The Diamond Lens
By FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales April1929. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
This story, published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1858, was the firstof the great weird-scientific stories. It won immediate popularity forthe author—a popularity which continued unbroken until his death inthe Civil War.
1. The Bending of the Twig
From a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinationshad been towards microscopic investigations. When I was not more thanten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonishmy inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drillingin a disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water wassustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus,magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinctand imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up myimagination to a preternatural state of excitement.
Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explainedto me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, relatedto me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through itsagency, 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 theremotest resemblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon, and employedin vain attempts to realize that instrument, the theory of whoseconstruction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of glasscontaining those oblate spheroidal knots familiarly known as "bull'seyes" were ruthlessly destroyed, in the hope of obtaining lenses ofmarvelous power. I even went so far as to extract the crystalline humorfrom the eyes of fishes and animals, and endeavored to press it intothe microscopic service. I plead guilty to having stolen the glassesfrom my Aunt Agatha's spectacles, with a dim idea of grinding theminto lenses of wondrous magnifying properties—in which attempt it isscarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.
At last the promised instrument came. It was of that order knownas Field's simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteendollars. As far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus couldnot have been selected. Accompanying it was a small treatise on themicroscope—its history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended thenfor the first time the Arabian Nights Entertainments. The dull veilof ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly toroll away, and to lay bare a land of enchantments. I felt towards mycompanions as the seer might feel towards the ordinary masses of men.I held conversations with nature in a tongue which they could notunderstand. I was in daily communication with living wonders, such asthey never imagined in their wildest visions. I penetrated beyond theexternal portal of things, and roamed through the sanctuaries. Wherethey beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window-glass,I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common tophysical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles asfierce and protr