had never seen in him before.

And as we began to climb the hill together in silence I saw that the
stars were clear overhead and there was no mist, that the trees stood
motionless without wind, and that beyond us on the summit of the hills
there were lights dancing to and fro, appearing and disappearing like
the inflection of stars in water.

II

THE DIAMOND LENS

Fitz-James O'Brien

I

THE BENDING OF THE TWIG

From a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations
had been towards 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 humour 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