Twice Told Tales

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP.

  (SCENE, _the corner of two principal streets_,[1] _the_ TOWN-PUMP_talking through its nose_.)

  Noon by the north clock! Noon by the east! High noon, too, by thesehot sunbeams, which full, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almostmake the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly,we public characters have a tough time of it! And among all thetown-officers chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains for asingle year the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed inperpetuity upon the town-pump? The title of "town-treasurer" isrightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has.The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since Iprovide bountifully for the pauper without expense to him that paystaxes. I am at the head of the fire department and one of thephysicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace allwater-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform someof the duties of the town-clerk by promulgating public notices whenthey are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chiefperson of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirablepattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downrightand impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which Istand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for allday long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market,stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, and at night I hold alantern over my head both to show where I am and keep people out ofthe gutters. At this sultry noontide I am cupbearer to the parchedpopulace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist.Like a dramseller on the mall at muster-day, I cry aloud to all andsundry in my plainest accents and at the very tiptop of my voice.

  [Footnote 1: Essex and Washington streets, Salem.]

  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 theunadulterated ale of Father Adam--better than Cognac, Hollands,Jamaica, strong beer or wine of any price; here it is by the hogsheador the single glass, and not a cent to pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walkup, and help yourselves!

  It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here theycome.--A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff and away again, so as to keepyourselves in a nice cool sweat.--You, my friend, will need anothercupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there asit is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a scoreof miles to-day, and like a wise man have passed by the taverns andstopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heatwithout and fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder ormelted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drinkand make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench thefiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup ofmine.--Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great strangershitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for acloser intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent.Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hotgullet and is converted quite to steam in the miniature Tophet whichyou mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of anhonest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of adram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half sodelicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know theflavor of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, rememberthat I keep a constant supply at the old stand.--Who next?--Oh, mylittle friend, you are let loose from school and come hither to scrubyour blooming face and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule,and other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the town-pump? Takeit, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may yourheart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now!There, my dear child! put down the cup and yield your place to thiselderly gentleman who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones that Isuspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without somuch as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only forpeople who have no wine-cellars.--Well, well, sir, no harm done, Ihope? Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toeshall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemenlove the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to thetown-pump. This thirsty dog with his red tongue lolling out does notscorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs and laps eagerly outof the trough. See how lightly he capers away again!--Jowler, did yourworship ever have the gout?

  Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends, andwhile my spout has a moment's leisure I will delight the town with afew historical remniscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksomeshadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewnearth 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 liquiddiamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial tillthe fatal deluge of the firewater burst upon the red men and swepttheir whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and hisfollowers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their longbeards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark.Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here outof the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm andlaid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years itwas the watering-place, and, as it were, the washbowl, of thevicinity, whither all decent folks resorted to purify their visagesand gaze at them afterward--at least, the pretty maidens did--in themirror which it made. On Sabbath-days, whenever a babe was to bebaptized, the sexton filled his basin here and placed it on thecommunion-table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered thesite of yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after anotherwas consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing andwaning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, asif mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally thefountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides and cart-loadsof gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forminga mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when itsrefreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over theforgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the courseof 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 serveyou with my iron goblet. Drink and be refreshed. The water is as pureand cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red sagamore beneaththe aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasuredunder these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brickbuildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as this wasted andlong-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtuesof cold water--too little valued since your fathers' days--berecognized by all.

  Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence andspout forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for thisteamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, orsomewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter thanthe watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark onthe sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistenedwith a gallon or two apiece and they can afford time to breathe it inwith sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes aroundthe brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.

  But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for theremainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect ofmodesty if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my ownmultifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better youthink of me, the better men and women you will find yourselves. Ishall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days, though onthat account alone I might call myself the household god of a hundredfamilies. Far be it from me, also, to hint, my respectable friends, atthe show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains tokeep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnightbells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to thetown-pump an
d found me always at my post firm amid the confusion andready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worthwhile to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma as thephysician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all thenauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so, since thedays of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficialinfluence on mankind.

  No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concedeto me--if not in my single self, yet as the representative of aclass--of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and suchspouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth ofthe vast portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from thefiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shallbe my great confederate. Milk and water--the TOWN-PUMP and the Cow!Such is the glorious copartnership that shall tear down thedistilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter thecider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolizethe whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! ThenPoverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretchedwhere her squalid form may shelter herself. Then Disease, for lack ofother victims, shall gnaw its own heart and die. Then Sin, if she donot die, shall lose half her strength. Until now the frenzy ofhereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sireto son and rekindled in every generation by fresh draughts of liquidflame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat ofpassion cannot but grow cool, and war--the drunkenness ofnations--perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war ofhouseholds. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy--acalm bliss of temperate affections--shall pass hand in hand throughlife and lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close. To them thepast will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity ofsuch moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead facesshall express what their spirits were and are to be by a lingeringsmile of memory and hope.

  Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractisedorator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturersundergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business tothemselves.--Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just towet my whistle.--Thank you, sir!--My dear hearers, when the worldshall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collectyour useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make abonfire in honor of the town-pump. And when I shall have decayed likemy predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountainrichly sculptured take my place upon this spot. Such monuments shouldbe erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of thedistinguished champions of my cause. Now, listen, for something veryimportant is to come next.

  There are two or three honest friends of mine--and true friends I knowthey are--who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf doput me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrowupon the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.--I prayyou, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, toget tipsy with zeal for temperance and take up the honorable cause ofthe town-pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy-bottle?Or can the excellent qualities of cold water be no otherwiseexemplified than by plunging slapdash into hot water and woefullyscalding yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moralwarfare which you are to wage--and, indeed, in the whole conduct ofyour lives--you cannot choose a better example than myself, who havenever permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence andmanifold disquietudes, of the world around me to reach that deep, calmwell of purity which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour outthat soul, it is to cool earth's fever or cleanse its stains.

  One o'clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may aswell hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintancewith a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husbandwhile 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 atyour sweet image in the pitcher as you go, and forget not in a glassof my own liquor to drink "SUCCESS TO THE TOWN-PUMP."