Stories of Ourselves

Stories of Ourselves Volume 2

Volume 2
Stories of Ourselves Volume 2 is a set text for Cambridge IGCSE®, O Level and
International AS & A Level Literature in English courses. Each short story in this
collection has its own unique voice and point of view. They may differ in form,
genre, style, tone and origin, but all have been chosen because of their
wide appeal.

Written in English by authors from different countries and cultures, the anthology

Stories of Ourselves
incudes works by Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Christina Rossetti, Janet Frame,
Jhumpa Lahiri, Romesh Gunesekera, Segun Afolabi, Margaret Atwood and
many others.

Features:
• Biographical information about the writer of each story provides useful
context for students Volume 2
• Notes on each story support students by explaining unfamiliar words and phrases
• Can be used alongside Stories of Ourselves Volume 1 and Songs of Ourselves Cambridge Assessment International Education
Volumes 1 and 2
Anthology of Stories in English
You might also be interested in
Cambridge IGCSE® and O Level Literature in English 978-1-108-43991-6
Cambridge International AS & A Level Literature in English 978-1-107-64496-0
Songs of Ourselves Volume 1 978-8-175-96248-4
Stories of Ourselves Volume 1 978-0-521-72791-4
Songs of Ourselves Volume 2 978-1-107-44779-0
 Stories of Ourselves

Volume 2

Cambridge Assessment International Education

Anthology of Stories in English
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 Contents

Introductionvii

1 Death of the Laird’s Jock 1

walter scott

2 Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment 6

nathaniel hawthorne

3 Nick 14
christina rossetti

4 George Silverman’s Explanation 19

charles dickens

5 The Nightingale and the Rose 41

oscar wilde

6 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 46

ambrose bierce

7 The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion 54

thomas hardy

8 The Copper Beeches 68

arthur conan doyle

9 A Story of a Wedding Tour 87

margaret oliphant

10 The Shrinking Shoe 102

walter besant

11 The Middle Years 115

henry james

12 Going Blind 130

henry lawson

13 The Little Regiment 135

stephen crane

iii
Contents

14 The Woman’s Rose 149

olive schreiner

15 The Lady’s Maid’s Bell 152

edith wharton

16 The Furnished Room 168

o . henry

17 Gabriel-Ernest 174
saki ( hector hugh munro )

18 The Widow’s Might 180

charlotte perkins gilman

19 Eveline 187
james joyce

20 Them Others 191

stacy aumonier

21 The Doll’s House 205

katherine mansfield

22 A Warning to the Curious 211

m . r . james

23 Death in the Woods 223

sherwood anderson

24 Indian Summer of an Uncle 232

p . g . wodehouse

25 ‘And Women Must Weep’ 250

henry handel richardson

26 The Black Ball 255

ralph ellison

27 Lappin and Lapinova 263

virginia woolf

28 Stability 269
philip k . dick

iv
 Contents

29 The Tower 279

marghanita laski

30 The Gold Watch 285

mulk raj anand

31 The Reservoir 292

janet frame

32 Thank You M’am 302

langston hughes

33 A Visit 306
anna kavan

34 The Axe 311

penelope fitzgerald

35 When It Happens 317

margaret atwood

36 Words 324
carol shields

37 The Man Who Walked on the Moon 328

j . g . ballard

38 A Walk to the Jetty 338

jamaica kincaid

39 In the Mountains 347

ruth prawer jhabvala

40 Showing the Flag 360

jane gardam

41 Sharmaji 367
anjana appachana

42 Mrs. Sen’s 384

jhumpa lahiri

43 A Thousand Years of Good Prayers 399

yiyun li

v
Contents

44 Mrs Mahmood 409

segun afolabi

45 Promenade 416
henrietta rose - innes

46 The Plantation 423

ovo adagha

47 Haywards Heath 430

aminatta forna

48 The Paper Menagerie 435

ken liu

49 Fluke 445
romesh gunesekera

Acknowledgements452

vi
 Introduction
This book is a sequel to Stories of Ourselves, 2008. Selections from this volume will be
set for study for several Cambridge Assessment International Education Literature in
English examinations. But this book is not simply a set text – it aims at being a stimulus
to wider reading beyond the confines of the selections prescribed for study for the
examinations, and it is also a resource for students of the language as well as literature.
While the stories in this book are drawn from and reflect many and diverse countries
and cultures, what they have in common is their use of English – the language in which all
the stories were written – to craft imaginative literature, and they demonstrate its endless
range and depth.
It has been said the short story is ‘a moment of truth’. If so, we might ask: whose
truth? It is not always clear. Details of the setting, aspects of language, attitudes and ways
of behaving described in a story may be quite alien, even uncomfortable to the reader.
But reading short stories from different parts of our world helps us become aware of
subjectivity: that there are many more points of view and ways of seeing than one’s own.
Many of the writers intend to make their readers see things sharply and differently. In
all other ways, their intentions and effects vary greatly. Some aim to change the reader’s
mind, some to shock or frighten, some to amuse and entertain.
As the stories in this anthology collectively show, there is endless variety in the short
story form in genre, length, scope, theme, style, tone and narrative technique. So there
can be no one simple definition of what is required to make a successful short story. Each
has a unique voice and shape – but there is no template for that shape.
For some readers, the best stories produce their effects of surprise, humour, fear or
shock without being too obvious about it. Good stories may be very unusual, and they
often seem to say that there is no pattern for a human life. Others, by contrast, show
us the ordinary world in a vivid way. Sometimes stories seem to show the whole life by
showing us just a part.
There are no rules: a successful story might be successful in all kinds of ways.
But we might say that stories need to be extraordinary enough to gain attention, but
observe the ordinary – some kind of recognisable world – well enough to engage our belief,
and often good stories make the ordinary, extraordinary and the extraordinary, ordinary.
It follows that there is no list of right answers in studying short stories, but there are
many right questions. Here are a few to consider when reading the stories:
• When was the story written?
• When and where is the story set?
• Is it a fable, a fantasy, a kind of ghost or detective story, or is it in the form of ‘realist’
fiction? Perhaps it is a mixture, perhaps it fits no obvious category.

vii
Introduction

• Who is telling the story? Can we believe her or him? Are we committed to one point of
view, or are there multiple perspectives?
• Is there a key event or incident, or a more complex plot – and in what ways is it shaped
by the writer?
• How are our feelings played upon as the story develops?
• What use does the writer make of metaphor, images or symbols?
• How are characters created in a short space? Do they interact? Are they sketched in or
more fully developed?
• How does the writing make me like this character so much?
• How has the author made this so funny?
It is endlessly enjoyable and instructive to make comparisons between stories. Readers
are encouraged to explore their own links and contrasts between stories both within the
anthology as a whole and outside it, including those featuring in Stories of Ourselves
volume 1. Like that volume, the stories are listed chronological order.
It is expected that readers have access to a dictionary. The Notes aim to explain
words or phrases whose meaning in the context of the story might be unclear to the
general reader.

Editor’s Acknowledgements
Special thanks are due to Tim Underhill, Jon Clewes, Helen Carr, Fay Head, Marica
Lopez, Richard Feirn, Andrew Campbell, Noel Cassidy, Liz Whittome and Matthew
Arcus for their advice, encouragement and practical help in making this anthology.
Mary Wilmer, Cambridge 2018

viii
 1

Death of the Laird’s Jock

(1831)
Walter Scott

Scott was a Scottish novelist and poet, famous for novels such as Ivanhoe and Rob Roy which established
historical romance as a popular genre. This short story gives a good flavour of Scott’s romantic fiction, with
its interesting narrative technique, larger-than-life characters and Highland setting. In its discussion of the
relationship between literature and painting, it also tries out what the new form of the short story can do.

To the editor of ‘The Keepsake’

You have asked me, sir, to point out a subject for the pencil, and I feel the difficulty of
complying with your request; although I am not certainly unaccustomed to literary com-
position, or a total stranger to the stores of history and tradition, which afford the best
copies for the painter’s art. But although Sicut pictura poesis is an ancient and undisputed
axiom—although poetry and painting both address themselves to the same object of
exciting the human imagination, by presenting to it pleasing or sublime images of ideal
scenes; yet the one conveying itself through the ears to the understanding, and the other
applying itself only to the eyes, the subjects which are best suited to the bard or tale-teller
are often totally unfit for painting, where the artist must present in a single glance all
that his art has power to tell us. The artist can neither recapitulate the past nor intimate
the future. The single now is all which he can present; and hence, unquestionably, many
subjects which delight us in poetry, or in narrative, whether real or fictitious, cannot with
advantage be transferred to the canvas.
Being in some degree aware of these difficulties, though doubtless unacquainted both
with their extent and the means by which they may be modified or surmounted, I have,
nevertheless, ventured to draw up the following traditional narrative as a story in which,
when the general details are known, the interest is so much concentrated in one strong
moment of agonizing passion, that it can be understood, and sympathized with, at a
single glance. I therefore presume that it may be acceptable as a hint to some one among
the numerous artists who have of late years distinguished themselves as rearing up and
supporting the British school.

1
1 Death of the Laird’s Jock

Enough has been said and sung about

The well-contested ground
The warlike Border-land—
to render the habits of the tribes who inhabited them before the union of England and
Scotland familiar to most of your readers. The rougher and sterner features of their char-
acter were softened by their attachment to the fine arts, from which has arisen the saying
that, on the frontiers, every dale had its battle, and every river its song. A rude species of
chivalry was in constant use, and single combats were practised as the amusement of the
few intervals of truce which suspended the exercise of war. The inveteracy of this custom
may be inferred from the following incident:
Bernard Gilpin, the apostle of the north, the first who undertook to preach the
Protestant doctrines to the Border dalesmen, was surprised on entering one of their
churches, to see a gauntlet, or mail-glove, hanging above the altar. Upon inquiring the
meaning of a symbol so indecorous being displayed in that sacred place, he was informed
by the clerk that the glove was that of a famous swordsman who hung it there as an
emblem of a general challenge and gage of battle, to any who should dare to take the
fatal token down. ‘Reach it to me,’ said the reverend churchman. The clerk and sexton
equally declined the perilous office; and the good Bernard Gilpin was obliged to remove
the glove with his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the champion
that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage of defiance. But the champion
was as much ashamed to face Bernard Gilpin as the officials of the church had been to
displace his pledge of combat.
The date of the following story is about the latter years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign;
and the events took place in Liddesdale, a hilly and pastoral district of Roxburghshire,
which, on a part of its boundary, is divided from England only by a small river.
During the good old times of rugging and riving (that is, tugging and tearing), under
which term the disorderly doings of the warlike age are affectionately remembered,
this valley was principally cultivated by the sept or clan of the Armstrongs. The chief
of this warlike race was the Laird of Mangerton. At the period of which I speak,
the estate of Mangerton, with the power and dignity of chief, was possessed by John
Armstrong, a man of great size, strength, and courage. While his father was alive, he
was distinguished from others of his clan who bore the same name by the epithet of the
Laird’s Jock, that is to say, the Laird’s son Jock, or Jack. This name he distinguished
by so many bold and desperate achievements, that he retained it even after his father’s
death, and is mentioned under it both in authentic records and in tradition. Some of
his feats are recorded in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and others mentioned
in contemporary chronicles.
At the species of singular combat which we have described, the Laird’s Jock was
unrivalled; and no champion of Cumberland, Westmoreland, or Northumberland, could
endure the sway of the huge two-handed sword which he wielded, and which few others
could even lift. This ‘awful sword’, as the common people term it, was as dear to him as
Durindana or Fushberta to their respective masters, and was nearly as formidable to his

2
 Death of the Laird’s Jock 1

enemies as those renowned falchions proved to the foes of Christendom. The weapon
had been bequeathed to him by a celebrated English outlaw named Hobbie Noble, who,
having committed some deed for which he was in danger from justice, fled to Liddesdale,
and became a follower, or rather a brother-in-arms, to the renowned Laird’s Jock; till,
venturing into England with a small escort, a faithless guide, and with a light single-
handed sword instead of his ponderous brand, Hobbie Noble, attacked by superior
numbers, was made prisoner and executed.
With this weapon, and by means of his own strength and address, the Laird’s Jock
maintained the reputation of the best swordsman on the Border side, and defeated or
slew many who ventured to dispute with him the formidable title.
But years pass on with the strong and the brave as with the feeble and the timid.
In process of time, the Laird’s Jock grew incapable of wielding his weapons, and finally
of all active exertion, even of the most ordinary kind. The disabled champion became at
length totally bed-ridden, and entirely dependent for his comfort on the pious duties of
an only daughter, his perpetual attendant and companion.
Besides this dutiful child, the Laird’s Jock had an only son, upon whom devolved
the perilous task of leading the clan to battle, and maintaining the warlike renown
of his native country, which was now disputed by the English upon many occasions.
The young Armstrong was active, brave, and strong, and brought home from dangerous
adventures many tokens of decided success. Still the ancient chief conceived, as it
would seem, that his son was scarce yet entitled by age and experience to be entrusted
with the two-handed sword, by the use of which he had himself been so dreadfully
distinguished.
At length, an English champion, one of the name of Foster (if I rightly recollect)
had the audacity to send a challenge to the best swordsman in Liddesdale; and young
Armstrong, burning for chivalrous distinction, accepted the challenge.
The heart of the disabled old man swelled with joy when he heard that the challenge
was passed and accepted, and the meeting fixed at a neutral spot, used as the place of
rencontre upon such occasions, and which he himself had distinguished by numerous
victories. He exulted so much in the conquest which he anticipated that, to nerve his son
to still bolder exertions, he conferred upon him, as champion of his clan and province,
the celebrated weapon which he had hitherto retained in his own custody.
This was not all. When the day of combat arrived, the Laird’s Jock, in spite of his
daughter’s affectionate remonstrances, determined, though he had not left his bed for
two years, to be a personal witness of the duel. His will was still a law to his people,
who bore him on their shoulders, wrapped in plaids and blankets, to the spot where the
combat was to take place, and seated him on a fragment of rock which is still called the
Laird’s Jock’s stone. There he remained with eyes fixed on the lists or barrier, within
which the champions were about to meet. His daughter, having done all she could
for his accommodation, stood motionless beside him, divided between anxiety for his
health, and for the event of the combat to her beloved brother. Ere yet the fight began,
the old men gazed on their chief, now seen for the first time after several years, and
sadly compared his altered features and wasted frame with the paragon of strength and

3
1 Death of the Laird’s Jock

manly beauty which they once remembered. The young men gazed on his large form
and powerful make, as upon some antediluvian giant who had survived the destruction
of the Flood.
But the sound of the trumpets on both sides recalled the attention of every one to
the lists, surrounded as they were by numbers of both nations eager to witness the event
of the day. The combatants met. It is needless to describe the struggle: the Scottish
champion fell. Foster, placing his foot on his antagonist, seized on the redoubted sword,
so precious in the eyes of its aged owner, and brandished it over his head as a trophy
of his conquest. The English shouted in triumph. But the despairing cry of the aged
champion, who saw his country dishonoured, and his sword, long the terror of their
race, in possession of an Englishman, was heard high above the acclamations of victory.
He seemed, for an instant, animated by all his wonted power; for he started from the
rock on which he sat, and while the garments with which he had been invested fell from
his wasted frame, and showed the ruins of his strength, he tossed his arms wildly to
heaven, and uttered a cry of indignation, horror, and despair, which, tradition says, was
heard to a preternatural distance, and resembled the cry of a dying lion more than a
human sound.
His friends received him in their arms as he sank utterly exhausted by the effort, and
bore him back to his castle in mute sorrow; while his daughter at once wept for her
brother and endeavoured to mitigate and soothe the despair of her father. But this was
impossible; the old man’s only tie to life was rent rudely asunder, and his heart had broken
with it. The death of his son had no part in his sorrow. If he thought of him at all, it was
as the degenerate boy, through whom the honour of his country and clan had been lost;
and he died in the course of three days, never even mentioning his name, but pouring out
unintermitted lamentations for the loss of his noble sword.
I conceive that the moment when the disabled chief was roused into a last exertion
by the agony of the moment is favourable to the object of a painter. He might obtain
the full advantage of contrasting the form of the rugged old man, in the extremity of
furious despair, with the softness and beauty of the female form. The fatal field might be
thrown into perspective, so as to give full effect to these two principal figures, and with
the single explanation that the piece represented a soldier beholding his son slain, and the
honour of his country lost, the picture would be sufficiently intelligible at the first glance.
If it was thought necessary to show more clearly the nature of the conflict, it might be
indicated by the pennon of St. George being displayed at one end of the lists, and that of
St. Andrew at the other.
I remain, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
The author of Waverley.

4
 Death of the Laird’s Jock 1

Notes
p. 1 Laird’s Jock - A ‘laird’ is a Scottish word for ‘chief’. The ‘Laird’s Jock’ is the
chief’s son, who is named Jock.
p. 1 The Keepsake - a literary annual published every Christmas 1828–1857
p. 1 Sicut pictura poesis - poetry is like painting – i.e. it creates a picture
p. 1 sublime - the idea of the sublime was very important in painting and literature
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and goes beyond the idea of
supreme beauty to mean a kind of moral greatness
p. 1 the British school - a ‘school’ or style of painting in the nineteenth century
p. 2 The well-contested ground - i.e. the lands on the border of England and
Scotland, fought over for many years
p. 2 The union of England and Scotland - the Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707
p. 2 rude species of chivalry - a rough kind of chivalry, i.e. code of honour
p. 2 gage - a token such as a glove thrown down to challenge to a fight
p. 2 Border dalesmen - farmers in the Border lands
p. 2 Minstrelsy - ballads
p. 2 Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland - counties of Northern England
p. 2 Durindana, Fushberta - swords (which were commonly given names) belonging
to heroes of ancient epics – Durindana was Roland’s sword in the medieval
romance ‘The Song of Roland’
p. 3 ponderous brand - heavy sword
p. 3 rencontre - place of meeting
p. 3 plaids - the tartan woollen cloth worn by Highlanders
p. 4 pennon of St. George . . . St. Andrew - flags of the patron saints of England
and Scotland

5
 2

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment

(1837)
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne is regarded as one of the founders of American literature, and is now best known for his novel The
Scarlet Letter. In this story, an aged doctor appears to have discovered the secret of youth, which he tries out on
some old friends with unexpected results.

That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet
him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel
Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the
Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate
in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves.
Mr. Medbourne, in the vigour of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost
his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel
Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful
pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other
torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or
at least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present genera-
tion, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition
tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in
deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories, which had prejudiced the gentry
of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning, that each of these three
old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers
of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other’s throats
for her sake. And, before proceeding farther, I will merely hint, that Dr. Heidegger and
all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves; as is not
unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woful
recollections.
‘My dear old friends,’ said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, ‘I am desirous
of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in
my study.’

6
 Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment 2

If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger’s study must have been a very curious place.
It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled with
antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of
which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with
little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of
Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to
hold consultations, in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room
stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared
a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and
dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this
mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor’s deceased patients dwelt within its
verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side
of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in
the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress.
Above half a century ago, Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with his young
lady; but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover’s
prescriptions, and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains
to be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive
silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book.
But it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid had lifted
it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the
young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped
forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said, ‘Forbear!’
Such was Dr. Heidegger’s study. On the summer afternoon of our tale, a small round
table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase, of
beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window,
between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this
vase; so that a mild splendour was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old
people who sat around. Four champagne-glasses were also on the table.
‘My dear old friends,’ repeated Dr. Heidegger, ‘may I reckon on your aid in performing
an exceedingly curious experiment?’
Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become
the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it
spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine own veracious self; and if any passages of
the present tale should startle the reader’s faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of
a fiction-monger.
When the doctor’s four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they anticipated
nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or the examination
of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in
the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled
across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather,
which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened
the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose,

7
2 Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment

though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the
ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor’s hands.
‘This rose,’ said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, ‘this same withered and crumbling flower,
blossomed five-and-fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs
yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five-and-fifty years it has
been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible
that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?’
‘Nonsense!’ said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. ‘You might as
well ask whether an old woman’s wrinkled face could ever bloom again.’
‘See!’ answered Dr. Heidegger.
He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At
first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture.
Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals
stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a
deathlike slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green; and there was the
rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover.
It was scarcely full-blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its
moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.
‘That is certainly a very pretty deception,’ said the doctor’s friends; carelessly, however,
for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer’s show; ‘pray how was it effected?’
‘Did you never hear of the “Fountain of Youth”,’ asked Dr. Heidegger, ‘which Ponce
de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of, two or three centuries ago?’
‘But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?’ said the Widow Wycherly.
‘No,’ answered Dr. Heidegger, ‘for he never sought it in the right place. The famous
Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the
Floridan peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several
gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as
violets, by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my
curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase.’
‘Ahem!’ said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor’s story; ‘and
what may be the effect of this fluid on the human 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

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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 grey, 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 look
so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really
begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscription which Father Time had been so long
engraving on their brows. The Widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like
a woman again.
‘Give us more of this wondrous water!’ cried they, eagerly. ‘We are younger,—but we
are still too old! Quick,—give us more!’
‘Patience, patience!’ quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment, with
philosophic coolness. ‘You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might be
content to grow young in half-an-hour! But the water is at your service.’
Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained
in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren.
While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor’s four guests snatched their
glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? even
while the draught was passing down their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on
their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their
silvery locks; they sat around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman,
hardly beyond her buxom prime.

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‘My dear widow, you are charming!’ cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been
fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the
crimson daybreak.
The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew’s compliments were not always
measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly
visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved
in such a manner, as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some
intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome
dizziness, caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne’s mind
seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future,
could not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue
these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national
glory, and the people’s right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and
doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarely catch the
secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if
a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had
been trolling forth a jolly bottle-song, and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus,
while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other
side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and 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 curtsying 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 favour 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 splendour 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 armchair, with a grey 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

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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 gaiety 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 waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and
gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor, like a gouty grandfather; one set
a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages
of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an armchair, and strove to imitate the
venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the
room. The Widow Wycherly—if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow—tripped up
to the doctor’s chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.
‘Doctor, you dear old soul,’ cried she, ‘get up and dance with me!’ And then the four
young people laughed louder than ever, to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor
would cut.
‘Pray excuse me,’ answered the doctor, quietly. ‘I am old and rheumatic, and my
dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of
so pretty a partner.’
‘Dance with me, Clara!’ cried Colonel Killigrew.
‘No, no, I will be her partner!’ shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
‘She promised me her hand, fifty years ago!’ exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.
They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp,—
another threw his arm about her waist,—the third buried his hand among the glossy curls
that clustered beneath the widow’s cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing,
her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself,
yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful
rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the
duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror
is said to have reflected the figures of three old, grey, withered grandsires, ridiculously
contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam.
But they were young: their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by
the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favours, the
three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize,
they grappled fiercely at one another’s throats. As they struggled to and fro, the table
was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water
of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly,
which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered
lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger.

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2 Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment

‘Come, come, gentlemen!—come, Madam Wycherly,’ exclaimed the doctor, ‘I really

must protest against this riot.’
They stood still and shivered; for it seemed as if grey Time were calling them back
from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked
at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved armchair, holding the rose of half a century,
which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion
of his hand, the four rioters resumed their seats; the more readily, because their violent
exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were.
‘My poor Sylvia’s rose!’ ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the light of the sunset
clouds; ‘it appears to be fading again.’
And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it, the flower continued to shrivel
up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase.
He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its petals.
‘I love it as well thus, as in its dewy freshness,’ observed he, pressing the withered rose
to his withered lips. While he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor’s snowy
head, and fell upon the floor.
His guests shivered again. A strange chilliness, whether of the body or spirit they
could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and
fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepening furrow
where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been
crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their old
friend, Dr. Heidegger?
‘Are we grown old again, so soon?’ cried they, dolefully.
In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient
than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes! they were old
again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her
skinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it could be
no longer beautiful.
‘Yes, friends, ye are old again,’ said Dr. Heidegger; ‘and lo! the Water of Youth is
all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very
doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it; no, though its delirium were for years
instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!’
But the doctor’s four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved
forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night from
the Fountain of Youth.

Notes
p. 6 singular - remarkable
p. 6 frantic speculation - mad money-making scheme
p 6 mendicant - beggar
p. 6 of evil fame - of bad reputation

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p. 6 beside themselves - not quite in their right minds

pp. 6–7 folios . . .quartos . . . duodecimos - books of different sizes
p. 7 Hippocrates - classical Greek doctor – the founder of Western medicine
p. 7 thitherward - at it or towards it
p. 7 visage - face
p. 7 ponderous - heavy
p. 7 forbear! - do not (touch it)
p. 8 Fountain of Youth . . . Ponce de Leon - a real Spanish explorer; according to
some myths found a ‘fountain of youth’ in Florida in 1513
p. 8 Floridan peninsular . . . Lake Macaco - large lake in Florida now called Lake
Okeechobee
p. 9 palsied - afflicted by palsy; shaking
p. 10 trolling - singing
p. 10 a calculation . . . icebergs . . . - Another one of his ‘frantic speculations’ -
ludicrous project that will never work and will lose money

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