



Produced by David Widger






THE DIAMOND LENS

By Fitz-James O'brien




I

FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations
had been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than
ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my
inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me by drilling in a
disk of copper a small hole in which a drop of pure water was sustained
by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some
fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect
forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a
preternatural state of excitement.

Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to
me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to
me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency,
and ended by promising to send me one regularly constructed, immediately
on his return to the city. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes
that intervened between that promise and his departure.

Meantime, I was not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the
remotest resemblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon, and employed
in vain attempts to realize that instrument the theory of whose
construction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of
glass containing those oblate spheroidal knots familiarly known as
"bull's-eyes" were ruthlessly destroyed in the hope of obtaining lenses
of marvelous power. I even went so far as to extract the crystalline
humor from the eyes of fishes and animals, and endeavored to press
it into the microscopic service. I plead guilty to having stolen the
glasses from my Aunt Agatha's spectacles, with a dim idea of grinding
them into lenses of wondrous magnifying properties--in which attempt it
is scarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.

At last the promised instrument came. It was of that order known as
Field's simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteen dollars.
As far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus could not
have been selected. Accompanying it was a small treatise on the
microscope--its history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended then for
the first time the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The dull veil of
ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly to
roll away, and to lay bare a land of enchantments. I felt toward my
companions as the seer might feel toward the ordinary masses of men.
I held conversations with nature in a tongue which they could not
understand. I was in daily communication with living wonders such as
they never imagined in their wildest visions, I penetrated beyond the
external portal of things, and roamed through the sanctuaries. Where
they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window-glass,
I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common to
physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as
fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mould,
which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped
away from her jam-pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew,
enchanted gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage
and most astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these
microscopic forests hung strange fruits glittering with green and silver
and gold.

It was no scientific thirst that at this time filled my mind. It was the
pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been disclosed.
I talked of my solitary pleasures to none. Alone with my microscope, I
dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night, poring over the
marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like one who, having discovered
the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should
resolve to enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to mortal the secret
of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at this moment. I destined
myself to be a microscopist.

Of course, like every novice, I fancied myself a discoverer. I was
ignorant at the time of the thousands of acute intellects engaged in the
same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a thousand
times more powerful than mine. The names of Leeuwenhoek, Williamson,
Spencer, Ehrenberg, Schultz, Dujardin, Schact, and Schleiden were then
entirely unknown to me, or, if known, I