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TITLES.

By RUSSELL W. TAFT.

O, my child, this article has nothing to with the Knights of the Bath or of the Garter, nor with the Princes of Jerusalem. I refer, not to the Titles arrayed in Burke's Peerage nor the Almanach-de-Gotha, but to the titles to those of your prints that you deem worthy to call by name. Of course all pictures have some distinguishing appellation; probably eighty per cent. of our negatives are denominated rather for identification than otherwise—for instance, "Squinty—N. G.— looks sick," or "Duffelheimer's Brewery from tower Episcopal chapel" but for the other twenty, which we may deem worthy of a place on the wall or in the portfolio, we must have something by way of title.

I assume that the self-respecting pictorialist needs no caution against the materialistic title. If a picture is not worthy of study introspectively, the fact that it is a view of "Orchard Street taken from a point seventeen feet east by north of the granite horse block in front of the residence of Hon. Henry Simpson" will not save it, regardless of the fact that such a title savors of the "this-cross-marks-the-spot-where-the-bloodyhatchet-was-found" school of art.

Passing by this class of titles we will find that there are but three requisites of an appropriate title, Consistency; Originality; Brevity.

Consistency.-Above all things be consistent. Bear in mind always the remark of some literary fellow that consistency is a jewel. And yet how many prints we see where the titles violate this rule. I recall one print of some boys in bathing entitled "Sea Urchins" where the glassy sea washed a bank of grass and the other shore was lost in some reeds about forty feet distant. In every picture there should be a motive (very high browed persons call it a moteef) a "guiding, controlling idea" as our friend Webster expresses it. Let your title, then, refer to it. If your print is a sandy beach and a distant head

land in which plashing waves and nicely illuminated clouds give the predominating note of interest, is not "Sea and Sky," simply that, better than

"The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock bound coast,"

when the waves are not of the high-dashing variety and the rock bound coast is a headland in the middle distance peacefully slumbering in the misty light of a September afternoon?

RUSSELL W. TAFT.

Originality. Be original in the selection of titles. Why, after having seen "The Old Mill" 756,867 times any person should attach that moth-eaten and bald-headed title to a print of their own for the 756,868th is something with which my feeble intellectual powers are unable to grapple. If it is an old mill, as it sometimes is, and not a detached shed some distance from a trout brook, the picture will show it, and a more suitable title will add to the value of the print without being tautological. Then there is "Quietude," a stately old dame with a toupee and store teeth, who is neck and neck with the "Old Mill," while a little in the rear, obscured by a suitable amount of dust, comes "In the Gloaming," only about 438,243 times along. And we wonder why.

Brevity. If brevity is the soul of wit, be as witty as you can. Do not select a title that reminds one of the Orphic sayings of the Poet in "Iole." "Thank you," he said thickly; "thank you for your thought. Thought is but a trifle to bestow a little thing in itself. But it is the little things that are the most important-the smaller the thing the more vital its importance, until the thing becomes so small that it isn't anything at all, and then the value of nothing becomes so enormous that it is past all computation." The chronic disseminator of caloricised ether had best leave the titling of his prints to someone else. Sometimes an appropriate quotation from some well known poem will serve acceptably, but the cases are few and far between where the quotation will not overbalance the print.

Choose a title consistent, original and brief. It may save a passable print, but a title inconsistent, hackneyed and verbose is far more apt to mar an excellent piece of work. And if you would learn a little on the subject of titles it might be well to run through the pages of any American Annual or Photograms of the Year applying to the prints the three tests suggested. Try it. Like homoeopathic medicine, it may do you no good, but it will certainly do no harm.