The Diamond Lens

FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations had beentoward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than ten years old, adistant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed asimple microscope for me by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole in which adrop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitiveapparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinctand imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imaginationto a preternatural state of excitement.Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to me allthat he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to me a few of thewonders which had been accomplished through its agency, and ended bypromising to send me one regularly constructed, immediately on his return tothe city. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes that intervened between thatpromise and his departure.