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398 THE DIAMOND
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Sometimes
common misunderstandings of trade terms lead writers and poets into
error. An instance occurs in Emerson's " Destiny." He says:
Whether your jewel be of pure water, A rose diamond or a white."
Many
suppose that the term " rose " as applied to the diamond, indicates the
color of the stone. Evidently the poet thought so. It refers, however,
to the cutting and may be any color. Nor is the " water " of a diamond
quite definite. As a trade term it was never universally used, but it
became a favorite with writers, probably as a poetical phrase and from
the knowledge that some tested the purity of a gem's color by dropping
it in water; the purer, so much the less observable was it. If quite
pure, it could not be distinguished from the water surrounding it, and
was therefore said to be of pure water. The term is now nearly obsolete.
Who
has not watched with keen enjoyment the lighting up of misty dewdrops
clinging to the grass blades of the meadow, or hanging tremulous upon
shrub and bush, when the sun climbs over the eastern hilltop and fills
the valley with cool sparks of purity?
Moore has indelibly fixed such a scene in his description of the maid in " Reuben and Rose ":
"
Rose, who was bright as the spirit of dawn, When with wand dropping
diamonds and silvery feet, It walks o'er the flowers of mountain and
lawn."
All the varied forms of play in which water is seen under the sun have sometime reminded a poet of the
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