The Arizona champion., 1890-09-13
WOULD THEY DE WORM
An Attempt to Prove That Artificial GeIns
 Would Always Be Popular.

An Attempt to Prove That Artificial Gems
 Would Always Be Popular.
 The question is curious one, for it in- wolves good deal of human nature. It is the value of a precious stone wholly de- pendent upon it's rarity and the conse- quent proof it affords that its owner is possessed of wealth, or at all events, of wealth which he can afford to waste? That is nearly universal assumption, especially with those to whom wealth is itself an offense, and it has this sup port at least, that many 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 pre- cious stones, as compared to their bulk and utility, is no doubt due to their rarity and the consequent qualification to vanity which their possess. on affords, but their whole value does not consist in that The desire for them is pro- voked also by their inherent beauty, as of flowers gifted with an attribute of permanence and possibly also by that instinctive taste for shining things which has made dewdrops strike all races as exquisitely eautiful-nobody ever paid for dewdrop-and which, as many doctors know, rises in some men and women to a well marked kind of insanity. Many kleptomaniac can con trol themselves against their tempta- tion so long as the coveted article does not glitter. No possible case of manu- facture can make an eternal dewdrop other than beautiful or take away the ruby's gift of setting of flesh or dim the strange flash of the opal. so utterly unlike any thing else that nature has produced. (By the way, the reference to the opal may be mistake, for the beauty of that jewel, being the result of natures fail ure and not of her success, for she can 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 ever 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 therefore, if jewels became cheap, is that the rich would abandon them in their present form, which tends more and more to a costly simplicity-the Cfn haSn h,-aI 0f other ornamentS-and that whole poRu- 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 B rmingham jewelry that would die, not the real article. Tho rich, moreover, would defend them- selves by calling art to their aid, and we should see not only wonderful im- provement in goldsmiths' work now of- ten devoid of even a pretense of art feeling, but sudden and splendid re- vival of the art of the gem engraver, now 80 nearly dead. The ruby collar of the Marchioness would be almost as costly as ever, as a triumph of design and workmanship-even soc alists could hardly make the first designer in Europe use his gift with willing heart for 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 pense.-Spectator.