The Opal Ring, being the Christmas number of All the
Year Round. The stories woven together in this little tale are united by a some- what novel expedient,—the assumption that a clairvoyante, by taking the opal ring into her band during the mesmeric trance, could follow the fortunes of all the people to whom it had successively belonged. In connection with this assumption, there runs the popular superstition that an opal ring is a cause, or at all events a sign, of calamity to the person who possesses it. The central story on which the others are hung is feebly executed. But one or two of the pendants, especially the Russian story of the first possessor of the ring, the Egyptian story of its second owner, and the Paris story of its fourth recipient, are told with a good deal of spirit and graphic power. But the belief in the superstition itself runs up to the very end. Could not All the Year Round, in narrating "the breaking of the spell," have taught its readers to believe that the spell was not in the opal ring at all, but only in the superstitious fancies of those who believed in such a spell ?
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