The Diamond Lens Author:Fitz James O'Brien Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TOMMATOO. THE HOUSE BY THE STONE-YARD. A Fairy that had lost the power of vanishing, and was obliged to remain ever present, doing continual good; a c... more »ricket on the hearth, chirping through heat and cold ; an animated amulet, sovereign against misfortune; a Santa Glaus, without the wrinkles, but young and beautiful, choosing the darkest moments to leap right into one's heart, and drop there the prettiest moral playthings to gladden and make gay, — such, in my humble opinion, was Tommatoo. As yet I do not ask the reader to agree with me; for over him I have this one great advantage, — I know who Tommatoo is. When, however, he makes her acquaintance also, hears her twitter round the house, beholds the . flash of her large dusky-gray eyes, is wonder-struck at the marvellous twinkling of her ever-dancing little feet, he can take his choice of all the personifications with which I began this story, and I feel convinced that he will select the most beautiful to enrobe Tommatoo. There is (or rather was, six years ago, when the incidents to be narrated took place, —but I shall narrate them in the present tense) a vast flat of hjnd stretching along the New York shore of the North River, close to where Thirty-Second Street vanishes into a swamp, inwhich unborn avenues are supposed to be slowly maturing. Although yet in embryo, they are already christened, and city engineers have imaginative ground-plans hanging on their walls, where Twelfth and Thirteenth Avenues are boldly represented, with as much minuteness as Fifth or Sixth. Should, however, any sanguine person be led by those delusive maps to seek for such mythical thoroughfares, Ponce de Leon, after his pursuit of the Fountain of Youth, would not offer a more striking example of ill-success. On reaching the spot where ...« less