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."