THE DIAMOND LENS

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.