"I have lost a precious jewel!" replied the unfortunate person, "the
like of which is not to be found among any prince's treasures.
While I possessed it, the contemplation of it was my sole and
sufficient happiness. No price should have purchased it of me; but
it has fallen from my bosom where I wore it in my careless
wanderings about the city."

After causing the stranger to describe the marks of his lost jewel,
the Intelligencer opened a drawer of the oaken cabinet which has
been mentioned as forming a part of the furniture of the room. Here
were deposited whatever articles had been picked up in the streets,
until the right owners should claim them. It was a strange and
heterogeneous collection. Not the least remarkable part of it was a
great number of wedding-rings, each one of which had been riveted
upon the finger with holy vows, and all the mystic potency that the
most solemn rites could attain, but had, nevertheless, proved too
slippery for the wearer's vigilance. The gold of some was worn
thin, betokening the attrition of years of wedlock; others,
glittering from the jeweller's shop, must have been lost within the
honeymoon. There were ivory tablets, the leaves scribbled over with
sentiments that had been the deepest truths of the writer's earlier
years, but which were now quite obliterated from his memory. So
scrupulously were articles preserved in this depository, that not
even withered flowers were rejected; white roses, and blush-roses,
and moss-roses, fit emblems of virgin purity and shamefacedness,
which bad been lost or flung away, and trampled into the pollution
of the streets; locks of hair,--the golden and the glossy dark,--the
long tresses of woman and the crisp curls of man, signified that
lovers were now and then so heedless of the faith intrusted to them