With the magic of spring, in myriad raindrops lit by the sudden sun, in the glint of young leaves and the brightness of early flowers, April shares the sparkle of the diamond. For springtime and for its precious stone, superlatives are the order of the season. The diamond has the greatest brilliance and most power of reflection of all gems. Its clearness and its cleanness are unsurpassed. It is colorless, yet it can show the entire spectrum of colors. The god of mines, we are told, created the diamond by pulverizing all other precious stones—ruby, sapphire, emerald, and the gathered host—blending and pressing them into one supreme stone, a crystal that, itself without color, imprisons and releases all the fused colors in its core. More sentimentally, legend records that in one of his unguarded tender moments, Jupiter, king of the gods, asked the young man who had rocked him in his cradle to name his own reward. The young man asked that he might endure unchanged forever. Jupiter turned him into a diamond. Increasingly through the centuries has the diamond been valued. Popes have proclaimed its virtues. Musical comedies have sung its praises. Only the flawless diamond, the Hindus pointed out, has the power to heal. Pope Clement VII stated that the greatest curative potency dwelt in the powdered diamond. In the eighteenth century, the French maintained—to the smiling acquiescence of the feminine kind—that the diamond possesses talismanic virtue only when given as a gift; a purchased diamond held no luck for the purchaser. This symbolism blent with the meaning of the ring to make the diamond the first formal gift to the loved woman upon betrothal. As the seal of an engagement, a solitaire is more effective than the old “writ” or quill-penned bond; it symbolizes at once a bond and an indestructible union of power and beauty. There is in this gem, though it is not always the most costly of precious stones, the strongest appeal to a woman, and she is fortunate indeed whose claim to the diamond is a birthright. A diamond in a jewel adorning another beauty sets unrest in a woman’s heart, until she too is asparkle. The diamond is a sign of love; it confers loveliness, or at least it imposes pride. It is the ambition of every woman—and it should be the fortune of everyone Aprilborn—to possess a flawless diamond. After the shower Brightens the hour, Flowers lift on the stem. Raindrop sparkles Till evening darkles: Diamond is the gem. _May: Emerald_ Who first beholds the light of day In Spring’s sweet flowery month of May And wears an emerald all her life, Will be a loved and happy wife. May is the month when meadows and woods put on their richest garb of green. May is the month of the emerald. The ancients said that the gem was the captured glow of the firefly.