Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-09-11
WOULD THEY sE woRN9
Aa Attempt to Prove That Artificial Gen,
 Would Always Be Popular.

Aa Attempt to Prove That Artificial Genaa
 Would Always He Popular.
 The question is Q curious one, for 1t in- uOlves a good deal of human nature. It ls the value of a precious stone wholly de- pendent upon It's rarity and the conse- quent proof it affords that it's owner is possessed of wealth, or at all events, of wealth which he can afford to waste? That is Q nearly universal assumption, especially with those to whom wealth is itself an offense, and 1t has this sup port at least that many Q woman who would despise pretense thinks, if she actually has the diamonds at her bankers she may wear their copies in paste. We venture, nevertheless, to question its entire correctness
 The enormous market price of gre ' cious stones, as compared to their h. | and utility, is no doubt due to tl'.' rarity and the consequent gratificat., to vanity which their possession affolGs but their whole value does not cons. in that The desire for them is r" voked also by their inherent beauty. of flowers gifted with an attribute permanence and possibly also by instinctive taste for shining thi'~" which has made dewdrops strike
 races as exquisitely beautiful .]h~' ever paid for dewdrop-and which. many doctors know, rises in some n'r. and women to a we'll marked kin4 insanity. Many ykleptomaniacsc can c trol themselves against their tenn, tion so long as the coveted article d. not glitter. No possible case of ma7; facture can make an eternal dewd' ether than beautiful or take away luby's gift of setting of flesh or | the strange flash of the opal.
 utterly unlike any thing else q nature has produced. (By the w., the reference to the opal m be a mistake, for the beauty of tn; jewel, being the result of nature's fai ure and not of her success, for she ca:. hardly have intended those hiatuses which yield the iridescence-may be wholly beyond even the ablest chemists art).
 The taste for jewels would be univer- sal if only the people eyer thought Of them as possibly procurable and if they sank heavily in price they would be universally worn, as, indeed, the cheap CT jewels and the limitations are al ready. What would happen, we believe. 1uSESAOAOp II JS"CAo OCS0hAS Shu6HS 4S that the rich would abandon them in their present form, which tends more and more to a costly simplicity-the stones being. as it wero, barred of all other ornaments-and that whole popu. lations would take them up, thus con- stituting them once more great article of commerce. Every woman above the poorest would use the stones for orna- ment It is Birmingham jewelry that would die, not the real article. The rich, moreover, would defend them selves by calling art to their aid, and we should see not only a wonderful im- provement in goldsmiths' work, now of ten devoid of even a pretense of art feeling, burt sudden and splendid re- vival of the art of the gem engraver, now so nearly dcad. The ruby collar of the Marchioness would be almost as costly as ever, as a triumph of design and workmanship-even socialists could hardly make the first designer in Europe use his gift with a willing heart for a pound a week-while diamonds would become with the women of the people what pearls used to be in some parts of Italy, ornaments with which it was almost indecorous, certainly quite bad form, on high occasions, to dis Dense. Spectator.