard pressed evidently, had run straight to that old pen and taken refuge in it, through a hole in the top where the covering boards were off. But before we reached the spot, one of the hounds had also got in and shaken the life out of the refugee.

We could not positively identify the fox, yet it was a young fox, and we all thought that it resembled one of the cubs which we had kept in the pen. I am inclined to think that, finding itself in sore straits, it came to the old pen where, though a captive, it had once been safe from dogs which came about the place.

CHAPTER XIII

WE ALL SET OFF TO HAVE OUR PICTURES TAKEN

A few days later--I think it was June 15th--Gram's constant, urgent reminders prevailed, and directly after the noontide meal we all set off for the village, to have our pictures taken. The old lady had never ceased to mourn the fact that there were two of her sons whose photographs had not been taken before they enlisted. This was not so unusual an omission in those days as it would be at present; having one's photograph taken was then a much less common occurrence. Indeed, the photograph proper had hardly begun to be made, at least, not in the rural districts. The ambrotype was still the popular variety of portrait.

Personally, I confess to a lingering liking for the old ambrotype, the likeness taken on a glazed plate, on which the lights are represented in silver, and the shades are produced by a dark background. I like, too, the respectful privacy of the little inclosing case which you opened to gaze on the face of your friend. Best of all, I like its great durability and fadelessness. The name itself is a pa.s.sport to favor in a picture, from _ambrotos_, immortal, and _tupos_, type, or impression: the immortal-type. Your pasteboard photograph so soon grows yellowed, dog-eared and stale! For certain purposes I would be glad to see the dear old ambrotype revived and coming back in fashion. True, you had to squint at it at a certain angle to see what it was; but when you obtained the right view, it was wonderfully lifelike and comforting.

One obstacle and another had delayed the trip for several weeks, but on that sunny June day the word to go was given. With much care and attention to clean faces, and hair, our best clothes were donned, for to have one's picture taken was then one of the great occasions of a youngster's life. There was earnest advice given on all sides in regard to "smiling expressions." Little Wealthy, especially, was exhorted so much in this respect, that she actually shed tears before we started. A "smiling expression" sometimes comes hard. Nor was she alone in her anxiety. I remember being a good deal worried about it, and that I had secretly resolved--since the sitting was said to occupy less than a minute--to draw a long breath, set my teeth together hard, and hold on to my "smiling expression" for that one minute, at least, if I died for it afterwards.

Indeed, the young folks of this later generation will hardly be able to understand what an ordeal it was to sit for an ambrotype, in 1866.

Ambrotypes were the kind of pictures which Gram had in view. Moreover, she had no notion of investing in more than one likeness apiece for each of us. This ambrotype was to be kept in the family archives, for the benefit of generations to come; the idea of having a dozen taken, or even half a dozen, to give away to one's friends, had not at that time entered the minds of country people in that portion of New England.

We had at first intended to start by nine in the morning and arrive by ten or eleven, so as to have the benefit of the midday sun--an important requisite for an ambrotype. But it was eleven o'clock before all were properly ready, and Gram then decided to have our noon meal before setting off. We got off a few minutes past noon. All the doors of the farmhouse were locked, or otherwise fastened, the garden gate closed and the horses harnessed. The Old Squire with Gram led the way in the single wagon, and we six cousins, with Addison driving old "Sol,"

followed in the express wagon, three on a seat. We were conscious that we presented a curiously holiday appearance and laughed a great deal as we rattled along the road, although secretly each felt not a little anxious.

"Oh, but it's nothing!" Halstead exclaimed over and over. "All you have to do is to sit still a minute; the cammirror is the thing that does the work;"--for he was a little shaky on the p.r.o.nunciation of the word camera, or the workings of it. To Addison and Theodora's great amus.e.m.e.nt, he went on to inform the rest of us in a superior tone, that the cammirror took a reflection from a person's face, much as a looking-gla.s.s does, and then threw it on a "mess of soft chemical stuff"

which the artist had spread on a little pane of gla.s.s. "Being soft, the reflection naturally sticks in it," Halse continued. "Then all the fellow has to do is to harden it up--and there you are.

"But he has to be pretty careful, or you come out upside down," Halstead added. "I had a notion of buying one of those cammirrors once, before I came here, and starting in the business. I wish I had now. It is a sight better business than farming. I knew a fellow out at New Orleans that made thirteen dollars in one day, taking pictures."

"I wonder that you didn't get a 'cammirror,' Halse," Addison remarked.

"You might have become a rich man in a few years."

"Oh, but it's dreadful unhealthy work," replied Halstead, in an offhand tone. "The chemical stuff they have to mix up gets into the lungs. It smells terribly. There's two kinds. The worst-smelling kind isn't the most unhealthy, though; the other kind you can but just smell at all, but one good whiff of it will about use a man up, if it gets fairly into his lungs. It doesn't answer for the artist fellow to breathe much when he is in the little dark place, where he spreads the chemical stuff on the gla.s.s. They generally hold their noses when they are in there."

"If that is true, we had all better be careful how we breathe much this afternoon," Addison observed, feigning a very anxious glance around.

Little Wealthy looked distressed, however, and erelong intimated a desire to ride with Gram in the other wagon. She and Theodora and I rode on the back seat of our wagon; and I heard Theodora whispering to her rea.s.suringly, that Halstead's talk was all nonsense.

On reaching the village we hitched our horses under two of the Congregationalist meeting-house sheds, and then proceeded to the small, low studio, or "saloon," with a large window in the roof, where at that time one Antony Lockett (or else Locke) practised the art of photography. He was a tall, large man of sandy complexion, somewhat slow in his movements and of pleasant manners. Gram opened negotiations with him directly, as to the price of ambrotypes, etc. She was not a little distressed, however, to learn from Mr. Lockett that ambrotypes were somewhat out of fashion, and that a new-fangled thing, called a photograph, represented the highest art and progress of the day. It was expensive, however. Of ambrotypes the artist spoke somewhat apologetically and slightingly. He also talked fluently of "tin-types,"

a kind of small, inferior likeness on a thin metal plate, without case, or gla.s.s. These he offered to make by the dozen at prices which almost shocked us from their cheapness.

As an artist who wished to exercise his vocation to the extent of its possibilities, Mr. Lockett argued adroitly in favor of the new photographs for all of us.

Grandmother was much perplexed. "It appears that times are changing," I heard her say to the Old Squire. "I should say times were changing, Ruth!" he replied rather shortly. "If this man is going to charge six dollars apiece for us all, for photographs, I guess we had better get our horses and go home."

"Of course we cannot pay any such money as that, Joseph," Gram concurred. "We shall have to have ambrotypes, as we set out in the first place. I cannot see any better way. But it's a pity fashion has turned against them."

Ambrotypes being declared for, artist Lockett made his preparations, including several trips into his little dark room, the erection of his camera on its tripod, hanging a little pink sock on a hook upon the wall to look at, and setting out a chair with an iron head-rest. He then said, somewhat impressively, "I am ready. Who will sit first?"

None of us wished for that distinction, and to this day I recall the terrified look in little Wealthy's eye as she sought to make herself invisible behind Theodora's shoulder. The child was really much alarmed, largely from the peculiar odor which pervaded the place, and the stories which Halstead had told on our way down. It was the odor of all ambrotype "saloons" of that date, which can best be described by saying that it resembled what might have been, if the place had long been the haunt of a horde of cats.

"Joseph," said Gram at length, "you had better sit first, you are the oldest."

"I am not so very many months older than you, Ruth," replied the Old Squire, with a twinkle of his eye. "And when I was a young man, it was held to be the proper thing to seat the ladies first."

"Now don't you go to being funny, Joe," replied Gram, fanning herself vigorously. "This is no place for it."

Thus rebuked, and after some hesitation, the old gentleman with a queer expression took his seat in the "chair," and had his iron-gray head adjusted to the round black disks of the head-rest. Gram arranged his front lock with her comb, and said, "Now keep your eye on the little sock, Joseph, and look smilin';"--a superfluous piece of advice, as it proved, for he had already begun grinning awfully.

The artist, who had his head under the black cloth of his camera, now suddenly looked forth and gave different advice. "Not too smilin'. Not so smilin' as that, quite," said he.

But the Old Squire only grinned the more vigorously, showing several teeth.

Gram went around in front by the artist. "Oh, no, Joseph, not near so smilin'!" she exclaimed.

But do their best, they could not get the smile off his face.

"Look more solemn, Joseph," Gram now exhorted him. "You are overdoing it."

But so certain as the artist raised his hand to take off the cap from the camera, the Old Squire's face would begin to pucker again, and the artist was obliged to wait.

We all grew scandalized at his unaccountable levity. Addison sat laughing silently in a chair behind, and Gram at last lost her patience.

"If you were only a little boy, it wouldn't be quite so silly!" she exclaimed. "But an old man, with only a few years more on the earth, to behave so, is all out of character. Think of the shortness of life, Joseph, and the certainty of death."

But still from some nervous perversity, the old gentleman's face drew up in the same inveterate pucker whenever Lockett raised his hand to uncap the camera.

"O Joe, I'm astonished at you! I am for certain!" cried Gram, so vexed and angry that she lost all patience. She rushed to the door and looked out, to control her feelings.