again, and tell me, on the word of an
honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a
dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so
delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the
flavor of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, remember
that I keep a constant supply at the old stand.--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 pleasant titillation 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 remniscences. 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 Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial till
the fatal deluge of the firewater burst upon the red men and swept
their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his
followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long
beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark.
Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here out
of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm and
laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it
was the waterin