During this month (February) in the year 1852, the following item 
appeared in "The Photographic Art-Journal" (Vol. 3):
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  -- We were very agreeably surprised by receiving the following poetry 
from  one of our subscribers.  The authoress is a practitioner of the 
Daguerrean art in the village of Salem [sideways "X"] Roads, Chautauque 
Co. N.Y.  To be a poetess and daguerreotypist, is synonymous with good 
taste and good pictures, and must secure warm friends and many of them.

THE HUSBANDS' DAGUERREOTYPE.

Mystic shadows, life portraying,
  Loved memento of the dead,
While I gaze, the tear-drops straying,
  Dims, like hearts whose joys are fled.

Treasured token; memory lingers
  Fondly, sadly, on the past,
When those eyes, those lips, those fingers,
  Moved, and breathed, and gazed their last.

Tracing back Time's flowing current,
  Well remembered is the hour
When aroused by Love's knight errant,
  First was felt their magic power.

Nor are memory's links yet broken,
  Tho' sprinkled with the rust of time,
Since those sacred vows were spoken,
  And homage paid at wedlocks shrine.

Nor the soul-enkindling rapture,
  When these lineaments were traced,
With a parents' penetration
  On a lovely cherub's face.

But the grave conceals the substance,
  Time this shadow may deface,
From the tablet of affection, 
  Naught thine image can erase.
                             M. M. B.

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Posted for your enjoyment.      Gary W. Ewer       
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02-01-96