impairs somewhat the character of frank simplicity of his every-day expression.
The daguerreotypist was somewhat embarrassed with a subject in shirt-sleeves, the unusual prevalence of white disturbing his experience in light and shade. The various trials, before he could satisfy himself, occupied nearly an hour, during the whole of which tiresome period and process, Billy sat patient and motionless—wide awake, but with not a nerve restless or discomposed. The man expressed his wonder at the self-command of his old sitter and at the steadiness with which he looked straight at him as directed while the plate was under the action of the light. Indeed, that the tough system of the centenarian has had no experience of neuralgic wear—that he is a man born without nerves—is, I fancy, one of the secrets of his longevity. To this and his inexhaustible good-humor may mainly be attributed, I have no doubt, his duration under all sorts of hard usage by poverty and exposure.
A man one hundred and three years old, seeing his own likeness for the first time, was a dramatic moment, I thought—but Billy evidently did not feel the poetry of it. I held up the naked plate to him, and he said, "Why, it is like me!" with a sort of reluctant acknowledgment of surprise, but immediately felt about for his hat, "to be going," glad it was over. He was not up to giving his mind the trouble to comprehend it, and if I was pleased he was very
