CHAPTER. I 
INTRODUCTORY 
I was a photographer even when a boy. 
Wet plates were then in use, and I actually 
had a hand at making my own dry plates, 
as the years went on. Well do I remember 
the glad day when from the great London 
city there arrived a quarter-plate camera 
and portrait lens complete, the gift of my 
parents, when I had attained the age of 
twelve. And I blocked up a window in the 
dusty cellar of the old house, in which to 
sensitize my plates, develop, fix, and wash, 
carrying all my water up and down in cans 
and jugs, even monopolizing the family bath 
for washing prints. My knowledge of the 
gentle art was first culled from a small book, 
‘Instructions’ it was called, that: came 
packed in the box that held the apparatus 
B.N. B 
