Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
is hardly surprising if there were a vague feeling toward this really
excellent man and scholar as toward one having the evil eye, whom
people dread to meet and fear to offend.
But here is another individual with another experience. Gems are his
passion, and for years he has sacrificed to it. He is only an old
clerk on a moderate salary, but no misadventure has ever disturbed his
plans, and year by year he has added some treasure to his hoard till
it is unique as it is precious. There are rings of bishops and kings;
jeweled baubles from Egyptian tombs and gold-wrought ornaments of the
Montezumas; a cameo where a single face with its shadows makes six
laughing and six weeping outlines; a cat's-eye quartz to which the
one the king of Siam has is perhaps the mate; diamonds and pearls,
amethysts and topazes, beryls and opals, single emeralds of rare
beauty and doublets of great size, rubies of the real pigeon's blood,
and sapphires whose heart is blue as the bluest midnight, but whose
angles refract a radiance red as fire; chains of carved beads; seals,
intaglios,--to almost all of them some legend attaching.
Here passes a person very different from either of these--a tall and
martial figure, a filibustero in every clime, hunted with blood-hounds
in the Spanish sierras when Don Carlos needed him, floating naked
on bladders down the Danube, with despatches in his mouth, when
the Hungarians were sore pressed. Here goes a jolly, happy man, who
contentedly lets title and coronet go by across the sea while he
practices law in the Patent Office. Here on the avenue go up and
down all these people, and countless others with stories as pointed,
whether it be such a story as that of Captain Suter, whose treacherous
servant bartered all the gold of California for a single drink, or of
this black man who to-day is free and yesterday was a slave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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