many places. Boeple remained poor. But, when he died, Iowa 

 erected a splendid monument in his memory. 

 The Origin of the; Pearl. 

 The cause or origin of the pearl is always a question of great 

 interest. The great majority of pearls has been caused, either by 

 some irritating substance like a grain of sand getting imbedded in 

 the mussel and becoming a source of irritation, or by the egg of a 

 small parasite, which preys upon mussels, becoming a source of 

 irritation. In either case, nature gives the mussel the automatic 

 power to secrete this smooth pearly substance around the irritat- 

 ing object and thus reduce the trouble. The vast majority of 

 pearls is caused by the egg of the parasite. 



Japanese; Culture Pearls. 



The Japanese learned this secret of the origin of the pearl 

 many hundreds of years ago. They have ingeniously taken ad- 

 vantage of it to cause the formation of immense quantities of 

 "culture pearls," as they are called. They insert into the shell of 

 the pearl oyster small, half-round, smooth objects and fasten them 

 to the shell with cement. In the course of five or six years these 

 are so coated with pearl as to have all the outward appearance of 

 genuine pearl. Only an expert can detect the difference. 



Pearls have been found and admired and worn by savage 

 man in every age and every part of the world where mollusks are 

 found. 



The World's Greatest Find of Pearls. 



De Soto, in his celebrated and ill-fated march through 

 Georgia, gave the Indians a very creditable imitation of what 

 Sherman's later march through Georgia was to be. You know 

 what Sherman called war. It is said that the Indians entertained 

 for De Soto the same tender afTection that the later Georgians en- 

 tertain for Sherman. 



Be that as it may, or as it most likely Avas, De Soto found in 

 one of the temple houses of a Georgia Indian town the enormous 

 quantity of two bushels of pearls. Never before or since in the 

 history of the world has such enormous booty been found. The 

 value of this booty must have amounted, at present prices, to 

 hundreds of millions of dollars. To relieve the Indians of the 

 care and worry of this enormous treasure, he kindly took it with 

 him. He also very considerately opened many of the graves of 

 their great men and took the gems buried there. This is probably 

 the pot calling the kettle black, as the speaker has done a great 

 deal of this same grave work, as you will see later on. De Soto 

 was never able to get his pearls to market. As the trials of 

 De Soto's men increased, they threw away all useless impedimenta. 

 Then De Soto, hoping to get a better spirit into his men, divided 

 this immense pearl booty and gave to each his share, which was 

 about one pint. This was enough to make each man rich, if he 



