Читать книгу The History and Poetry of Finger-rings онлайн

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We are inclined to add in this section a circumstance connected with a ring as it appeared in a respectable English periodical. Fact, here, beats fiction:

“Many years ago a lady sent her servant, a young man about twenty years of age, and a native of that part of the country where his mistress resided, to the neighboring town with a ring, which required some alteration, to be delivered into the hands of a jeweller. The young man went the shortest way across the fields; and coming to a little wooden bridge that crossed a small stream, he leant against the rail, and took the ring out of its case to look at it. While doing so, it slipped out of his hand, and fell into the water. In vain he searched for it, even till it grew dark. He thought it fell into the hollow of a stump of a tree under water, but he could not find it. The time taken in the search was so long, that he feared to return and tell his story, thinking it incredible, and that he should be even suspected of having gone into evil company and gamed it away or sold it. In this fear he determined never to return—left wages and clothes, and fairly ran away. This seemingly great misfortune was the making of him. His intermediate history I know not; but this, that after many years’ absence, either in the East or West Indies, he returned with a very considerable fortune. He now wished to clear himself with his old mistress; ascertained that she was living; purchased a diamond ring of considerable value, which he determined to present in person, and clear his character, by telling his tale, to which the credit of his present position might testify. He took the coach to the town of——, and from thence set out to walk the distance of a few miles. He found, I should tell you, on alighting, a gentleman who resided in the neighborhood, who was bound for the adjacent village. They walked together, and in conversation, this former servant, now a gentleman, with graceful manners and agreeable address, communicated the circumstance that made him leave the country abruptly many years before. As he was telling this, they came to the very wooden bridge. ‘There,’ said he; ‘it was just here that I dropped the ring; and there is the very bit of old tree into a hole of which it fell—just there.’ At the same time he put down the point of his umbrella into the hole of the knot in the tree, and drawing it up, to the astonishment of both, found the very ring on the ferrule of the umbrella.”