A Day In 1900

He locks the narrow, plain legs into place and mounts the box to it. Pulling open the face of the box, he prepares the camera as his subject sways with slight impatience.

She waits, feeling slightly unnoticed as he gets it all ready to go. Although the day is cool, her petticoat, dress, and matching jacket weigh her down and trap in the heat so she-- only 4-- sweats and lets out a soft sigh.

She looks up at the brilliant blue, where puffy clouds of stretched cotton gently sail on over the land of shimmering green trees, long grass, and buildings and homes--- simple and elegant, plain and colourful.

She comes back to earth and looks to her right, adjusting her bonnet as she watches a wagon slowly rumble on toward their direction over the paver-filled red-brown street they put in before she was even born.

It's just a single horse. The unpainted buckboard wagon has short sides and one seat, upon which a man in grey sits as he controls his horse. There appears to be little in the wagon, so she quickly loses interest.

She turns to her left and stares down the poured sidewalk she stands on-- new, from within her lifetime, and still a clean grey-white. She sees a man dressed in overalls with a dark long-sleeve shirt. He's walking along and swinging his arms all under his brown hat.

From the corner of her eye she notices a glint on the road separated from her by a narrow strip of tall green grass going to seed among a few other smaller plants.

Oh! she thinks. It's a man on a bicycle. The handles shine in the sun as the hard rubber wheels greet the rectangular pavers-- some with words facing up, most with the blank end up.

Above the cyclist is a tall electric lamp hanging from a wire that's attached to a telephone pole full of small, deep aqua insulators. The other end is attached to a leaning and empty pole in someone's fenced-in yard where sheets hang out to dry.

Behind all of these, she sees the white-painted Church with its deeply-coloured stained glass windows and its tower painted in white with colourful accents. At the top is the cross, the symbol of her religion her parents teach her with each prayer at night.

"Miss," the man with the box says gently, interrupting her thoughts and views. "As we wait for your parents, would you like just a photograph of you?"

She nods, still a bit shy of the man her parents said would take her picture with them, the picture they can put in in their photo album to look back at over the years-- when she grows up.

He adjusts the angle and stands just within the gentle dance of the shadows cast by gently rustling leaves, the weathered and uneven wood fence breaking off to their neighbour's entrance just behind him.

He plays with the box another second as she looks at the dark glass lens of the camera. "Watch the birdie," he says, and for the second time that day she squints at the poor excuse of a canary.

He pulls the cord, and the rest is lost to history.