BUSINESS LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14326, 23 March 1910, Page 9

BUSINESS LIFE.

BUCKLE TO. Now you and I, this year, have made up our minds to take some step or steps that will lift us out of the ruck. We are not going on any more in the old shackless, shiftless way that characterises ninety out of every hundred of the people by whom we are surrounded. There is no need for it. The mere fact that you buckle to any task will make your life ever so much more enjoyable. It hardly matters what the task may be. Just suppose that you have taken up any line and pursued it for years, and imagine -where it will land you. Suppose you merely go in for saving. Well 1 Suppose that in ten years you have a hundred pounds. As soon as you have :iaved your first hundred pounds you will need no more advice. The mere act of saving will have made a man of you. Suppose you started a little business now, and made it the object of your life for ten years, could you possibly fail? Not at all, unless you, were a very unlucky man indeed. It is being done every day. Suppose you started to' make yourself the most lovable, kindly, helpful man in all your circle, and • you pursued that object for ten years as if it were the business of your life! Think what a noble character you would be at the end of that time; and set about it - right away. ' Look to right and left of you, and on every hand, almost every hour you will see traits in other people well worthy of your imitation, and * others- ; excite your abhorrence. Cleave, to the one and avoid the other in your own person.' Don't wait till it is too late. « ! Keep on supposing you were in such and such a situation, had such and such chances. What would you do? What would you advise your best friend to do? Then do. for yourself. For most of our faults, for most of our failures, for most of our misery, we have only ourselves to blame. Very well! You are young and life is all before you. You see "the world round you strewed with wrecks. ! / Suppose you were any one of them, and then think what you would give to have a fresh open start. That 6tart you hive. It is your one chance. You have only one life, and, barring a few inevitable mistakes, there is no reason why you should make a wreck of it. I have, given you a few, keys to success.. Remember this last. Suppose yourself one of the derelicts, and then eteer such a" course that you will never become one. A LADY PHOTOGRAPHER. "Photograph lovely woman?" said a woman as she stood, camera in hand, closely watching the movements of a curious water creature cautiously crawling through a bunch of sedges. "I like very well to take pictures of lovely women, but it is a different line of business from mine altogether. My work leads me out into the open. Why, only a week ago I spent a couple of mornings on my knees • in the grass by the side of a pond, because I had an order for half a dozen creatures who live in water, and who are so shy that they have to. be watched for hours and taken unawares. Most of these wild creatures, such as water-rats, duck, field-mice, and others too numerous to name, are extremely shy, and I have to exercise a deal of patience. But I get 'em all light," and she laughed cheerfully as she held up a number of plates on (which the inexperienced eye could trace 'mere outlines. . ■• T .•- / "Who wants them?" she repeated the question in surprise,- "why, many people want these photographs. There are students of natural history who constantly, demand such things; there are writers who want them for , illustrations, and there are mere amateurs who like to have these creatures about them. I do a little in that way myself," and, opening wide the long window at one end of her studio, she showed a glass contrivance, in which lizards, tiny snakes, and other creatures,' more curious than, charming, were curled up for the winter. — "No, I do not work always amongst, water creatures," she went on. "I am dressed to-day for that work with top boots and tweeds; just as often, however, I spend half my day on the top of a scaffolding. No, it never occurs to me to get giddy I am too keen on my picture. The most difficult piece of work of that kind I ever did was to photograph a building on which there were some most unusual gargoyles. I got.out of a window very high up on a .very windy day, and then took my place on a scaffolding erected for the purpose. My position was quite close to the edge, and the fixing of my camera was a difficulty. But it is not more difficult than photographing lovely women. Oh, no. The difficulties there come in quite another/way. Scientific men often require rather curious things treated by the camera, and there are inventors who bring me their inventions. Advertisements, too, offer a good many opportunities for the photographer who takes her work from a standpoint such as mine. . I find that every year brings an increase in the demand for plain, solid work from, photographers, what I—tall mere business work without anything artistic about it at all, except the knowledge of light, shade, and so on, without which no photographer can work at all, and I find that my careful studies, my capacity for climbing scaffoldings, and so on, come in very useful indeed." ,