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THE PEARL
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' pearls.
From that time until now, writers have used pearls to symbolize purity,
innocence and the highest type of feminine beauty. To say that a
woman's teeth were like pearls has been the poets' favorite adulation,
and the discovery and sale of great pearls has been deemed of
sufficient importance by travellers and historians to record them.
Much
of the literature of pearls is founded on the statements of Pliny
regarding them: many, if not most, of the absurd beliefs as to their
origin and superstitions concerning them, may be traced to the same
source; and though these ancient errors have been repeatedly exposed by
later scientists and naturalists the poetic absurdities of the
industrious Roman compiler, gathered from contemporaneous writers and
tradition are current to-day, for they appeal more to the child-like
human love of the indefinite wonderful than the exact statements of
research, though the latter are really more marvellous.
Though jewels are regarded by many as baubles and of little account among the great commercial interests of the world, they have
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