ODDS AND ENDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2194, 26 October 1920, Page 4

ODDS AND ENDS.

EMERALD MOST COSTLY GEM.

The emerald now ranks ms the rarest and most costly gem in the international market' for precious stones, and emeralds in London are bringing as high as 3,500 dollars a carat. For centuries the emerald Ims held first place among gems; The ancients thought it had occult powers, particularly for healing diseases of the eye. Nero, when he sat, in his marble grandstand and watched gladiators fight lions in thq arena, wore an eyeglass with an emerald lens. Pliny, who wrote a Roman encyclopaedia two thousand years ago, told of a statue of a lion in Cypress, It had emeralds for eyes, so brilliant that they scared the fish. The wearing of most gems signifies little more than what scientists call the “pecuniary honorific” —the desire to display ability to pay. But the emerald as a coveted stone is an emblem of civilisation. Emeralds are so notoriously imperfect that the common expression, “as (lawless as an emerald” is the last possible word in compliment. The rivalry for perfect emeralds reflects man’s incessant desire to attain perfection.

MUST NOT AVAIL. Shortly before the recent refusal of the Korean school children to learn Japanese a national wailing day.had been set. It was to bo rv day of public mourning all over the country for the loss of Korea’s lib* erly. In all cities the public was to gather at noon at stated places and sharp at the stroke of 12 begin the traditional Korean funeral wail—< Ai-go, Ai-go, Ai-go, Ai-go, Ai-go-rising always higher and higher, Caster and faster, to a crescendo that tightens the hearts of those who hear it. But the Japanese intelligence service obtained a copy of (he instructions. The day before Ihc appointed day of lamentation troops were brought out into the main streets, machine-guns were conspicuously posted, police searched houses for suspected leaders, and at the last moment the demonstration was called off, COMPANIONSHIP IN DEATH.

Supers)ilions die hard; but it may surprise many to know that the barbaric custom of.slaughtering a deceased chieftain’s retinue that they might accompany him beyond the grave is still occasionally followed in London, though only in a minor degree (says a Daily Chronicle, writer). Mr Fdward Lovett, in a recent lecture, declared that he knew of throe instances in recent years where a pel bird had been killed and placed in a child’s coffin. In another case which had come under his notice, an old maid's cat had been killed and buried in the back garden at the moment of its mistress’ funeral. Air Lovett linked these humble examples with the ceremony of leading an officer's charger in his funeral procession, and the custom still prevalent among gipsies of dc-stroying-a chief’s caravan after his death.