A Photographer's Day Out by Lewis Carroll

I am shaken, and sore, and stiff, and bruised. As I have told you many times already, I haven't the least idea how it happened and there is no use in plaguing me with any more questions about it. Of course, if you wish it I can read you an extract from my diary, giving a full account of the events of yesterday, but if you expect to find any clue to the mystery in that, I fear you are doomed to be disappointed.

August 23, Tuesday. They say that we Photographers are a blind race at best; that we learn to look at even the prettiest faces as so much light and shade; that we seldom admire, and never love. This is a delusion I long to break through. If I could only find a young lady to photograph, realizing my ideal of beauty above all, if her name should be… (why is it, I wonder, that I dote on the name Amelia more than any other word in the English language?), I feel sure that I could shake off this cold, philosophic lethargy.

The time has come at last. Only this evening I fell in with young Harry Glover in the Haymarket.

-‘Tubbs!’ he shouted, slapping me familiarly on the back, ‘my uncle wants you down tomorrow at his Villa, camera and all!’

‘But I don't know your uncle’ I replied, with my characteristic caution. (N. B. If I have a virtue, it is quiet, gentlemanly caution.)

‘Never mind, old boy, he knows all about you. You be off by the early train, and take your whole kit of bottles, for you'll find lots of faces to uglify, and…’

-‘Can't go,‘ I said rather gruffly, for the extent of the job alarmed me, and I wished to cut him short, having a decided objection to talking slang in the public streets.