"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

frame?"

"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr.
Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne
glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently
impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were
continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting
in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and
comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its
rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it
would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you,
you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a
second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it
would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become
patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a
feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that,
knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error,
they should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so
well selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. The
liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed
to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it
more wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or
pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and
always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat
stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their
souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young
again. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on the
table.

Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect
of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine
brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them