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 THE DAGUERREOTYPE: AN ARCHIVE OF SOURCE TEXTS, GRAPHICS, AND EPHEMERA


  The research archive of Gary W. Ewer regarding the history of the daguerreotype

During the month of January 1854, the following two paragraphs appeared in the tale, "Stage-Coach Stories" which appeared in "Putnam's Monthly. A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art." (New York) Vol. 3, No. 13 (January 1854): - - - - - - - - Chapter II. THE LAWYER'S STORY. [paragraphs seven and eight] While this dialogue was going on, and our military be-titled driver was enlightening the judicial dignitary as to the welfare of his domestic circle, and sarcastically bewailing his inability to return appropriately, the complimentary inquiry of the latter; and while the twain were discoursing about divers other matters, until the appearance of the sweating porter, with one trunk on his shoulder and another in his hand; I was making a rapid inspection of the passengers who were already on the coach. On the front seat, bolt upright, sat a spruce-looking, red-and-white complexioned, dark-haired and dark-whiskered young gentleman, trimly dressed in a linen sack, worn over a black coat and white marseilles vest, with his very red lips sucking the ivory head of a yellow rattan cane. I guessed at once that he was a daguerreotype artist, materially aided in this sagacious conjecture by the appearance of a tripod, which lay helplessly on the roof of the coach, its legs tied together and sticking out of the canvas bag in which its head works were bundled up. (The tale includes only a few other references to this character, nothing of which adds further to this description. --G.E.) -------------------------------------------------------------- 01-18-99

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