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_ "_HAVE_ you noticed Miss Harvey's diamonds?" said a friend,
directing my attention, as she spoke, to a young lady who stood at
the lower end of the room. I looked towards Miss Harvey, and as I
did so, my eyes received the sparkle of her gems.
"Brilliant as dew-drops in the morning sunbeams," I remarked.
"Only less brilliant," was my friend's response to this. "Only less
brilliant. Nothing holds the sunlight in its bosom so perfectly as a
drop of dew.--Next, the diamond. I am told that the pin, now
flashing back the light, as it rises and falls with the swell and
subsidence of her bosom, cost just one thousand dollars. The public,
you know, are very apt to find out the money-value of fine jewelry."
"Miss Harvey is beautiful," said I, "and could afford to depend less
on the foreign aid of ornament."
"If she had dazzled us with that splendid pin alone," returned my
friend, "we might never have been tempted to look beneath the jewel,
far down into the wearer's heart. But, diamond earrings, and a
diamond bracelet, added--we know their value to be just twelve
hundred dollars; the public is specially inquisitive--suggest some
weakness or perversion of feeling, and we become eagle-eyed. But for
the blaze of light with which Miss Harvey has surrounded herself, I,
for one, should not have been led to observe her closely. There is
no object in nature which has not its own peculiar signification;
which does not correspond to some quality, affection, or attribute
of the mind. This is true of gems; and it is but natural, that we
should look for those qualities in the wearer of them to which the
gems correspond."
I admitted the proposition, and my friend went on.
"Gold is the most precious of all metals, and it must, therefore,
correspond to the most precious attribute, or quality of the mind.
What is that attribute?--and what is that quality?"
"Love," said I, after a pause, "Love is the most precious attribute
of the mind--goodness the highest quality."
"Then, it is no mere fancy to say that gold corresponds to love, or
goodness. It is pure, and ductile, and warm in color, like love;
while silver is harder, and white and shining, like truth. Gold and
silver in nature are, then, as goodness and truth in the human soul.
In one we find the riches of this world, in the other divine riches.
And if gold and silver correspond to precious things of the mind, so
must brilliant jewels. The diamond! How wonderful is its affection
for light--taking in the rays eagerly, dissolving them, and sending
them forth again to gladden the eyes in rich prismatic beauty! And
to what mental quality must the diamond correspond? As it loves the
sun's rays, in which are heat and light--must it not correspond to
the affection of things good and true?--heat being of love, and
light of truth or wisdom? The wearer of diamonds, then, should have
in her heart the heavenly affection to which they correspond. She
should be loving and wise."
"It will not do to make an estimate in this way," said I. "The
measure is too exacting."
"I will admit that. But we cannot help thinking of the quality when
we look upon its sign. With a beautiful face, when first seen, do we
not always associate a beautiful soul? And when a lady adorns
herself with the most beautiful and costly things in nature, how can
we help looking, to see whether they correspond to things in her
mind! For one, I cannot; and so, almost involuntarily, I keep
turning my eyes upon Miss Harvey, and looking for signs of her
quality."
"And how do you read the lady?" I inquired.
My friend shook his head.
"The observation is not favorable."
"Not favorable," he replied. "No, not favorable. She thinks of her
jewels--she is vain of them."
"The temptation is great," I said.
"The fact of so loading herself with costly jewels, is in itself
indicative of vanity--"
A third party joining us at this moment, we dropped the subject of
Miss Harvey. But, enough had been said to make me observe her
closely during the evening.
The opening line of Moore's charming lyric,
"Rich and rare were the gems she wore,"
kept chiming in my thoughts, whenever I glanced towards her, and saw
the glitter of her diamonds. Yet, past the gems my vision now went,
and I searched the fair girl's countenance for the sparkle of other
and richer jewels. Did I find them? We shall see.
"Helen," I heard a lady say to Miss Harvey, "is not that Mary
Gardiner?"
"I believe so," was her indifferent answer.
"Have you spoken to her this evening?"
"No, aunt."
"Why?"
"Mary Gardiner and I were never very congenial. We have not been
thrown together for some time; and now, I do not care to renew the
acquaintance."
I obtained a single glance of the young lady's face. It was proud
and haughty in expression, and her eyes had in them a cold glitter
that awoke in me a feeling of repulsion.
"I wish you were congenial," the lady said, speaking partly to
herself.
"We are not, aunt," was Miss Harvey's reply; and she assumed the air
of one who felt herself far superior to another with whom she had
been brought into comparison.
"The gems do not correspond, I fear," said I to myself, as I moved
to another part of the room. "But who is Miss Gardiner?"
In the next moment, I was introduced to the young lady whose name
was in my thought. The face into which I looked was of that fine
oval which always pleases the eye, even where the countenance itself
does not light up well with the changes of thought. But, in this
case, a pair of calm, deep, living eyes, and lips of shape most
exquisitely delicate and feminine--giving warrant of a beautiful
soul--caused the face of Miss Gardiner to hold the vision as by a
spell. Low and very musical was her voice, and there was a
discrimination in her words, that lifted whatever she said above the
common-place, even though the subjects were of the hour.
I do not remember how long it was after my introduction to Miss
Gardiner, before I discovered that her only ornament was a small,
exquisitely cut cameo breast-pin, set in a circlet of pearls. There
was no obtrusive glitter about this. It lay more like an emblem than
a jewel against her bosom. It never drew your attention from her
face, nor dimmed, by contrast, the radiance of her soul-lit eyes. I
was charmed, from the beginning, with this young lady. Her thoughts
were real gems, rich and rare, and when she spoke there was the
flash of diamonds in her sentences; not the flash of mere brilliant
sayings, like the gleaming of a polished sword, but of living
truths, that lit up with their own pure radiance every mind that
received them.
Two or three times during the evening, Miss Harvey, radiant in her
diamonds--they cost twenty-two hundred dollars--the price would
intrude itself--and Miss Gardiner, almost guiltless of foreign
ornament, were thrown into immediate contact. But Miss Gardiner was
not recognized by the haughty wearer of gems. It was the old farce
of pretence, seeking, by borrowed attractions, to outshine the
imperishable radiance of truth. I looked on, and read the lesson her
conduct gave, and wondered that any were deceived into even a
transient admiration. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," but
they had in them no significance as applied to the wearer. It was
Miss Gardiner who had the real gems, beautiful as charity, and pure
as eternal truth; and she wore them with a simple grace, that
charmed every beholder who had eyes clear enough from earthy dust
and smoke to see them.
I never meet Miss Harvey, that I do not think of the pure and
heavenly things of the mind to which diamonds correspond, nor
without seeing some new evidence that she wears no priceless jewels
in her soul. _
Read next: CHAPTER IV. NOT AS A CHILD.
Read previous: CHAPTER II. IS HE A CHRISTIAN?
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