moderate price, or will you follow your fortune? The'
whole town is aware of your dilemma, and deeply
interested in your decision. Meanwhile, if you are a
gourmet of the emotions, you will gaze at your blister
by day, and dream about it by night. You will receive
visitors, you will listen to their comments, and you will
laugh disdainfully at the offers they make you. I f you
are wise you will prolong this golden period, and bask
for a season in the warm sun of fame.
But let us say that some day, before it is too late,
you sell it. Away goes the speculator, his heart in his
mouth, the beautiful iridescence in his hand. The
blister is cut open, and there emerges the pearl of the
season, or there emerges—nothing !,
Thus the flavour of romance lingers on in the air of
this pearling town. It is a little paradise of the Celestial,
for no Chinaman could desire more than the opportunity
it offers of making an ample income by the steady
pursuit of business, and of losing it in a sudden gamble.
The European here, with his many pumps and
schooners, accumulates much shell, and little pearl. For
the seas are wide, and schooners drift with wind and
tide. He cannot be everywhere at once. When he visits
one o f his boats at work, the diver becomes delicate^
develops a racking headache, and lies down. The
weary pearler sails; away to another boat. I hen the
diver recovers, and his boat drifts out of sight and
reach of interruption. When it is found ;again, and
the pearler comes on board, he finds laid out for him
a neat row of rifled shells. The jaws of oysters gape
500
quickly in the sun, and it takes no long time to slip
a finger, sensitive to pearls, along the lip of the open
bivalve.
The small capitalist, with his pump or two in his
own charge or in that of his wife; reaps a smaller harvest
of shells, but he gets his pearls. And so the white man
goes:, and the yellow man and the brown man stay and
work at a profit.
But let us enter the town, while the morning is
still fresh, and call upon some of its inhabitants.
Here is the house of the latest celebrity—the
man who has found the pearl worth 18,000 rupees-—a
Burman. Ascending the stairs at the side of the house,
we enter a large square room with many windows
facing the street. In the centre there is a round table,
with the open shell of the oyster in which this thing
of price was found displayed upon it. The walls are
hung with oleographs of catholic selection, of the
German Emperor, a Franco-Prussian battle, of an old
man in a frock coat being kissed by a ballet-girl.
Mats are spread upon the floor, and curtains conceal
the inner rooms.
The entire family appears, consisting of the old
father, a retired goldsmith, the old mother, the son
who found the pearl, and the son’s wife. They are
in the main humble- people, but no Burman is ever at
a loss for good manners, and the possession of this
great pearl imparts to all of them a new air of dignity.
The treasure is produced from a small ointment bottle
filled with pink cotton, and is deposited on the table.
•Soi