Short Story: 'The Diamond Lens' by Fitz-James O'Brien, Part 1

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Now, the Special English program, AMERICAN STORIES.

Our story today is called "The Diamond Lens. " It was written by Fitz-James O'Brien. We will tell the story in two parts. Now, here is Maurice Joyce with part one of "The Diamond Lens."

STORYTELLER:

When I was ten years old, one of my older cousins gave me a microscope. The first time I looked through its magic lens, the clouds that surrounded my daily life rolled away. I saw a universe of tiny living creatures in a drop of water. Day after day, night after night, I studied life under my microscope.

The fungus that spoiled my mother's jam was, for me, a land of magic gardens. I would put one of those spots of green mold under my microscope and see beautiful forests, where strange silver and golden fruit hung from the branches of tiny trees. I felt as if I had discovered another Garden of Eden.

Although I didn't tell anyone about my secret world, I decided to spend my life studying the microscope.

My parents had other plans for me. When I was nearly twenty years old, they insisted that I learn a profession even though we were a rich family, and I really didn't have to work at all. I decided to study medicine in New York.

This city was far away from my family, so I could spend my time as I pleased. As long as I paid my medical school fees every year, my family would never know I wasn't attending any classes. In New York, I would be able to buy excellent microscopes and meet scientists from all over the world. I would have plenty of money and plenty of time to spend on my dream. I left home with high hopes.

Two days after I arrived in New York, I found a place to live. It was large enough for me to use one of the rooms as my laboratory. I filled this room with expensive scientific equipment that I did not know how to use. But by the end of my first year in the city, I had become an expert with the microscope. I also had become more and more unhappy.

The lens in my expensive microscope was still not strong enough to answer my questions about life. I imagined there were still secrets in Nature that the limited power of my equipment prevented me from knowing.

I lay awake nights, wishing to find the perfect lens – an instrument of great magnifying power. Such a lens would permit me to see life in the smallest parts of its development. I was sure that a powerful lens like that could be built. And I spent my second year in New York trying to create it.

I experimented with every kind of material. I tried simple glass, crystal and even precious stones. But I always found myself back where I started.

My parents were angry at the lack of progress in my medical studies. I had not gone to one class since arriving in New York. Also, I had spent a lot of money on my experiments.

One day, while I was working in my laboratory, Jules Simon knocked at my door. He lived in the apartment just above mine. I knew he loved jewelry, expensive clothing and good living. There was something mysterious about him, too. He always had something to sell: a painting, a rare statue, an expensive pair of lamps.

I never understood why Simon did this. He didn't seem to need the money. He had many friends among the best families of New York.

Simon was very excited as he came into my laboratory. "O my dear fellow!" he gasped. "I have just seen the most amazing thing in the world!"

He told me he had gone to visit a woman who had strange, magical powers. She could speak to the dead and read the minds of the living. To test her, Simon had written some questions about himself on a piece of paper. The woman, Madame Vulpes, had answered all of the questions correctly.

Hearing about the woman gave me an idea. Perhaps she would be able to help me discover the secret of the perfect lens. Two days later, I went to her house.

Madame Vulpes was an ugly woman with sharp, cruel eyes. She didn't say a word to me when she opened the door, but took me right into her living room. We sat down at a large round table, and she spoke. "What do you want from me?"

"I want to speak to a person who died many years before I was born."

"Put your hands on the table."

We sat there for several minutes. The room grew darker and darker. But Madame Vulpes did not turn on any lights. I began to feel a little silly. Then I felt a series of violent knocks. They shook the table, the back of my chair, the floor under my feet and even the windows.

Madam Vulpes smiled. "They are very strong tonight. You are lucky. They want you to write down the name of the spirit you wish to talk to."

I tore a piece of paper out of my notebook and wrote down a name. I didn't show it to Madame Vulpes.

After a moment, Madame Vulpes' hand began to shake so hard the table moved. She said a spirit was now holding her hand and would write me a message.

I gave her paper and a pencil. She wrote something and gave the paper to me. The message read: "I am here. Question me." I was signed "Leeuwenhoek."

I couldn't believe my eyes. The name was the same one I had written on my piece of paper. I was sure that an ignorant woman like Madame Vulpes would not know who Leeuwenhoek was. Why would she know the name of the man who invented the microscope?

Quickly, I wrote a question on another piece of paper. "How can I create the perfect lens?" Leeuwenhoek wrote back: "Find a diamond of one hundred and forty carats. Give it a strong electrical charge. The electricity will change the diamond's atoms. From that stone you can form the perfect lens."

I left Madame Vulpes' house in a state of painful excitement. Where would I find a diamond that large? All my family's money could not buy a diamond like that. And even if I had enough money, I knew that such diamonds are very difficult to find.

When I came home, I saw a light in Simon's window. I climbed the stairs to his apartment and went in without knocking. Simon's back was toward me as he bent over a lamp. He looked as if he were carefully studying a small object in his hands. As soon as he heard me enter, he put the object in his pocket. His face became red, and he seemed very nervous.

"What are you looking at?" I asked. Simon didn't answer me. Instead, he laughed nervously and told me to sit down. I couldn't wait to tell him my news.

"Simon, I have just come from Madame Vulpes. She gave me some important information that will help me find the perfect lens. If only I could find a diamond that weighs one hundred forty carats!"

My words seemed to change Simon into a wild animal. He rushed to a small table and grabbed a long, thin knife. "No!" he shouted. "You won't get my treasure! I'll die before I give it to you!"

"My dear Simon," I said, "I don't know what you are talking about. I went to Madame Vulpes to ask her for help with a scientific problem. She told me I needed an enormous diamond. You could not possible own a diamond that large. If you did, you would be very rich. And you wouldn't be living here."

He stared at me for a second. And then he laughed and apologized.

"Simon," I suggested, "let us drink some wine and forget all this. I have two bottles downstairs in my apartment. What do you think?"

"I like your idea," he said.

I brought the wine to his apartment, and we began to drink. By the time we had finished the first bottle, Simon was very sleepy and very drunk. I felt as calm as ever…for I believed that I knew Simon's secret.

Announcer: You have just heard part one of the "The Diamond Lens" by Fitz-James O'Brien. It was adapted for Special English by Dona de Sanctis. Your storyteller was Maurice Joyce.

Listen again next week for the final part of our story told in Special English on the Voice of America. This is Shirley Griffith.

Go to Part 2.

James Stewart, 1908-1997: He Starred in Some of the Best-loved American Movies

Source: www.voanews.com

I'm Shirley Griffith. And I'm Rich Kleinfeldt with the VOA Special English program,PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today, we tell the story of actor James Stewart. His movies were loved by people around the world.

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James Maitland Stewart was born in the small eastern town of Indiana, Pennsylvania in nineteen-oh-eight. His father had a hardware store that had been owned by the Stewart family since the eighteen fifties.

During high school, Jimmy played football, and acted in plays. He also learned to play the accordion. He took the accordion with him to college at Princeton University, where he joined a musical group called the Triangle Club. Through the club, he met students interested in performing.

Jimmy studied architecture at Princeton. He graduated in nineteen thirty-two. Just before graduation, a friend asked him to join an acting group for the summer. Jimmy agreed because he thought it would be a good way to meet girls.

Jimmy Stewart said later that if his friend had not asked him to join the summer theater group, he would never have been an actor. He would have returned home to help his father in the store. Instead, he met a number of good young actors while performing that summer in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. One was Henry Fonda, who would be a friend throughout his life.

Jimmy Stewart performed in Broadway plays in New York City until the Metro Goldwyn Mayer movie company gave him an acting job. He moved to California in nineteen thirty-five. He acted in more than twenty-four movies over the next six years. He appeared in all kinds of movies: funny ones, sad ones and musical ones. He even sang a song in the movie "Born to Dance. " It is called "Easy to Love":

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The movie that made Jimmy Stewart a real Hollywood star was "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. " It was released in nineteen thirty-nine.

JIMMY STEWART:

"It's a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once. And that's why it seemed like a pretty good idea to me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy basements for a couple of months out of the year and build their bodies and minds for a man-sized job, because those boys are gonna be behind these desks some of these days."

The next year, he won an Academy Award for best actor in "The Philadelphia Story. "

The night he won the Academy Award, his father called him on the telephone from Pennsylvania. "I hear you won some kind of an award," Alex Stewart said. "You had better bring it back here and we'll put it in the window of the store. " Jimmy Stewart's Oscar statue stayed in the window of Stewart's hardware store in Indiana, Pennsylvania for twenty-five years.

Jimmy Stewart was already an established and successful actor when World War Two started in Europe. Early in nineteen forty-one, he tried to join the Army. But he was rejected because he did not weigh enough. So he started eating high fat foods and tried again. This time, he was accepted for military service.

The Army put him in the Air Corps because he already knew how to pilot a plane. In nineteen forty-three, he went to Europe as commander of an Air Force bomber group. He flew more than twenty combat missions, leading as many as one thousand planes at a time over Germany. He returned to the United States in nineteen forty-five as a colonel.

Jimmy Stewart won several military awards for excellent performance under very dangerous conditions. He remained in the Air Force Reserve after the war. In nineteen fifty-nine he was made a general. Each year, he took part in two weeks of active military duty. In nineteen sixty-six, he requested combat duty and took part in a bombing strike over Vietnam.

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After World War Two, Jimmy Stewart returned to Hollywood. He found that his new movies were not as popular as his earlier ones had been. One example was "It's a Wonderful Life." It was released in nineteen forty-six. The movie was not a success at first. But over time it has become one of the best loved American movies.

JIMMY STEWART:

"Can't you understand what's happening here? Don't you see what's happening? Potter isn't selling. Potter's buying! And why? Because we're panicky and he's not. That's why. He's pickin' up some bargain. Now, we can get through this thing     all right. We've, we've got to stick together, though. We've got to have faith in each other."

Jimmy Stewart said in later years that "It's a Wonderful Life" was the movie he liked best. It tells the story of a small town man who feels the world would have been better if he had never lived. An angel comes to him and shows him that this is not true. The movie celebrated values like loyalty and love of family.

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Jimmy Stewart decided to play other kinds of parts after what seemed to be the failure of "It's a Wonderful Life. " He was a reporter in "Call Northside Seven Seven Seven" the next year. He was a suspicious head of a school in the murder movie "Rope" in nineteen forty-eight. In the nineteen fifties, he appeared in many western movies such as "Winchester Seventy-Three" and "Broken Arrow. "

Jimmy Stewart enjoyed his greatest popularity in the nineteen fifties. In nineteen fifty-nine, he won awards from the Venice Film Festival, the New York film critics and the Film Daily writers. The awards honored him for his performance in the movie "Anatomy of a Murder. " He was the defense attorney for an army officer accused of murder. He was nominated for an Academy Award for that movie. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for playing a man who has an imaginary rabbit friend, in the movie "Harvey. "

Jimmy Stewart is well known for his work with the famous director of mystery movies, Alfred Hitchcock. These movies included "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "Rear Window" and "Vertigo. " Mr. Stewart also played real heroes in several movies. He was band leader Glenn Miller in "The Glenn Miller Story. " And he was pilot Charles Lindbergh in "The Spirit of Saint Louis. "

Jimmy Stewart appeared in fewer films in the nineteen sixties. He was a senator in the Old West in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."  In "The Shootist" he was a doctor in a small town. He also appeared on television. But his two television shows were not successful.

Mr. Stewart began experiencing health problems as he aged. He had heart disease, skin cancer and hearing loss. But he found time to travel. And he published a book of poetry in nineteen eighty-nine. It sold more than three hundred thousand copies.

In nineteen eighty, Jimmy Stewart was honored by the American Film Institute with an award for his lifetime work. Three years later, he received a Kennedy Center Honor for his work. And in nineteen eighty-five, President Ronald Reagan gave him the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

People who knew Jimmy Stewart did not praise him just because he was a good actor and a war hero. They said Jimmy Stewart was one of the nicest people they had ever met. He was a man who lived by the values he was taught as a child in that small town in Pennsylvania.

He went back to Indiana, Pennsylvania, in nineteen eighty-three, for his seventieth birthday. The town held a huge celebration in his honor. President Reagan sent planes to fly over the court house. Parades were held. And a statue of him was placed in the town center.

Jimmy Stewart married Gloria Hatrick McLean in nineteen forty-nine. She had two sons from an earlier marriage. Jimmy raised them as his own. One of the boys was killed during the Vietnam War while serving in the Marine Corps. Jimmy and Gloria also had twin daughters.

Gloria Stewart died in nineteen ninety-four. Friends said Jimmy Stewart was never the same after that. They said he withdrew into his house because he did not know what to do without her. His health got worse. He died on July the second, nineteen ninety-seven.

Jimmy Stewart's daughter Kelly Harcourt spoke at his funeral in Beverly Hills. She reminded mourners of the message of her father's favorite movie, "It's a Wonderful Life:" No man is poor who has friends.

"Here's to our father," she said, "the richest man in town."

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This Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach and produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Rich Kleinfeldt. And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week at this time for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on VOA.