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

cents, with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying
the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the
polar icebergs.

As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror
courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the
friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her
face close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle
or crow's foot had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snow
had so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap could be
safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a
sort of dancing step to the table.

"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another
glass!"

"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant
doctor; "see! I have already filled the glasses."

There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful
water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the
surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so
nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mild
and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike
on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a
high-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a gray
dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time,
whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company.
Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they
were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage.

But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot
through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age,
with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was
remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had
joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and
without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery
of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their
prospects. They felt like new-created beings in a new-created
universe.

"We are young! We are young!" they cried exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all.
They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the
exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of
their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of
which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at
their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped