Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DIAMOND. When the coal in the grate warms us, the gem on our hand responds to its glow. One is the gift of the dim past to our necessities; the other represents the height of modern luxury. Yet both are chemically the same. These ancient buried forests which protect us from the cold are largely composed of carbon. Every breath we expel is full of carbon. It is an elemental substance without which we would die. Yet in its crystallized form, it is as rare as the diamond. In fact, it is the diamond. The diamond is pure carbon. All great things are simple: air, water, fire; sunset and moon- rise ; the night and the dawn; our five senses; birth and death. Diamond is the poem of the inorganic world: still, it is nothing but carbon; not another thing enters into its composition; while tourmaline, a bushel of which would not buy the Kohinoor, is infinitely complex. Though the composition of the diamond is absolutely simple, yet it defies explanation, it is the despair of science. No chemist can make one, no mineralogist can tell how it is made. Here even the learned must resort to generalities. Though heat and pressure and time have much to do with its crystalline form, what does that mean ? What is the magic that enables a dull substance once in a thousand years to blossom like the rose ? The stolid Boer boys played long with bright pebbles before the genius came and directed capital to buy the farm. Then the whole world bought. To us, here at home, it is a miracle. Yet as the diamond itself is the simplest of things, so great deeds are rooted in single instincts of the heart. The youth craves adventure, the adult a living, the financier a fortune, the slave his freedom, the explorer the realization of his dream, and all combined turn the world inside out: the Pole is f... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.