Lynx Did Not Spring

Rev. Francis E. Clarke, founder of Christian Endeavor, told of a young man, out in the Maine woods with his camera for a pleasant outing, who stopped at the entrance of a cavern on a rocky hillside, and impulsively thought: “Let us see what kind of a photograph I can get out of that cave.”

Steadying the camera just a little way from the mouth, he gave the sensitive plate a long time exposure into the darkness of the interior. Then he went heedlessly on his way.

When later he developed the plates, a thrill of astonishment passed over him as the exposure of the cave revealed in the center of the opening—but concealed from his eyes by the darkness within—a huge lynx crouched and ready to spring. Danger, disfigurement, perhaps death, had confronted him; yet he had been quite unaware of the peril, in the thoughtless gaiety of holiday freedom.