FIRST STEPS IN A DIFFICULT ART
E
XPERTS are
notoriously jealous of their trade secrets. Never from one of my
pearl-doctor acquaintances did I receive any practical instruction in
their art. Everyone— and I did not hesitate to ask—refused to disclose
anything about their methods, and they even guarded with the utmost
secrecy such special tools as they had themselves fashioned for their
work.
Every
neophyte in pearl-surgery, therefore, must presumably come by his
knowledge in the difficult school of trial-and-error alone. There is no
testimony of knowledge, no past-master willing to transmit his wisdom
to posterity.
I
Suppose I was like everyone else in that my own first efforts at
pearl-surgery were crude and uninstructed in the extreme. But I made
them. My first attempt of all was in Northwest Australia. Among a mixed
lot of pearls I had bought from a fisherman, there was a fairly large
piece, rather irregular in shape, but of good color and luster. It had,
however, one great defect—an intensely black spot on its best side.
To
remove this spot I set to work with the small sharp blade of my
penknife. I whittled away gently for upwards of half an hour, at the
end of which time the pearl had nearly gone, but the black spot still
remained. I could not help being reminded of the letter a disappointed
client is said to have written to the vendor of a wart-cure. "Dear Sir,
After using your much-advertised cure for nearly three months, I can
only report that my nose has now entirely disappeared, but the wart is
still prominent. What are you going to do about it?"
History
does not relate what the vendor said. Undoubtedly his reply should have
been, "Try another bottle." That, at least, is what I did. I persevered
with the treatment, with the
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