QUEEN VICTORIA'S COSTLY MISTAKE.
QUEEN VICTORIA is said to have a great fondness for pearls. She has taken care that all her daughters shall have fine pearl necklaces. One of her first purchases, after the birth of each, has been two or three pearls, and every year until their marriage she has added a pearl or two to her stock until the necklace she required was ready. In this quiet, economical way she has been enabled to make up almost a complete rope of pearls for each of the princesses, and those who have seen the necklaces at court say that the daughters are, as far as pearls go, well supplied with jewelry. Thereby hangs a tale. Some years ago her majesty bought from a well-known London jeweler three very valuable pearls, the united cost of which was not far short of five hundred pounds. A little while after the purchase had been made, the merchant was surprised to receive a letter from a lady at court, which read: “The queen wishes very much to know whether pearls will burn.” The reply to this somewhat tartly scientific inquiry was an assurance that if her majesty wished to oxygenize pearls for her amusement, she would find that they would burn in an ordinary fire. The rejoinder brought the secret to light. The queen had placed the pearls on her writing desk, wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. As she was writing one morning, she used the tissue paper to wipe her pen, and then threw it into the fire. The pearls, all unobserved, went with it. The ashes of the grate were searched for them in vain. They had been destroyed so utterly as to leave no trace. The queen with her own hand had cast three splendid jewels, worth more than the average income of her middle-class subjects, into the blaze.—Ladies' Home Journal.