Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1893 — A JEWELED TURTLE. [ARTICLE]

A JEWELED TURTLE.

The Pet of a Millionaire Has Its Shell Studded with Diamonds. In my journeyings over this fair land I have run across some very strange fads indulged in by people who have plenty of money and who have used it in the gratification ol fancies that have not benefited the world in the least, writes a Buffalo correspondent of the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat. I have met stamp collectors and pugdog fanciers; men with a mania for accumulating walking canes; once I knew a man who had spent hundreds of dollars in getting up a collection of historical hats covering two centuries; but a jeweler at Port Lee told me about a millionaire of that vicinity who should certainly have the highest pointed-crown hat in my friend’s collection. About a month ago this millionaire walked into a jeweler’s place with a common land turtle or tortoise, which he had captured in the woods near by, laid it on the counter and gave a most astounding order, remarking, “I’ll give the people something to talk about.” And he certainly did, for he ordered the shell of the turtle to be incrusted on its outer side with a heavy layer of gold on Etruscan finish. In the center of its horny back he ordered an emerald to he placed. At various points in the gold he had inserted small but pure diamonds. A massive silver chain was attached to the slfell. At his magnificent country seat the erratic millionaire had constructed on his lawn a reproduction fn rocks, bushes and ferns of the spot from which the tortoise had been taken. In this place, which the rich man calls a “turtlearmin,” the highly decorated reptile is permitted to roam the length of his silver chain, It looks as though the financial stringency had not struck this man of means, and his neighbors are now waiting for him to have the horns of his cattle gold plated, his horses shod with silver and diamond drops placed in the ears of his fancy pigs.