ened
to attempt major operations on distinguished patients. Let him but
succeed a few times and his reputation is made. He may by his craft lay
the foundation of a pearl-merchant's fortune and incidentally of his
own. He will never lack commissions while his hand remains lucky. I
say lucky advisedly. For pearl-doctoring is a great gamble at any time,
and they do not talk in the trade about a pearl-doctor's skill or
discernment, but about his lucky hand. If he begins to register a few
important failures, his clients think that luck has deserted him, and
they fade away.
The
ordinary professional scraper, therefore, has not a free hand. He is
constrained both by the limits his clients set upon their risk and by
his own fear of having a failure which may destroy his whole reputation.
Amateur
pearl-scrapers, on the other hand, who are entirely recruited from
pearl-merchants, provide the supreme artists of pearl-doctoring because
the only limit they have to consider is their own bank balance; and
they are, besides, working on their own pearls. Not that all merchants
are scrapers or many of them proficient ones. But when they are good,
they are usually first-rate. The pearl-merchant who doctors his own
pearls is as a rule thoroughly infatuated by the composite nature of
his hobby, consisting as it does of equal parts of skill and the
wildest gambling. Every pearl to him is a "case." By dint of constant
practice he not only perfects his technique, but develops a flair which
guides him in the selection of suitable material. If he operates on a
large scale in the commercial sense, the law of averages will probably
favor him.
The
profession of pearl-doctor is probably almost as exclusive as that of
wireless announcer. During fifty years in the trade, in four
continents, I have heard of perhaps fifty— professionals, bien entendu. I
suppose there would not be above a couple of hundred in the world. As
for the amateurs, it is impossible to compute them. But the number of
those who have achieved real reputation is very small. I know of only
twenty-two.
There was a mission-priest in Broome, who was an excel-
