ly some ambitious young fellow who, after
learning his trade, often made and painted his "saloon" himself.
Frequently he slept in it, and sometimes cooked his meals in it. If he
did not own a horse, he usually made a bargain with some farmer to haul
him to his next stopping place in exchange for taking his picture. When
business grew dull in one neighborhood, he moved to another. He was the
true Bohemian of his trade--the gypsy of early photography.

The forward wheels of this one were gone, and its front end was propped
up level on a short piece of timber; but otherwise the "saloon" looked
as if the "artist" might at that moment be developing a plate inside.

On closer inspection, however, we saw that weeds had sprung up beneath
and about it, and I guessed that the wagon had been standing there for
at least a month or two; and on peeping in at the little end door we saw
that birds or squirrels had been in and out of the place. All that we
could make of it was that the photographer, whoever he was, had come
there, left his "saloon" and gone away--with the forward wheels.

We gathered a load of herbs and drove home again, much puzzled by our
discovery. The story of the "daguerreotype saloon" at Dresser's Lonesome
soon spread abroad, but no one was able to furnish a clue to its
history. Of course all manner of rumors began to circulate; some people
declared that the owner of the "saloon" must be a naturalist who had
journeyed up there to take pictures of wild animal life; others thought
that the photographer had lost his way and perished in the woods.

When Willis Murch passed along the old road in October that fall, the
mysterious "saloon" was still standing there; and lumbermen spoke of
seeing it there during the winter. That next August, a year after we had
first discovered it, Catherine and Theodora again went up to Dresser's
Lonesome to gather herbs; and still the "daguerreotype saloon" was
there.

It was Halstead who carried the girls up on that trip. The weather had
been threatening when they started, and showers soon set in; rain fell
pretty much all the afternoon, so that the girls were badly delayed in
gathering their herbs. When Halstead declared that it was high time to
start for home, Catherine proposed that they stay there overnight and
finish their task the next day. The roof of the old farmhouse was now so
leaky that they could find no shelter there from the rain; but Catherine
suggested that the deser