Diamonds at the Opera.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 5

Diamonds at the Opera.

Evkhy grand opera night afc the Metropolitan opera House it is a question which is the bettor worth seeing -the spectacle on the ftage, or the 9cene in the house* itself. Fashionable society, .there transfoims a theatre into a great retSeption-room. Wealth displays itself in cushioned, padded and filk-lintd boxes as casket jewel* are 1 shown in the stores. Beauty disports it-* self as flowers flaunt their colours in garden plots and va?es. Somebody has figured up that the pum o$ 1,900, 000,0U0d01.i8 posasesed by the men who own the grand tier of private boxes in the theatre, and somebody etae of the same inclination estimated that in the two rows} of boxes last Wednesday night 1,000, OOOdoL, worth of jewels was displayed by the ladies. That seems impossible until you come to think how easily a few thousand and tso9 of thousands multiplied again and agaft* scattered here, there, and everywhere foot up a million. A I,ooodol. diamond does notfc sag the lobe of a matron's ear. A 15\000dol*. necklace only sheds a tiny thread of light upon a lady's neck— and these are common possessions in this opera-house. They are* as common as gilt pins among the counter* girls in Sixth Avenue.

The following story is told of the revenge taken by a Nantucket ship master against a United States Consul who ww very rarely to be found in md office*, although upon his sign were the words* "in from tea to oae." The indignaht cftp«> tain, after trying to find the consul several days without success, took a print brash* and altered the official's sign, so that i% read, u ten. to one he is not in."