Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West
"Well?" demanded Maud, reading Colby's face with her clear eyes.
"I made a night of it, as I promised," said he. "This morning I know so
much about pearls that I'm tempted to go into the business."
"As Jack Andrews did?" inquired Flo.
"Not exactly," he answered with a smile. "But it's an interesting
subject--so interesting that I only abandoned my reading when I found I
was burning my electric lamp by daylight. Listen: A pearl is nothing more
or less than nacre, a fluid secretion of a certain variety of oyster--not
the eatable kind. A grain of sand gets between the folds of the oyster
and its shell and irritates the beast. In self-defense the oyster covers
the sand with a fluid which hardens and forms a pearl."
"I've always known that," said Flo, with a toss of her head.
"Yes; but I want you all to bear it in mind, for it will explain a
discovery I have made. Before I get to that, however, I want to say that
at one time the island of Ceylon supplied the world with its most famous
pearls. The early Egyptians discovered them there, as well as on the
Persian and Indian coasts. The pearl which Cleopatra is said to have
dissolved in wine and swallowed was worth about four hundred thousand
dollars in our money; but of course pearls were scarce in her day. A
single pearl was cut in two and used for earrings for the statue of Venus
in the Pantheon at Rome, and the sum paid for it was equal to about a
quarter of a million dollars. Sir Thomas Gresham, in the days of Queen
Elizabeth, had a pearl valued at about seventy-five thousand dollars
which he treated in the same manner Cleopatra did, dissolving it in wine
and boasting he had given the most expensive dinner ever known."
"All of which--" began Maud, impatiently.
"All of which, Miss Stanton, goes to show that pearls have been of great
price since the beginning of history. Nowadays we get just as valuable
pearls from the South Seas, and even from Panama, St. Margarita and the
Caromandel Coast, as ever came from Ceylon.
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In a village there lived two men who had the self-same name. Both were named Claus. But one of them owned four horses, and the other owned only one horse; so to distinguish between them people called the man who had four horses Big Claus, and the man who had only one horse Little Claus. Now I'll tell you what happened to these two, for this is a true story.
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