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You're built to win it. Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep.

Find us at snewscast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Fantastic Bows of microscopic forests. Tonight, as we are beginning the month that ends with Halloween, we'll read the first have of the Diamond Lens, a short story by Fitz James O'Brien, first published in 1858. Every October, snoozecast features our spooky story series, tales with a spectral or uncanny quality meant to set a certain mood without keeping you awake. This marks our seventh year of our Halloween special, and we're beginning with something more curious than chilling. O'Brien's tale is steeped in the oddity of early scientific obsession, centering on microscopy, the study of the unseen through magnification. In the author's hands, the microscope becomes not just a tool of science, but a gateway to another world, learning the line between discovery and delirium. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. 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 in experience, constructed a simple microscope for me by drilling in a disc of copper, a small hole in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some 50 diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a 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.

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 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 pains of glass containing those oblate, serodial knots, known as bull's eyes, were ruthlessly destroyed in the hope of obtaining lenses of marvelous power. 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 simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteen dollars. As far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus could not have been selected. The company eating it was a small treatise on the microscope. Its history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended then for the first time the Arabian night's entertainments, the dull veil of ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly to roll away and to lay bare a land of enchantments. I felt toward my companions as the seer might field toward the ordinary masses of men. I held conversations with nature in a tongue which they could not understand. I was in daily communication with living wonders, such as they never imagined in their wildest visions. I penetrated beyond the external portal of things and roamed through the sanctuaries, where they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window glass. I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common to physical life and and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mold which my mother could housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped away from her jam pots, there abode for me under the name of mildew enchanted gardens filled with bells and avenues of the densest foliage and most astonishing verger. While from the fantastic bows of these microscopic forests, sang strange fruits glittering with green and silver and gold. It was no scientific thirst that at this time filled my mind. It was the pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been disclosed. I talked of my solitary pleasures to none alone with my microscope. I dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night, pouring over the marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like the one who, having discovered the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should resolve to enjoy it in solitude,

and never betray to mortal the secret of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at this moment.

I destined myself to be a microscopic. Of course, like every novice, I fancied myself a discoverer. I was ignorant at the time of the thousands of acute intellectuals engaged in the same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a thousand times more powerful in mind. I was ignorant of their patient and wonderful researchers. In every specimen which I placed beneath my instrument, I believed that I discovered wonders of which the world was as yet ignorant. I remember well the thrill of delight and admiration that shot through me the first time that I discovered the common-wheel animal-cule, expanding and contracting its flexible spokes, and seemingly rotating through the water. Alas, as I grew older and obtained some works treating of my favorite study, I found that I was only on the threshold of a science to the investigation of which some of the greatest men of the age were devoting their lives and intellects. As I grew up, my parents who saw but little likelihood of anything practical resulting from the examination of bits of moss and drops of water through a brass tube and a piece of glass were anxious that I should choose a profession. It was their desire that I should enter the counting house of my uncle, Ethan Blake, a prosperous merchant who carried on business in New York. This suggestion I decisively combated. I had no taste for trade. I should only make a failure. In short, I refused to become emergent. But it was necessary for me to select some pursuit. My parents were estate New England people who insisted on the necessity of labor. And therefore, although, thanks to the request of my poor aunt Agatha, I should, on coming of age, inherit a small fortune sufficient to place me above want. It was decided that, instead of waiting for this, I should act the nobler part and employ the intervening years in rendering myself independent. After much thought I complied with the wishes of my family and selected a profession. I determined to study medicine at the New York Academy. This disposition of my future suited me. A removal from my relatives would enable me to dispose of my time as I pleased without fear of detection. As long as I paid my academy fees, I might shirk attending lectures if I choose. And as I never had the remotest intention of standing in examination, There was no danger of my being plucked. Besides, a metropolis was the place for me. There I could obtain excellent instruments, the newest publications, and a conversation with others of pursuits kindred with my own. In short, all things necessary to ensure a profitable devotion of my life to my beloved science. I had an abundance of money, few desires that were not pounded 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. My first step was to find suitable apartments. After a couple of days' search, I took a pretty unfernished second floor on 4th Avenue. Sitting room, bedroom, and a smaller room I meant for a laboratory. I fitted the room simply but neatly, and set about adorning the temple of my worship. I visited Pike, the celebrated optician, reviewed his splendid collection, Fields compound, Bingham's, Spencer's, Nash's binocular, and finally chose Spencer's truney and microscope for its many improvements in comparative freedom from tremor. I bought every accessory I fancied. Draw tubes, micrometers, camera lucida, lever stage, condensers, polarizing apparatus, aquatic boxes, fishing tubes, and a host of other implements, most of which, as I afterward discovered, were useless to me without years of practice. The optician looked at me downfully. Perhaps he thought me a madman. I suppose I was. Every great genius is mad upon his subject. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced. Mad or not, I applied myself with a zeal few students equal. I had everything to learn, patience, analytical powers, a steady hand, an untiring eye, and subtle manipulation. For a long while half, my apparatus lay idle on the shelves, and those instruments whose use I grasped in theory availed little, until practice gave me delicacy of handling. Yet such was my perseverance that within a year I became both in theory and practice, and accomplished microscopist. In period, I examined specimens of everything and made small discoveries. I overturned Ernberg's claim that Volvox globator was an animal, proving his monad's phases and vegetable cells incapable of true conjugation. I explained the rotation of plant cells and hairs by silery attraction despite critics who blamed optical illusion. Still, I was horribly dissatisfied. At every step I met the imperfections of my instruments. Like many microscopists, I supplied their defects with my imagination. Construing depths my lenses could not reach. A lay awake, inventing imaginary microscopes of a measurable power, and cursed the imperfect mediums I was forced to use. Convinced that a single simple lens of vast but perfect power was possible, I turned to constructive microscopy. Another year passed in experiments on glass, gems, flints, crystals, and artificial alloys. I made as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes and learned much of glass making, but ended where I began near despair. My parents noted my neglect of medical studies. I had not attended a lecture since arriving in the city, and the expenses of my pursuit embarrassed me. One day, while experimenting on a small diamond, a stone that from its great refracting power had long engrossed me, Jewel Simon, a young Frenchmen who lived above me and sometimes visited, burst in in a state of excitement. He raved of having seen the celebrated Madame Volpice, a spirit medium, and after a rapid change of manner begged me to come see a policy vase, he had just bought. I followed him mechanically, yet the mention of the medium set my thoughts on a new track. What if by communication with organisms subtler than my own, I might leap at once to the goal which labor alone perhaps could never attain. While buying the vase from Simon, I found myself arranging a visit to the madam. Two evenings after this, thanks to an arrangement by letter and the promise of an ample fee, I found the madam awaiting me at her residence alone. She was a coarse featured woman, with keen and rather cruel, dark eyes, and an exceedingly sensual expression under her jaw. She received me in perfect silence and an apartment on the ground floor, very sparsely furnished. In the center of the room, close to where Mrs. Volpi sat, there was a common round mahogany table. If I had come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman could not have looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no attempt to inspire the visitor with all. Everything bore a simple and practical aspect. This intercourse with the spiritual world was evidently as familiar in occupation with Mrs. Volpes as eating her dinner or riding in an omnibus. to come for a communication, Mr. Lindley, said the medium in a dry business-like tone of voice. By appointment, yes, what sort of communication do you want? I've written one. Yes, I wish for a written one. From any particular. Yes, have you ever known this spirit on this earth? Never. He died long before I was born. I wish merely to obtain from him some information which he ought to be able to give better than any other. Will you see to yourself at the table, Mr. Lentley, said the medium, and place your hands upon it. I obeyed. Mrs. Volpe is being seated opposite to me with her hands also on the table. We remained thus for about a minute and a half when a violent succession of wraps came on the table, on the back of my chair, on the floor immediately under my feet, and even on the window-pains. Mrs. Volpe smiled compositely. They are strong tonight. She remarked, you are fortunate. She then continued, "...Will the spirits communicate with this gentleman?" Vigor is affirmative. "...Will the particular spirit eat desires to speak with communicate?" A very confused rapping followed this question. "...I know what they mean," said Mrs. Volpees, addressing herself to me. They wish you to write down the name of the particular spirit that you desire to converse with. Is that so? She added, speaking to her invisible guests, after her moment's pause, her hands seemed to be seized with a violent tremor shaking so forcibly that the table vibrated. She said that a spirit had seized her hand, and would write. I handed her some sheets of paper that were on the table and a pencil. After a few moments had elapsed, she handed me the paper on which I found written, in a large, uncultivated hand, the words. He is not here, but he has been sent for. A pause of a minute or so ensued during which Mrs. Volpees remained perfectly silent. But the wraps continued at regular intervals. When the short period I mentioned had elapsed, the hand of the medium was again seized with its convulsive tremor, and she wrote, under this strange influence, a few words on the paper, which she handed to me. They were as follows. I am here. Question me. Lavinok. I was astounded. The name was identical with that I had written beneath the table, and carefully kept concealed. Neither was it at all probable that an uncultivated woman like Mrs. Volpey should know even the name of the greatest father of my cross-copies. It may have been biology, but this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip still concealing it from Mrs. Vulpie's a series of questions which to avoid tediousness I shall place with the responses in the order in which they occurred. 1. Can the microscope be brought to perfection? Spirit? Yes. Two. Am I destined to accomplish this great task? Spirit. You are. Three. I wish to know how to proceed to attain this end for the love which you bear to science. Help me, Spirit. A diamond of 140 carats submitted to electromagnetic currents for a long period will experience a rearrangement of its atoms, and from that stone you will form the universal lens. 4. We'll great discoveries result from the use of such a lens? Spirit, so great that all that has gone before is as nothing. 5. But the refractive power of the diamond is so immense that the image will be formed within the lens. How is that difficulty to be surmounted? Spirit. Pierce the lens through its axis, and the difficulty is avoided. The image will be formed in the pierced space, which will itself serve as a tube to look through. Now I am called. Good night. I cannot at all describe the effect that these extraordinary communications had upon me. I felt completely bewildered. No biological theory could account for the discovery of the lens. The medium might, by means of biological rapport with my mind, have gone so far as to read my questions and reply to them coherently. But biology could not enable her to discover that magnetic currents would so alter the crystals of the diamond as to remedy its previous defects and admit of its being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have passed through my head, it is true, but if so I had forgotten it. In my excited condition of mind, there was no course left but to become a convert, and it was in a state of the most painful, nervous exaltation that I left the medium's house that evening. She accompanied me to the door, hoping that I was satisfied. The wraps followed us as we went through the hall, sounding out on the flooring, and even through the door, I hastily expressed my satisfaction, and escaped hurriedly into the cool night air. I walked home with but one thought possessing me, have to obtain a diamond of the immense size required. My entire means multiplied a hundred times over would have been inadequate to its purchase. Besides, such stones are rare and become historical. I could find such only in the regalia of Eastern or European monarchs. Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n y