Cheaper by the Dozen

better of him, he'd try to turn around and administer one swift disciplinary stroke, and then turn back again in time to smile before the camera went off. Once, when he lost the gamble, an outstanding action picture resulted, which showed Dad landing a well-aimed and well-deserved clout on the side of Frank's head.
    Any number of pictures showed various members of the family, who had received discipline within a matter of seconds before the shutter clicked, looking anything but pleasant in the swivel seats of the car. The swivel seat occupants received most of the discipline, because they were the easiest for Dad to reach, and no one liked to sit there when it was picture taking time.
    Sometimes newspaper photographers and men from Underwood and Underwood would come to the house to take publicity pictures. Dad would whistle assembly, take out his stopwatch, and demonstrate how quickly we could gather. Then he would show the visitors how we could type, send the Morse code, multiply numbers, and speak some French, German, and Italian. Sometimes he'd holler " fire " and we'd drop to the floor and roll up in rugs.
    Everything seemed to go much smoother when Dad was on our side of the camera, for now he too was ordered where to stand, when to lick his lips, and, occasionally, to stop fidgeting. The rest of us had no trouble looking pleasant after the photographer lectured Dad. In fact we looked so pleasant we almost popped.
    "Mr. Gilbreth, will you please stand still? And take your hands out of your pockets. Move a little closer to Mrs. Gilbreth, No, not that close. Look. I want you right here." The photographer would take him by the arm and place him. "Now , try to look pleasant, please."
    "By jingo, I am looking pleasant," Dad finally would say impatiently.
    "I can't understand one thing," a man from Underwood and Underwood told Dad one time after the picture-taking was over. "I've been out here several times now. Everything always seems to be going fine until I put my head under the black cloth to focus. Then, just as if it's a signal, the four youngest ones start to cry and I can never get them to stop until I put the cloth out of sight."
    "Is that a fact?" was all the information Dad volunteered. Dad had a knack for setting up publicity pictures that tied in with his motion-study projects. While he was working for the Remington people, there were the news reels of us typing touch system on Moby Dick, the white typewriter with the blind keys. Later, when he got a job with an automatic pencil company, he decided to photograph us burying a pile of wooden pencils.
    We were in Nantucket at the time. Tom Grieves built a realistic-looking black coffin out of a packing case. For weeks we bought and collected wooden pencils, until we had enough to fill the coffin.
    We carried the casket to a sand dune between The Shoe and the ocean, where Dad and Tom dug a shallow grave. It was a desolate, windswept spot. The neighbors on the Cliff, doubtless concluding that one of us had fallen down and had had to be destroyed, watched our actions through binoculars.
    Dad set up a still camera on a tripod, connected the delayed-action attachment, and took a series of pictures showing us lowering the coffin into the grave and covering it with sand.
    "We'll have to dig up the coffin now and do the same thing all over again so we can get the movies," Dad said. "We're going to hit them coming and going with this one."
    We dug, being careful not to scratch up the coffin, and then sifted the sand from the pencils. Tom cranked the movie camera while we went through the second funeral. Fortunately, it was before the days of sound movies, because Dad kept hollering instructions.
    "Turn that crank twice a second, Tom. And one and two and three and four. Get out from in front of the camera, Ernestine. Marguerite Clark and Mary Pickford have things pretty well lined up out there, you know. Now then, everybody pick up the shovels and heave in the sand. Look serious. This is a sad burial. The good are often interred with their bones. So may it be with pencils. And one and two and..."
    When we were through with the second funeral, Dad told us we'd have to dig up the coffin again.
    "You're not going to take any more pictures, are you?" we begged. "We've taken the stills and the movies."
    "Of course not," said Dad. "But you don't think we're going to waste all those perfectly good wooden pencils, do you? Dig them up and take them back into the house. They