not be excelled. Small pearls are also used, or tiny brilliant rubies.85
In
a brightly-written tale for children, the style of which is rather
pronouncedly " up-to-date," a sapphire signet is an important element
of the story. Long years ago, in the island of Bermuda, in the
Revolutionary period, this heirloom was surreptitiously secured by a
young girl, to whom it was destined on her coming of age, but who was
childishly impatient to gain possession of it before the time. The
little heroine comes to New York and under the stress of a weird Tory
plot, hides away her signet in the false bottom of an old trunk, stored
away in the garret of the Charlton Street house in which she has lived.
Here, more than a century later, a group of bright children find a
diary of the long-dead heroine written in cipher. One of them is clever
enough to unravel this mystery and they finally succeed in finding the
hidden signet.86
Two
characteristic Oriental seal rings are owned by Miss Joan St. Michael
Peters and Miss Katherine Harrower, both of New York City. The gems
with which they are set were bought by the Rev. Dr. John P. Peters from
an Arab, in the Kut-el-Amara region, where the British invaders of
Mesopotamia underwent such a disastrous defeat. They are engraved
carnelians. Miss Peters' ring offers the design of a winged figure. The
excellence of the cutting might seem to indicate that it was done some
time between 500 B.C. and the beginning of our era, but a later date
has been assigned to it by Prof. A. V. Williams Jackson of Columbia
85 George Frederick Kunz, " The Etiquette of Gems," SaturÂday Evening Post, June 27, 1908, p. 5.
86 Augusta Huiell Seaman, "The Sapphire Signet," New York, The Century Co., 1916.
