Page:Convalescent willis.djvu/93

 the way, that my last summer's hat, which came back upon the old man's head yesterday, after a year's wear, has a considerably altered expression. He had, as usual, slept out of doors occasionally, and the hat, which is his pillow, serves him also for a cold-victual basket, and a cushion in wet places; but the wear of this trying variety of service was not all. He had found the crown "too high to go through the woods with;" and, cutting off the lower half, he had reduced it to the proportions of a soup-plate—more convenient than becoming. I mention it to protect myself from its doing me injustice (as I am told the trowsers are doing) in a collection of autographs.

Miracle as the taking of likenesses by daguerreotype certainly is, the process—especially on the scale practised in rural villages—has no very startling aspect of sublimity. The alchemistic hierophant of the sun's great mystery—(the man who daguerreotypes you)—goes about it with a commonplaceness tedious to endure, ludicrous to remember. Billy was simply acquiescent. His business was to oblige the friend who was to give him a dinner and some old clothes after the job was over; but as to understanding or believing in likenesses painted that way, he was not going even to try. The look of funny incredulity which this feeling of mere acquiescence naturally gave to his features, was faithfully copied, of course, in the daguerreotype. It adds to the effectiveness of it as a picture, though it