THE BOOK OF DIAMONDS
do.
In still another sense, it is an investment, for it is productive of
larger returns of pleasure than most things. It will continue to pay
interest in that way after a hundred fashions have come and gone.
Americans
spend many millions of dollars for diamonds every year. They buy
three-fourths of all the finest stones taken annually from the great
South African mines. Each year they purchase from 75,000,000 to
100,000,000 dollars worth of diamonds, over a quarter of a million each
day. They have bought so many that they have grown difficult to please
and will not buy anything but the best. The average American
stenographer wears a finer diamond in her engagement ring than any
possessed by the bejeweled royal ladies of Henry VIII's court. This is
not because the rough diamonds recovered from South Africa mines today
are so much better in quality than those found centuries ago in India
and not so long ago in Brazil, but because the method of cutting them
has improved enormously.
In
Europe great diamonds are a badge of caste. When a man puts them on his
wife he means to say we intend to belong to the aristocracy. Sometimes
he succeeds; sometimes he does not. It is generally a question of
money. If he has money enough, aristocracy scrutinizes his balance
sheet and admits him.
Before
1848 but few diamonds were imported into the United States. With the
increase of wealth caused by the discovery of gold in California a
taste for rich jewels developed, and a demand for diamonds arose which
has been increasing ever since. In the ten years succeeding 1849 the
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