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Show WAIFS FROM OVER-SEA. Salvini had a singular experience recently at Suinosa in Italy. He took, under an assumed name, some lodgings in an out-of-the-way street, for the purpose of quietly studying a new play. The day after he move in he began to rehearse his part. The play was a tragic one, and some passages were exceptionally thundering. The landlord was out, and his wife and daughter became alarmed at the noise the new lodger was making. They listened at the door and heard him howling something to this effect: "Miserable coward! Thy hand is, then, strong enough only to plunge the steel into the bosom of an innocent victim! Thou hast not the courage to kill thyself. Wilt thou then, await the hatchet of the executioner?" The two women became terrified, rushed to the police-office, and in a few minutes the great tragedian was put in a straight-jacket and locked up as a lunatic. It took several hours, with the aid of the local magistrate and the local physician, to clear the matter up. THE largest diamond in the world is said to exist among the crown jewels of Portugal having been a gift to the present king from his uncle, the Emperor of Brazil, in whose dominions this magnificent gem was discovered. It is four times the size of the Koh-i-noor, and its value has been variously estimated at from fifteen million to sixty million dollars, its enormous size rendering it unique in the history of the great jewels of the world. It was found in a negro's hut where it had long served as a plaything for the children of the family. It was seen by chance one day by a slave who had worked for some years in the diamond mines of the country, and after due examination he pronounced the pretty stone to be a colossal diamond. The emperor sent a regiment of cavalry to escort the priceless jewel to his capital. Oddly enough no diamonds were ever found before or since the discovery of this unique specimen in the neighborhood of the spot from whence it came which was a small mountain streamlet flowing over a pebbly bed. The old negro who was its original possessor had taken a quantity of gravel from the bed of the brook to spread before his door, and the children, attracted by the translucency and regular form of the diamond, had picked it out of the mass to play with. It is of oval shape and of perfect water, but its abnormal size will of course prevent its ever being used for an ornament.-Home Journal. |