The pearls are collected for the trade by a score or more of buyers, who visit the fisheries at intervals and purchase of the individual fishermen by personal dickering and bargaining. The buyers endeavor to keep informed of all choice pearls discovered, and when an especially valuable find is reported each one endeavors to have the first chance to secure it. The principal local centers of the pearling industry and marketing are Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin; McGregor, Clinton, and Muscatine, Iowa; Newport, Black Rock, and Bald Knob, Arkansas; Clinton, Carthage, and Smithville, Tennessee; St. Francisville, Illinois; and Vincennes and Leavenworth, Indiana. However, a large number of the pearls from American rivers are consigned by the finders to well-known gem dealers, the owners depending for fair treatment on the integrity and high standing of these experts. An interesting story is told of the pearl and the accompanying shell in which it was found, which was sent to a New York dealer by a poor woman. The price she received pleased her immensely; and in writing her appreciation, she added that she was especially gratified at receiving so good a price because it enabled her to send her boy to school. The dealer sent another check as a gift, and a few days before the next Thanksgiving Day a thirty-five-pound turkey was received by the four-score-year-old jeweler as an evidence of the mother’s gratitude. [Illustration: NECKLACE OF FRESH-WATER PEARLS Paris Exposition, 1900 ] The outbreak of pearl hunting in various parts of the country is frequently chronicled by the newspapers. These despatches are much alike, usually telling how some fisherman discovered a beautiful pearl which he sold to some responsible jeweler for an amount varying from $100 to $2000. The despatches generally state further that the effect of the find has been remarkable; the whole region is seized with the fever, and into the rivers and creeks swarm the hunters of both sexes, of all ages, and from all classes of the community. Factory-men leave their mills, farmers their crops, and merchants their stores, and with the members of their families join in searching for the gems. The mussels are secured by whatever means is most convenient. If valuable finds continue, thousands and thousands of mollusks are destroyed in the search, and when the efforts begin to prove futile the excitement subsides almost as quickly as it began. In very many localities the industry has run the whole gamut of the feverish excitement of its beginning, the humor and romance of its existence, and the pathos of its ending.