"RICH AND RARE WERE THE GEMS SHE WORE."
"_HAVE_ you noticed Miss Harvey's diamonds?" said a friend, directing
my attention, as she spoke, to a young lady who stood at the lower end
of the room. I looked towards Miss Harvey, and as I did so, my eyes
received the sparkle of her gems.
"Brilliant as dew-drops in the morning sunbeams," I remarked.
"Only less brilliant," was my friend's response to this. "Only less
brilliant. Nothing holds the sunlight in its bosom so perfectly as a
drop of dew.--Next, the diamond. I am told that the pin, now flashing
back the light, as it rises and falls with the swell and subsidence of
her bosom, cost just one thousand dollars. The public, you know, are
very apt to find out the money-value of fine jewelry."
"Miss Harvey is beautiful," said I, "and could afford to depend less on
the foreign aid of ornament."
"If she had dazzled us with that splendid pin alone," returned my
friend, "we might never have been tempted to look beneath the jewel,
far down into the wearer's heart. But, diamond earrings, and a diamond
bracelet, added--we know their value to be just twelve hundred dollars;
the public is specially inquisitive--suggest some weakness or
perversion of feeling, and we become eagle-eyed. But for the blaze of
light with which Miss Harvey has surrounded herself, I, for one, should
not have been led to observe her closely. There is no object in nature
which has not its own peculiar signification; which does not correspond
to some quality, affection, or attribute of the mind. This is true of
gems; and it is but natural, that we should look for those qualities in
the wearer of them to which the gems correspond."