n' off onder my personal notice, that shakes my
convictions on that p'int. Thar's a broke-down sport--this yere's long
ago while I'm briefly sojournin' in Socorro--who's got a opal, an' he
one day puts it in hock with a kyard sharp for a small stake. The
kyard gent says he ain't alarmed none by these charges made of opals
bein' bad luck. It's a ring, an' he sticks it on his little finger.
Two days later he goes broke ag'in four jacks.

"'This terrifies him; he begins to believe in the evil innocences of
opals. He presents the jewelry to a bar-keep, who puts it up, since
his game limits itse'f to sellin' licker an', him bein' plenty careful
not to drink none himse'f, his contracted destinies don't offer no
field for opals an' their malign effects. In less time than a week,
however, his wife leaves him; an' also that drink-shop wherein he
officiates is blown down by a high wind.

"'That bar-keep emerges from the rooms of his domestic hopes an' the
desolation of that gin mill, an' endows a lady of his acquaintance with
this opal ornament. It ain't twenty-four hours when she cuts loose an'
weds a Mexican.

"'Which by this time, excitement is runnin' high, an' you-all couldn't
have found that citizen in Socorro with a search warrant who declines
to believe in opals bein' bad luck. On the hocks of these catastrophes
it's the common notion that nobody better own that opal; an' said
malev'lent stone in the dooal capac'ty of a cur'osity an' a warnin' is
put in the seegyar case at the Early Rose s'loon. The first day it's
thar, a jeweller sharp come in for his daily drinks--he runs the
jewelry store of that meetropolis an' knows about diamonds an' sim'lar
jimcracks same as Peets does about drugs--an' he considers this
talisman, scrootinisin' it a heap clost. "Do you-all believe in the
bad luck of opals?" asks a pard who's with him. "This thing ain't no
opal," says the jeweller sharp, lookin' up; "it's glass."

"'An' so it is: that baleful gewgaw has been sailin' onder a alias; it
ain't no opal more'n a Colt's cartridge is a poker chip. An', of
course, it's plain the divers an' several disasters, from the loss of
that kyard gent's bank-roll down to the Mexican nuptials of the
ill-advised lady to whom I alloodes, can't be laid to its charge. The
whole racket shocks an' shakes me to that degree,' concloods Enright,
'that to-day I ain't got no settled views on opals', none whatever.'

"'Jest the same, I thinks it's o