Jacksboro Gazette. (Jacksboro, Tex.), Vol. 29, No. 7, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 16, 1908 Page: 3 of 8
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EDUCATIONAL OFFER EVER MADE
THE FORT WORTH SEMI-WEEKLY RECORD
JAGKSBORQ GAZETTE
and the
together with the New Home
Library Wall Chart, showing
splendid maps of Texas, the United States and
the world, all three for only %.........
1
1
THE SEMI-WEEKLY RECORD is easily the best paper in
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THE RECORD presents at one sweeping view the whole area
of events. The news of the country, state, nation and the
world is given ih each complete issue. Special departments
each week that will interest every member of the family.
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The New Home Library Wall Chart, for home, school, college,
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Similar charts sell regularly in educational supply stores for
$1.50 and upward. Size of chart, 28x36. Number of pages, 6.
Portion of Contents: ?
•
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Flags of all nations.
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Price of the chart alone, express prepaid, $1.50.
✓
Our Great Proposition
Remember, The Jacksboro Gazette one year, The Semi-Weekly
Record, Tuesday and Friday, for one year, and the] splendid
Wall Chart, all for $1.75 when called for at this office. Fifteen
cents extra is charged to cover postage and packing if the chart
is to be mailed to you instead of being delivered at this office.
Or to our subscribers who afe paid more than a year in advance
bn the Gazette we will give the Semi-Weekly Record and the
Wall Chart for $1.00 at this office.
This is the greatest value for your money ever offered. Act now. Or-
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sCf’
FROM,CITY TO FARM
*‘Ye who listen with credulity to the whisperings of fancy; who pursue with
eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises
of youth, ana that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by
the morrow;—attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia."
By ERNEST McGAFFEY
Author tif “'Poems of Gan and "Rod,” “Outdoors.’*
“Poems bf the Toivn,” Etc.
(Copyright, by Joseph B. Bowles.)
A Camera
in the Country
J. N. ROGERS & CO.;
Publishers JACKSBORO GAZETTE,"
Jacksboro, Texa s
h
Various devices are used at differ- 1
ent times by city people who happen
to reside in, the country for any length
of time. Sometimes a cheap phono-
graph is purchased, with its raucous
blare of “rag-time” melodies, and blat-
ant monologue; sometimes a pianola
is harnessed to the piano, and muscu-
lar music ground out by means of lib-
eral “knee action;” sometimes the
baleful “game” of croquet is employed
to eke out the hours of those to whom
time drags heavily. But for us, a
harmless, necessary, “kodak” was a
never-failing source of pleasure and
amusement all during our stay on the
farm.
We never thought of going on a
walk or a drive without carrying, along
our pictorial recorder, in case any-
thing new or strange grossed our line
of vision. Our walks were a daily oc-
currence, rain, hail or sunshine, but
when the weather permitted we car-
ried the kodak. Our drives were more
infrequent, being_^i matter of sending
in to town for a “rig” and making an
all-day trip of it. And in this latter
way ve covered the country for many
miles on all sides, traversing the river
bottom roads and coming into towns
where the houses were so old that the
wind and rain and sun had bleached
i and then browned them until they
i looked like frame mummies more
! ancient than the human ones ten-
century old in Egyptian tombs.
A Jodak is an amusing little beast,
and cm no more be depended on to do
the same thing twice than a rabbit,
and no two of them are alike. You
may borrow one, as I did once, and
It maj turn out excellent pictures reg-
ularly You may buy one, and it may
acquire the habit of taking some good
and same bad ones. Each lens, so
they say, is turned out exactly alike,
but alas for human skill, each lens
isnt alike. It is one of the joys of
amiteur photography that you can
never be sure of any particular re-
subs. Sometimes, on a “perfect” day,
with all the care in the world, the pic-
tures will be flat failures. On other
da/s, gray days, maybe, when you had
no license to expect any results at all,
tie picture-taking will turn out to be a
screaming success.
fl The best general rule in using these
little,machines is to follow directions
slavishly and not expect anything. In
this way you can every once in awhile
surprise yourself with the pictures
you will get. Sometimes the sun will
be watching you, and just as you are
about ready to “snap” the slide, the
victim all posed expectantly, will dart
into a convenient cloud-bank and stay
there for an hour. The sun can be de-
pended upon to do this every time it
gets a chance; don’t tell me that heav-
enly bodies are not endowed with a
sense of malignancy. I have seen a
sun that' rose on a comparatively clear
day make the most unseemly haste to
get behind a bank of clouds when
there was only one cloud-bank in
sight, and lay there for hours and
hours until it was too late to take pic-
tures, and then go down with a red
grin on it as much as to say “got you
that time.” The best way is to hide
the camera when you first start out,
for if the sun sees it you are apt to
have trouble.
When you have studied the little
book of instructions that goes with
the kodak you will find invariably that
there was something you overlooked
when you first started out. Thus,
after taking one picture, it is neces-
sasry to turn the crank around several
[times in order to get the next number
n the “spool” ready for exposure,
he directions plainly indicate this;
ut every once in awhile you forget
his and try to blend the composite of
ja flock of sheep with a woman spin-
ning at an old-fashioned spinning
wheel, or something equally as blend-
able. And then when such a picture
comes but there is the spectacle of a
flock of sheep trying to spin' an old
lady into a woolen stocking, or a flock
of spinning wheels trying to spin an
old lady Into a sheep, or a flock of old
ladles trying to spin a sheep into a
spinning wheel.
Always remember to turn the crank
until the next number comes plainly
into view. Another pesky nuisance is
that the plagued thing won’t always
give out a clear “click” as you move
the slide. Beware of this, for it
means that you are not taking pictures
at all, but just going through the mo-
tions. When you take out such a roll
of films to “develop” you are simply
wasting your time on a pack of “jok-
ers,” for there hasn’t been a single im-
pression taken. We once traveled on
foot seven miles to take a family
group and some individual pictures,
and all we got from the 12 “expos-
ures” was a dozen beautifully assorted
blurs.
A camera is one of the best things
in the world to teach self-control. The
man or woman who will use one a
year, the same one, and not resort to
the family shotgun or the ax to demol-
ish the machine for its devilish in-
genuity in getting out of order and
£iaying its fantastic capers, is not
only a wonder, but a person thorough-
ly capable of bringing up children as
they should be brought up. Some-
times a kodak will stick in its case,
and perhaps a little .dampness in the
atmosphere has caused it to swell out
and refuse to ^Dudge. After heaving
away at it for an hour, skinning your
finger and making you wonder if this
is really a good world or not, it is in
order for your wife to take hold of it
and lift it out with perfectTease, look-
ing at you meanwhile with pain at
your evident state of mind as depict-
ed in your corrugated brow. Now
that kodak had deliberately let go just
then for some ulterior reason of its
own, and it would have held on if you
had kept at it, forever. It wasn’t be-
cause of any little catch or anything
like that, nothing mechanical, but one
of those little occult demonisms, like
the family scissors deliberately crawl-
ing away and hiding in the ice-box.
In taking animals, it is well to re-
member that a horse or a cow is not
all head. This will be driven into the
intelligence after taking a few snap-
shots of these interesting animals and
having them show up with heads like
the pyramid side of a house and bodies
that taper off to diminutive propor-
tions. Take these brutes profile, never
“head on,” and you will get better re-
sults. Sometimes, of course, just as
you are getting the most pleasant and
intelligent look on a cow or a rooster,
it will turn its head or pick at its
feathers and spoil the effect. But this
is one of the things which is to be met
with fortitude.
' Speaking of cows, we never failed
to get a cow in all of our pictures.
There were so many cows in the
neighborhood, and a cow is such an
inevitable accompaniment of all rural
scejiery, that we very soon became
reconciled to the appearance of the
phant cow in our pictures. These
kodaks have a most “reachy” halntjn
regard to perspective, and while you
may think you are only taking a lone
tree, or a family group, you may be
taking in a line of land that pretty
nearly includes the whole township in
the direction in which the machine/ is
pointed. And somewhere on this
angle there will be a cow. Either ly-
ing down or standing up, or grazing,
or chewing the cud, or getting milked,
or driven in or out to pasture, or try-
ing to worm through a fence, or some
other thing, and when yon get the pic-
ture back from the reproducers, or de-
velop it yourself, you can always bet
on the cow.
We never had any particular trouble
with sheep, or hogs, or horses. They
are not nearly so apparent as cows
are in the country. Sheep are fine ob-
jects, and give very fine results in the
way of “snap-shots,” either grazing on
the hillsides, standing in groups or
huddling at the approach of a human
being, or lying in the shade of the
trees at noon, they are always pictur-
esque. But it is one of the cardinal
principles of using a kodak to have
your object in the sun, and the “cam-
era flared” should have his instrument
of torture shaded; so that a great
deal of ingenuity is needed at time3
to get your animal out into the sun
and just where you want it in
order to prepare for a successful
“snap.”
Sheep are very suspicious and pan-
icky creatures, and are apt to stick
their tails up and go "baaing” over the
hillsides just when you have teased
them into an attitude of woolly curi-
osity. This is one of the uncertain-
ties of the sport and requires sturdy
patience and invincible good humor
to counteract. A horse is different/ A
horse is one of the vainest animals in
the world, next to man, and rather
likes to have his picture taken. But
as for intelligence, a horse is the most
addlepated brute in existence. He
will shy at a bale of hay, rub back
into a burning barn from which he has
just been dragged, and snuff at a wa-
ter trough as though it was full of
bumble bees. But he prances out to
have his likeness “took” much as
though he thought he was the pick of
his tribe.
The best time for taking pictures,
so we were informed by our little
book, was between ten and four; but
we discovered that this dictum had its
limitations. For instance, some of the
most sketchy and beautiful effects we
got in landscapes were taken after
four o’clock, and even after five, and
the results gave a hazy, shadowy feel-
ing in the little pictures which was al-
most as good as a miniature etching.
On a few of the gray leaden days, We
got some of our clearest pictures, and
on some of the absolutely cloudy days
we got some of our most notable fail-
ures. It was a veritable lottery so far
as we were concerned, for we never
knew when we were going to get good
results or poor ones. As a fairly ac-
curate thing to go by, we could tell
that when we were most anxious to
get good pictures they turned out
miserably, and that when we were not
caring very much about it we got
“dreams.”
The most Interesting work was in
taking pictures of our neighbors and
our neighbors’ children. In taking a
child, care should always be taken not
to try to get the child’s attention at-
tracted. If that is done, some of the
weirdest effects in human physiog-
nomy possible will be the result. The
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children will have that half-scared,
half-shamed look which is so common
to regular photography, and will be,
at the moment of “snapping,” as ab-
solutely unlike themsetyes inside and
out as it would be conceivable to ima-
gine. And that is one of the mistakes
of photography. To take a picture
right of a human being it should be
taken with the mask off. Children
wear masks when they are noticed, or
told to look this way or that. Men and
women wear masks excepting when
they are alone. The result is that
children should have their pictures
taken when their attention is strictly
attracted elsewrhere than on the pho-
tographer, and grown persons should
have their pictures taken from am-
bush.
Every biped from the age of 16 up-
wards is thinking about himself or
herself when facing a photographer,
and the mask is on. Did you ever no-
tice the difference that sleep, or death,
makes in a person’s features? Well,
the lack of self-consciousness is the
laying aside of the mask, and never
until people are painted or photo-
graphed without their knowing it will\
either portrait-painting or photog-
have fairly decently after all.
“Flash-light” pictures we never at-
tempted. There is- a limit in every-
thing, and amateur, or even profes-
sional, “flash-light” photography, so-
called, is the limit of limits. They
give a ghastly jovial expression to
some faces, and a chalky, .corpse-like
deadness to others, and a group of
“flash-lighted” mortals is certainly
raphy be anything but make-believe
arts.
We got some good pictures of the
children when they were not looking,
and some excellent pictures of the
men in the fields, and elsewhere,
when they wrere off “guard,” but just
as sure as they were “snapped” when,
they wrere ready, g6od-by to any nat-
ural expression. Taking babies was
one of the extreme ‘"lottery” features
of the pastime, and, when taken in-
doors, was usually a dim outline of a
hazy patch of white dress. But the
parents always avowed it was as life-
like as anything they ever saw.
Landscapes were our best hold, for
a landscape can be depended on to
keep still, and always weats its per-
fectly natural expression, according to
the season wliich happens to be pass-
ing just then. We got pictures of
quaint wooden bridges, covered and
built without a single bit of/iron in
them, all mortised and pegged with,
wooden pegs, and enduring* through
many years. We took old mill-dams,
^here the water had run since the
days of the deer and wild turkeys, and
great oaks that had witnessed the
hegira of the Indians westward as it
had waved over the flames of their
ehrly campfires.
Landscapes where water Is a fea-
ture of the scenery take usually the
best, something about water seeming
to aid in bringing out the finer quali-
ties of a land scene, as a bit of silky,
ribbon will enhance the picturesque-
ness of a woman’s face. We had some
river and lake pictures that had the
very breath of outdoors in them, the
rushes bending with the moving winds
and distant cloud-shapes clearly,
though whitely, defined. It was cer-
tainly a fascinating and costly experi-
ence. You got so that you wanted to
take a “snap” of everything you saw;!
and when you sent your films away to
be developed and printed it cost al-
most as much as it would to keep a
yacht. The craze grows on you, and
your judgment gets wobbly; and you
keep getting deeper and deeper into
the clutch of the unseen enemy.
We found that of all the seasons
autumn gave us the best results as
to sharp outlines and clear effects 3
possibly this was because the air'was
clearer then. Summer ranked next as
to satisfactory photographs, and win-
ter effects were sometimes very good,
indeed and often blurred.
We often tried to photograph the
bird, but I regret to state that most of
these pictures were failures. The av-
erage bird, outside of owls and herons,
are extremely volatile, head up and
tail down, or head down and tail up,
here one minute and there the next,|
that we despaired of taking them suc-
cessfully. The best way to photograph;
the average bird is to have him
mounted and photograph him after-
wards. I got a very fair picture of art
catbird once, as those to whom the
catbird was duly pointed out were free
to admit, but as a rule “photograph-
ing” the birds was a sad waste of time,
energy and money. I would creep cau-
tiously up to a robin sitting on its
nest and take Its picture, and then,
when the picture came out, it would
be an elegant picture of everything
but the nest and the robin. As for *
moving bird, it was about as easy as
photographing a brook trout in the
water.
On the subject of birds’ nests, sep-
arate and apart from the birds them-
selves, that is a sorrowful page in our
experience as “camera fiends.” I have
crawled up to the top of an apple tree
to take an oriole’s nest and, aftec
using up half a dozen films, come
down ‘scratched and breatbhless, but
with the proud consciousness of hav-
ing ’’done it” that time. Then when
the pictures came back, each of them
would represent a f speaking likenese
of the top of an apple tree, or other
tree, with a large wad of placid sky in
the background, but of the nest not m
straw nor a hair. It was the same aa
to nests on the ground. I would chaeei
a bobolink from its nest in the pas-
ture and draw back the grass so as to
get a perfect exposure. Then I would
snap that nest four or five times and
tbe net result, after “development,**
would be a towzled tuft of meadow*
grass with a dark spot in the center**
But I never got a decent bird's nest lor
all toy trials, and I tried the catbird^
the jays, robins, bobolinks, warblers^
orioles, thrushes and others. _
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Jacksboro Gazette. (Jacksboro, Tex.), Vol. 29, No. 7, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 16, 1908, newspaper, July 16, 1908; Jacksboro, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth730666/m1/3/?q=music: accessed June 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Gladys Johnson Ritchie Library.