I had an
abundance of money, few desires that were not bounded by my illuminating
mirror on one side and my object-glass on the other; what, therefore,
was to prevent my becoming an illustrious investigator of the veiled
worlds? It was with the most buoyant hope that I left my New England
home and established myself in New York.

II

My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I
obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very
pretty second floor, unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom,
and a smaller apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I
furnished my lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted
all my energies to the adornment of the temple of my worship. I visited
Pike, the celebrated optician, and passed in review his splendid
collection of microscopes--Field's Compound, Hingham's, Spencer's,
Nachet's Binocular (that founded on the principles of the stereoscope),
and at length fixed upon that form known as Spencer's Trunnion
Microscope, as combining the greatest number of improvements with an
almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I purchased
every possible accessory--draw-tubes, micrometers, a _camera lucida_,
lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators, prisms,
parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic boxes,
fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would have
been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I
afterward discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me. It
takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The
optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these valuable purchases.
He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific
celebrity or a madman. I think he was inclined to the latter belief. I
suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which
he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and called a
lunatic.

Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific
students have ever equaled. I had everything to learn relative to the
delicate study upon which I had embarked--a study involving the most
earnest patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest hand,
the most untiring eye, the most refined and subtle manipulation.

For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of
my laboratory, which was now most amply furnis