Page 62 - Hartridge 1934

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PRIZE ESSAYS
This year the editors offered three competitions for poems or essays—one to the Seniors and Juniors, one to the three younger grades of the Aca­
demic, and one to the Elementary. They aivarded the prizes as follows:
SENIOR AND JUNIOR PRIZE
On Having One’s Picture Taken
I have always sworn that I would never have my picture taken. I have been very firm about it. Every year about the first of December Daddy comes to me and says, ”I have a wondeiful idea for Mother’s Christmas present. Why don’t we give her pictures of all you children?” I tell him that I’d die sooner, and that Mother wants a grey suit. A few days later Mother comes to me and says, ”I have a wonderful idea for Daddy’s Christmas present—” and I have to tell her that Daddy wants golf clubs.
Mother says I inherit my distaste for the camera from Daddy, but she is wrong. I think I inherit it from the human race. ”The camera does not lie” is a true statement, and there are few people in the world who like to see themselves, fair and true, as others see them.
I haven’t had my picture taken for ten years, and that last one has been in the living room all this time. It is a very round little girl, with long curls, a bang, and a dead rose. This one doesn’t embarrass me much, because I know it could never have been I. How much worse it would be to have to look at a picture of me as I am now.
There comes a time in the lives of all of us when our stern resolves have to weaken. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? I don’t know the answer, but the truth is that one day last week I found myself on the way to the studio
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