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BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864): The greatest of American novelists. His principal works are “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Marble Faun,” and “The House of the Seven Gables.” Hawthorne also wrote many sketches and tales, and several volumes of stories for children. The best of these are “Grandfather’s Chair,” tales from New England history, and “Tanglewood Tales” and “The Wonder Book,” two volumes of stories from Greek mythology.
“A Rill from the Town Pump” is one of the sketches in the volume entitled “TwiceTold Tales.”
(Stwo principal streets
, the Town Pump talking through its nose.)
Noon by the north clock! Noon by the east! High noon, too, by these hot sunbeams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it! And among all the town officers chosen atMarch meeting, where is he that sustains for a single year the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed upon the town pump?
The title of “town treasurer” is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire department and one of the physicians to theboard of health. As a keeper of the peace, all water drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town clerk bypromulgating
public notices when they are posted on my front.
To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of thesundry
in my plainest accents and at the very tip-top of my voice.
Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen! Walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the unadulterated ale of Father Adam—better than strong beer, or wine of any price; here it is by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves!
It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they come.—A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff and away again, so as to keep yourselves in a nice cool sweat.—You, my friend, will need another cupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day, and like a wise man have passed by the taverns and stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat without and fire within, you would have been burned to a cinder or melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jellyfish.
Who next?—Oh, my little friend, you are let loose from school and come hither to scrub your blooming face and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the town pump? Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child! put down the cup and yield your place to this elderly gentleman who treads so tenderly over the paving stones that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine-cellars.— Well, well, sir, no harm done, I hope? Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasanttitillation
of the gout, it is all one to the town pump. This thirsty dog with his red tongue lolling out does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout?
Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends, and while my spout has a moment’s leisure I will delight the town with a few historical reminiscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn earth in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and clear and deemed as precious as liquid diamonds. The Indianfire wate
burst upon the red men and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains.
Higginson
here wet his palm and laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years itwas the watering-place, and, as it were, the washbowl, of the vicinity, whither all decent folks resorted to purify their visages and gaze at them afterward — at least, the pretty maidens did — in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath days, whenever a babe was to be baptized, the sexton filled his basin here and placed it on the communion table of the humble meetinghouse, which partly covered the site of yonder brick one.
Thus one generation after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, thefountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides and cart loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed aturbid
stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the course of time a town pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring; and when the first decayed, another took its place, and then another, and still another, till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my iron goblet. Drink and be refreshed. The water is as pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red saga more beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick buildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as this wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold water—too little valued since your fathers’ days—be recognized by all.
The Town Pump
\3
Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence and spout forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe it in with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking vessel. An ox is your true toper.
One o’clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance with a large stone pitcher for me to fill Mayshe draw a husband while drawing her water, as Rachel did of old! —Hold out your vessel, my dear! There it is, full to the brim;so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher as you go, and forget not in a glass of my own liquor to drink “success to the town pump.”