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formed at the present time, and in their natural condition they are of comparatively short 

 existence, yet when once in man's possession they will keep any length of time if taken care 

 of. Well, what is a pearl? It certainly is a wonderful example amongst Nature's works. In 

 itself it is one of the most chaste and delicate objects and of great value, which it has been 

 for upwards of two thousand years, and which value, from its chaste and modest beauty, it 

 continues to retain. It is however merely an excrescence similar in substance to that of the 

 component parts of the shell of the insignificant animal in which it is found, and no doubt 

 the creature would have much preferred to have the substance it is made of used in the 

 ordinary way, which should have been merely to enlarge its shell. It is simply what might 

 be called a disease in such an insignificant animal, probably placed where it is to be found by 

 man and used by him for his luxurious enjoyment, as it can hardly be considered as otherwise 

 useful either to him or to the animal in which it is formed. Pearls certainly are the simplest and 

 most chaste ornaments for any gentlewoman, the only objection to them as such is the facility 

 with which the counterfeit is made ; but at the same time the wearer of genuine pearls has 

 the inner satisfaction of knowing that her ornaments are not sham, which, if the wearer of the 

 latter, if she has any right feeling at all, should instead of being proud in having them, would 

 be the reverse. Perhaps if the insignificant animal in whose body the pearl was found, and 

 which probably gave it some trouble, knew that it might help to adorn a queen, it might gratify 

 it and be some recompense for the inconvenience it gave it. As a matter of course, so soon 

 as the animal dies the shell opens and the pearl, if there is one, is lost when the body decays, 

 and the pearl as well as the shell alter their condition by decomposition, and probably in 



