Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

One afternoon, old Dr. Heidegger, whose habits had long given the town something to gossip about, invited four elderly friends to his study and promised them an experiment. Each of the guests had squandered something precious. Mr. Medbourne, once a wealthy merchant, had lost his fortune through a reckless speculation; Colonel Killigrew had spent his health on pleasure; Mr. Gascoigne was a politician whose name had become a byword for corruption; and the Widow Wycherly, a celebrated beauty in her youth, had lived for years in seclusion because of an old scandal. It was said that all three gentlemen had once been in love with her.

The study was a gloomy room, crowded with dusty books and hung with cobwebs, and in the middle of the table stood a tall vase of cut glass, full of water that sparkled faintly in the dim light. From a heavy volume the doctor took a rose so dry and withered that a single breath might have scattered it. It had been given to him, he explained, fifty-five years earlier by Sylvia Ward, the woman he was to have married, who had died on the eve of their wedding. He dropped it into the vase. Within moments the brown petals began to soften and redden, until the flower looked as fresh as on the morning it was picked.

The water, Dr. Heidegger told them calmly, came from the Fountain of Youth, and a friend had sent it to him from Florida. He offered each guest a glass, but first he urged them to write down, from the experience of a lifetime, a few rules that might keep them out of trouble the second time round. Were they not to do so, he warned, it would be a great pity. His friends merely laughed. As for himself, the doctor said, he had found growing old so laborious that he felt no desire to begin the process again.

They drank, and the effect was immediate. Color crept back into their cheeks; their backs straightened; their gray hair darkened with every glass. Within half an hour they were young, and no sooner were they young than they became exactly what they had been before. Mr. Gascoigne began making speeches about patriotism; Mr. Medbourne described a scheme to make a fortune by shipping ice to the East Indies; the colonel sang a drinking song; and the widow, laughing, hurried to the mirror to admire a face she had not seen for forty years.

Soon all three men were competing for her attention, and the competition turned into a struggle. In the confusion the table was overturned, the vase was smashed to pieces, and the precious water ran across the floor. Almost at once a chill passed through the room. The wrinkles returned, the hair turned gray again, and the four friends found themselves old once more, staring at one another in horror. The rose on the floor had withered as completely as before.

"I would not drink from that fountain," said Dr. Heidegger quietly, "even if it bubbled up in my own garden. This lesson has cost me nothing, and I've learned it well." His guests had learned nothing at all. Before they left that evening, they had already resolved to travel to Florida together and drink from the fountain as often as they pleased.