"LAYING" A PHOTOGRAPHER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 291, 7 December 1900, Page 2

"LAYING" A PHOTOGRAPHER.

A PARIS ADVENTURE

Condign punishment (says the Paris " correspondent of the "Pall Mall Gazette") , f has overtaken one of the innumerable amateur photographers of whom the Ex-v hibition Is the happy hunting-ground. The-." chastened collector of snapshots is a young lawyer's clerk, M. Jacques Collia f by name, who, bavins remarked that the V enormous concourse of people of :ul : ' classes and races attracted by the Exhibi--• tion includes unsurpassable specimens of /- every imaginable variety of human ug!i- v ness, conceived the notion of forming- a..-•; collection of photographs of these gro- .■; tesque countenances and misshapen v; bodies, and before Nemesis'overtook him ; his chamber of horrors counted more than : six hundred notable examples of human monstrosities. The fair sex, it is-pitiful . to relate', predominate among these counterfeit presentments of living caricatures, though, perhaps, if the photographer hai ■ been a woman it might have been the \', other way about. Moreover, the' balance \r has been restored to some extent by the. ; circumstances that it is by a woman that the victims have been avenged.* M. Collin, whom long impunity had ,-rendereil incautious, levelled his kodak without the' least attempt at concealment at a matron;-' of prodigiously heavy tonnage, whose '. ample cheeks were completed by whisker? of which a butler might be prouci. TJi,9 ■ mountainous owner of the heavy appencK. i ages was beside herself' with rage whejO ; she saw that her unusual configuration.: was the object of the ribald curiositj' of a stranger. Athletic, though ponder.ous, she fell upon the photographer, seized hitrt ' by the throat, and belaboured him with her umbrella. M. Collin was half-straw;^ led when the spectators of the scene came* ■ ■ to his rescue. It is probable that he will;,, henceforth be chary of seeking- to increase his collection, the possession of whK'h,.1 "• however, not a few malicious spirits vi'tll'■■'!■ s envy him. '. • ;,