" Besides, a metropolis was the place
for me. There I could obtain excellent instruments, the newest
publications, intimacy with men of pursuits kindred to my own,--in
short, all things necessary to insure a profitable devotion of my
life to my beloved science. 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 hopes that I left my New England home and
established myself in New York.
II.
THE LONGING OF A MAN OF SCIENCE.
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, Higham'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.
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