At The Royal Palace In Vienna We Saw The Finest, Largest, And
Gaudiest Collection Of Crown Jewels Extant.
That guide of ours
seemed to think he had done his whole duty toward us and could
call it
A day and knock off when he led us up to the jewel
collections, where each case was surrounded by pop-eyed American
tourists taking on flesh at the sight of all those sparklers and
figuring up the grand total of their valuation in dollars, on the
basis of so many hundreds of carats at so many hundred dollars a
carat, until reason tottered on her throne - and did not have so
very far to totter, either.
The display or all those gems, however, did not especially excite
me. There were too many of them and they were too large. A blue
Kimberley in a hotel clerk's shirtfront or a pigeonblood ruby on
a faro dealer's little finger might hold my attention and win my
admiration; but where jewels are piled up in heaps like anthracite
in a coal bin they thrill me no more than the anthracite would.
A quart measure of diamonds of the average size of a big hailstone
does not make me think of diamonds but of hailstones. I could
remain as calm in their presence as I should in the presence of a
quart of cracked ice; in fact, calmer than I should remain in the
presence of a quart of cracked ice in Italy, say, where there is
not that much ice, cracked or otherwise.
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