flow of jewels, the barbaric splendors literally heaped upon Oriental magnificence within touch before us. One hardly knows the ruby, its glorious tones, its true uses and possibilities, until he has had some such feast of rubies in an Indian temple, and the taste there acquired is little satisfied afterward with the glassy, regular polyhedrons of the West. That deep, clear, warm red ruby, the concentration of all heat and gorgeous light, the glowing, burning stone of the tropics, is India's own, its most typical, tropical gem. It became hard to believe, though, that rubies were rare and precious when, after all seen elsewhere, Chidambram's Brahmans laid plates and sheets of rubies—dozens, hundreds, thousands of them—before us. One could almost think they came like buttons on a haberdasher's card, and that one bought them by the gross or great gross as required, or by dry measure perhaps—by heaped-up pints and overflowing quarts.
For nearly two hours we handled the collars and crowns and ornaments passed out to us, until we were well surfeited with splendors, until pear-shaped pearls in rains and fringes could excite no more surprise, until big tallow-drop emeralds were the common thing, and star sapphires had to be of thumb's-end size to command any praise. Ropes of necklaces made of overlapping gold pieces clanged in dead weight on the table; the famous parrot cut from a single emerald was produced with cheers, and broad manacle-bracelets, set with ancient stones recut in European facetings, closed the list. The lid of the last chest was slammed down, the Brah-
