136 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
Said my instructor, with a twinkle of mirth in his eye, 
“You have been standing in front of your camera instead of 
behind it; turn it around, my child, and look.” 
The child turned it, and was deeply mortified at her utter 
stupidity; but she laughed to cover her confusion and said: 
“This reminds me of an episode that occurred at a baby 
show I once attended in the South. All the negro babies 
under a year old of the district had been sent in to compete 
for a prize and as they arrived they were duly ticketed with 
a large number pinned on the dress. Just before the open- 
ing hour, an assistant came in haste to the manager and said 
anxiously, ‘We have lost No. 9. Have you seen it? And 
we have two No. 6’s; we are getting all mixed up.’ 
“*No,’ replied the manager, ‘it was there a few minutes 
ago, for I marked the baby myself—it was a girl.’ 
“Then followed a hasty search, and a sudden exclamation 
of satisfaction from the manager, who called out, ‘Here’s No. 
g; some one has set her wrong side up so she looks like a 6.’ ” 
More than a week had now slipped away, I had mastered 
two minor points, but had not ventured to take a picture, and 
I have to laugh at myself now as I recall my maiden effort. 
The camera had been bought to gratify my desire to photo- 
graph flowers, but no one had told me, that, of all objects 
under the canopy of heaven, flowers are the most difficult, 
and require technical instruction. I was unaware that four 
o’clock in the afternoon in a shady place is not quite the 
condition to set an exposure at 1-25 of a second with a 64 
diaphragm. The object chosen was a lovely confusion of blue 
lupines and yellow day lilies, and I spent half an hour in set- 
ting up the camera, and measured the distance at least three 
times, anxiously inspecting the various contrivances to be 
set. My cheeks grew hot and my hand unsteady while I 
tried to pluck up courage to squeeze the bulb. It sounds 
