82 THE OTSTEE. 



CHAPTER X. 



''the TKEASrEE OF AX OTSTEE." j 



Sweet names given to Pearls ; Barry Cornwall Proctor's lines ; j 

 Component parts of Pearls ; Mother-of-pearl ; How Pearls j 

 are formed, Sorrows into Gems ; Their nucleus ; Sir Everard 

 Home and Sir David Brewster ; Cui'ious shapes and fancy 

 Jewellery ; Pearl Fisheries : Bahrein Island and Bay of Can- 

 dalchy ; Miseries of the Divers ; Pearls as Physic ; Immense 

 value of recorded Pearls. 



f\F all beautiful things in the world the pearl is the 

 ^ rarest and most beautiful. I^othing can exceed it, 

 nothing can equal it, although they try very hard in 

 * Trench" and ''Roman" ways, in glassy globules 

 which continually crack, or in round spots of wax, 

 which, instead of adorning, adhere to the neck of 

 beauty, and when old age comes upon it, turn yellow 

 and wrinkled like the skin of a dowager. JS'ay, nothing 

 can well imitate it, although art has gone somewhat 

 near it. But to a knowing eye one might as well seek 

 to imitate truth, or palm away upon the unwary a copy 

 of ti-ue virgin innocence as to imitate a pearl. "We 

 know all the answers that the dowagers can make; we 

 know that the imitations are "so cheap," so pretty; 

 we know that certain dowagers — witness Margaret, 

 Duchess Dowager of Lancaster — sell their real pearls 

 and wear cunning imitations; we know that they in 

 Tain try to persuade themselves that the false are as 



