GETTING YOUR PICTURE.
THE operator is just about to withdraw the cloth. His back is toward you.
The index-finger at his unoccupied hand mutely marks the place for your eye.
Every nerve in your body is braced for the ordeal. The cloth is drawn; and
the noiseless and unseen fingers of the prepared plate are picking up your
features one by one, and transferring them to its mysterious surface. What
an influence is this you are under, and which you cannot explain, which weakens
every nerve, and unloosens every cord and muscle, and sets free upon and
over you a myriad of sensations you never knew before! The eye of the camera
glares upon you like the eye of an offended and threatening power. Prickling
sensations
are felt in your scalp; and a heat evolved within with amazing
rapidity flushes to the surface of your body, and leaves it pierced with
a thousand pains. You stare at the mark with an intensity that threatens
to obliterate your sight. Heavens! how slowly the time drags! Your eyes grow
weaker and weaker, filling with water as they die out. You know that they
are closing; but you cannot help yourself. Will he never put back that cloth?
A thousand reflections upon your appearance, on the sounds in the streets,
on things irreverent, and disastrous to your composure, flood your mind,
and take such hold upon you, that you cannot shake them off. And yet no move
to restore that cloth. He stands like a statue cut from flint, and you quivering
from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, with eyes blinded by
tears, with perspiration oozing from every pore, and every muscle strained
until it seems ready to snap, and let you down upon the floor, a mass of
disfigured and palpitating flesh. He need not put up the cloth
now.
The opportunity which he controlled to reproduce you in perfection is gone.
It matters not now how it looks, only that you get away, and be at rest.
You grow hysteric in your despair. It settles down upon you like a cloud,
compressing your throat within its grasp, until your breath surges back on
to your lungs as if it would rend them. A weight is pressing upon you. You
struggle to wrench yourself
free from the dreadful oppression, and yet not
a muscle of your body is in motion. What dreadful thing is this? You must
shriek; you—The cloth is up; the thirty seconds have expired; and you are
photographed.
