The legend is a gruesome one recited by Sir Walter Scott in his poem _Anne of Geierstein_. With mystic shadowings and eerie intimations, it unfolds the story of the wearer of an opal, who shuns pious references and avoids all contact with holy water. One night a watchful person delivers an aspersion of the holy water, and the next day, where the opal-wearer had slept, there rested only a pile of ashes. Only the unthinking, however, and the wood-knockers shrink from the beautiful opal because of such old wives’ tales. The stouthearted Empress Victoria of England, for example, was extremely fond of opals, and bestowed upon many of her friends jewels in which opals were set. There are no records of sudden deaths at her court. In 1925, at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, Queen Mary, passing a booth tended by a miner’s wife, bought a black opal. It is a stone worthy of queenly favor. Far from being a sinister omen, the opal is a stone of good fortune. It is especially sought, indeed, by fortunetellers. Some of them gaze upon it to induce that trance-like state in which the future spreads before one like a great mirage; better than a crystal ball are the incessant interplay of colors and the endless iridescence of the stone. An opal on a ring increasingly gives the wearer a view of the future. Unlike the man who considered augurs boring, I confess to a keen interest in what makes them tick, or click. Usually their powers are linked to a special stone, which, like as not, is an opal. The famous European telepath, Eric Jan Hanussen, for example, believed implicitly in the prognostic power of the stone. “Anyone could do what I do,” he once said to me, “if he had my opal.” Certainly the opal is auspicious for the October-born. Light the fire; roast the crab. Though she dodge the while you grab, Kiss the maid still sober. Hard the day’s work you have done, Who would grudge an evening’s fun?— Opal in October. _November: Topaz_ Who first comes to this world below With drear November’s fog and snow, Should prize the topaz’ amber hue, Emblem of friends and lovers true. When nights are growing long and tempers short, when one seeks the consolations of philosophy (or memories of Florida) to store against the cold, November is the month of the topaz. This beautiful stone is at its best when honey-blond. The topaz was a holy stone, signifying Saint Matthew. Two of the popes, Clement VI and Gregory II, possessed a topaz of great beauty, to which were attributed great healing powers. This stone gave the faithful a further impetus to make the pilgrimage to Rome from the far corners of the world so that their health might return to them with the blessing and the touch of this hallowed stone.