Beadle's Dime Novels No. 14 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

/ HISTORY OF THE NECKLACE. 17 be induced to wear it; and no bride of the de Veres but would have shuddered at having it presented to her. It was kept in a casket by itself,.and looked at asa curiosity. Its splendor and costliness was no temptation to the vanity of the tuir women who examined it; until Madeline Monteith, a bril- liant creature, full of spirit and bravery, being betrothed to a noble cavalier, avowed her intention of possessing herself of the necklace to add to the jewels of her trowsseau. It was a shame, she said, to let so superb an ornament languish in per- petual darkness, because of a foolish superstition; the bride who wore it last would have been thrown from her horse, if she had not chosen to wear the emeralds. As for herself, they became her, they were magnificent, and she would wear them. She had her way about it; and for a time she seemed to prosper; but she never left her chamber after the birth of a puny boy, and died in less than a year from her bridal day.. “Tt would weary you,” continued Mrs. Percy, “ to recount the history of the various women of our line who have perish- ed from accident or met with sudden death, after having had the temerity to wear the emerald necklace. It has been the tra- ditionary belief that Mortimer Monteith laid such a curse and ban upon his gift as can never be shaken off. Inspired with horror by mournful tragedies connected with it, it has several times been thrown away by some one or another of my an- cestors, yet it has never failed, sooner or later, to come to light, whether it were thrown into yawning chasms, into bosoms of deep lakes, into fires, or, as in this latest instance, into a voice- less well; and the finder has ever been as unfortunate as those to whom it has been presented. “Tt came, with a branch of the family, over the water about a hundred years ago. The vessel in which they sailed was wrecked on Absecom coast; but all of the passengers were saved, except one young girl, Anne de Vere, a lovely creature, _ the pride and hope of all, who being dragged to shore in the mad clasp of her father, was found to be drowned, that hateful necklace glimmering about her throat in the pale light of the stormy dawn. - “Of course, in this age of realities, of science, light,and knowledge generally, our faith in omens, bans, curses, and all traditionary legends, is not very strong; and my mother, who comiclisooks. conn —_