xn 



GEMS. NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 



TF you will escape the evil effects of drunken- 



? ness, be preserved from hailstones and locusts, 



sleep well, and not be troubled by evil spirits of 



witches," says the medieval sage, " suspend an amethyst 



bead on a hair from a baboon and wear it at the neck." 



There was a time when many people believed such 

 things as this. We of the enlightened twentieth cen- 

 tury do not. And yet, much as we should like to deny 

 it, there are persons even to-day who have not quite 

 escaped the Dark-Age superstition the superstition 

 handed down from Egypt, through Greece and Rome 

 that there are "lucky" and "unlucky" gem stones. 

 What real difference is there, after all, between the 

 half -spoken belief that the opal is an "unlucky" stone, 

 and the sage's statement that the amethyst is a "lucky" 

 one, except in the matter of specific wording as to just 

 what evils are to be averted in the one case, as against 

 a general statement in the other? Most of us, to be 

 sure, do not believe in the general or the specific state- 

 ment any more than we believe that it really matters 

 whether we see the new moon over our right or our 

 left shoulder. Yet there are persons who still prefer 

 to catch the first glimpse of the new crescent "over the 

 sword arm"; and popular prejudice against the opal 



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