Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1877 — The Earrings of the Cochin China Girls. [ARTICLE]

The Earrings of the Cochin China Girls.

But human nature is weak, especially feminine human nature, in the adornment question, and vanity runs to the ears of the Cochin girls. Their earrings are wonderful to behold. They cannot, indeed, be rightly called earrings. They are more like the bongs of a hogshead. At the tenderestyears the little children have great gashes cut in the lobes ot their ears, tor* toise shell plugs inserted to stretch them, and as they grow older the plugs are enlarged till, at maturity, they appear with things like snuff-b Oxes, the size of a moderate pair of fists, almost always of tortoise shell, sometimes of ivory, plain tor everyday wear, but for grand occasions elaborately inlaid with gold and silver, and on every grand occasion the ear plugs are of solid gold weighing a pound or more apiece, and carved in the most distracting way. I think I've remarked before that the Cochin jewelers are greatly skilled in their trade, especially repousse work, which is now getting so fashionable here, and they expend their very best energies on the earrings for the Cochin belles. It is wondersul how they work, with tiny forges and tiny blowpipes blown by tiny boys, enormous horn goggles and little hammers and dammer, or soft cost composition to form a basis, for their punching operation, and the purest gold and silver, and little bellows worked by their toes. Fingers, toes, nose and eyes snap and glint as they rapidly ply their task. Four annhs, or twelve cents, which is the regular cooly or day’s wages for these hereditary skilled mechanscs (from this cooly, or day’s hire, comes the term “coolies” for day laborers so hired, seems a trifling sum indeed for the fairy-like results of their artistic labor.— Bengal Cor. Commercial Bulletin. “Bill” is the nicknamefor Will. This may account for the close relationship of a lawyer's bill to a man's 'will.