PEARLS IN LITERATURE
sacrifice
of self to leave a heritage of beauty; nor dreamed of the silent acres
under turbulent waters where the gem, one day to adorn the neck of
beauty or the diadem of royalty, is reared. What play for imagination
lies between the birth of this creation of one of the humblest of
Earth's creatures, and the high placement to which it rises as soon as
it is discovered.
There
are deserted wastes of sand and water under torrid skies, populated
almost momentarily with teeming multitudes whose jargon fills the
former silences with a world wide medley of tongues. As in a dream, the
tremulous air is stirred by the struggling movement of naked slaves,
turbanned orientals, men from all lands of the Occident, the moving
throng weaving constantly new patterns from the variegated colors and
fantastic costumes of living threads. And everywhere, beneath the
prosaic motion of labor and trading, is the quiver of hope, the
excitement of the gambler; the poetry of human passions, unseen, but
felt.
There
are in unfrequented seas, where some lonely atoll draws its circle
round a still lagoon, treasures greater than its cargo and the stately
359
