TWICE TOLD TALES

 A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP

 By Nathaniel Hawthorne

(SCENE. --The corner of two principal streets. --[Essex and WashingtonStreets, Salem. ]--The Town Pump talking through its nose. )

NOON, by the North clock! Noon, by the east! High noon, too, by thesehot sunbeams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almostmake the water bubble and smoke, in the trough under my nose. Truly, wepublic characters have a tough time of it! And, among all the townofficers, 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, all waterdrinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of theduties of the town clerk, by promulgating public notices, when they areposted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of themunicipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brotherofficers, by the cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartialdischarge of my business, and the constancy with which I stand to mypost. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for, all day long, I amseen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out myarms, to rich and poor alike; and at night, I hold a lantern over myhead, both to show where I am, and keep people out of the gutters. 

At this sultry noontide, I am cupbearer to the parched populace, forwhose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dram-selleron the mall, at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in my plainestaccents, and at the very tiptop 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 fatherAdam, --better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer, or wine of anyprice; here it is, by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent topay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, 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 score ofmiles 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 burned to a cinder, ormelted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink, and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the fieryfever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great strangers, hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closerintimacy, till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercyon you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and isconverted quite to steam, in the miniature tophet, which you mistake fora stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, didyou ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the priceof your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the firsttime these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good by; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at theold stand. Who next? O, my little friend, you are let loose fromschool, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memoryof certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in adraught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your younglife. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with afiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child, put down the cup, andyield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly overthe 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 offerswere 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 yourgreat toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. Ifgentlemen love 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; and, while my spout has a moment's leisure, I will delight the town with a fewhistorical reminiscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow ofvenerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn earth, in thevery spot where you now behold me, on the sunny pavement. The water wasas bright and clear, and deemed as precious, as liquid diamonds. TheIndian sagamores drank of it, from time immemorial, till the fatal delugeof the fire-water burst upon the red men, and swept their whole race awayfrom the cold fountains. Endicott, and his followers, came next, andoften knelt down to drink, dipping their long beards in the spring. Therichest goblet, then, was of birch-bark. Governor Winthrop, after ajourney 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 thefirst town-born child. For many years it was the watering-place, and, asit were, the wash-bowl of the vicinity, --whither all decent folksresorted, to purify their visages, and gaze at them afterwards--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, andplaced it on the communion-table of the humble meeting-house, whichpartly covered the site of yonder stately brick one. Thus, onegeneration after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, andcast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanishedfrom the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in afountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on allsides, and cartloads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed aturbid stream, forming a mud-puddle, at the corner of two streets. Inthe hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew inclouds 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 theancient spring; and when the first decayed, another took its place, --and then another, and still another, --till here stand I, gentlemen andladies, to serve you with my iron goblet. Drink, and be refreshed! Thewater is as pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the redsagamore, beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wildernessis treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls, but from thebrick buildings. And be it the moral of my story, that, as this wastedand long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall thevirtues of cold water, too little valued since your father's 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 this teamsterand his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewherealong that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the wateringof cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides ofthe trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon ortwo apiece, and they can afford time to breathe it in, with sighs of calmenjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of theirmonstrous 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 will you find yourselves. I shallsay nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days; though, on thataccount alone, I might call myself the household god of a hundredfamilies. Far be it from me also to hint, my respectable friends, at theshow of dirty faces which you would present, without my pains to keep youclean. Nor will I remind you how often when the midnight bells make youtremble for your combustible town, you have tied to the Town Pump, andfound me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drainmy vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay muchstress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician, whose simplerule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous lore, which has foundmen sick or left them so, since the days of Hippocrates. Let us take abroader view of my beneficial influence on mankind. 

No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede tome, --if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a class--ofbeing the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts asmine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vastportion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fieryfountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise, the cow shall be mygreat confederate. Milk and water! The TOWN Pump and the Cow! Such isthe glorious copartnership, that shall tear down the distilleries andbrewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the teaand coffee trade, and finally monopolize the whole business of quenchingthirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from theland, finding no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may shelteritself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its ownheart, and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half herstrength. Until now, the frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in thehuman blood, transmitted from sire to son, and rekindled in everygeneration, by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fireshall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war--the drunkenness of nations--perhaps will cease. At least, there willbe no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peacefuljoy, --a calm bliss of temperate affections, --shall pass hand in handthrough life, and lie down, not reluctantly, at its protracted close. To them, the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future aneternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Theirdead faces shall express what their spirits were, and are to be, by alingering smile of memory and hope. 

Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying; especially to an unpractised orator. I never conceived, till now, what toil the temperance lecturers undergofor my sake. Hereafter, they shall have the business to themselves. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thankyou, sir! My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated bymy instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor-casksinto one great pile, and make a bonfire, in honor of the Town Pump. And, when I shall have decayed, like my predecessors, then, if you revere mymemory, let a marble fountain, richly sculptured, take my place upon thisspot. Such monuments should be erected everywhere, and inscribed withthe names of the distinguished champions of my cause. Now listen; forsomething very important is to come next. 

There are two or three honest friends of mine--and true friends, I know, they are--who, nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, doput me in fearful hazard of a broken nose or even a total overthrow uponthe pavement, and the loss of the treasure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to gettipsy with zeal for temperance, and take up the honorable cause of theTown Pump in the style of a toper, fighting for his brandy-bottle? Or, can the excellent qualities of cold water be not otherwise exemplified, than by plunging slapdash into hot water, and wofully scalding yourselvesand other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral warfare, which youare to wage, --and, indeed, in the whole conduct of your lives, --youcannot choose a better example than myself, who have never permitted thedust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and manifold disquietudes ofthe world around me, to reach that deep, calm well of purity, which maybe called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to coolearth'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 acquaintance, with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband, whiledrawing her water, as Rachel did of old. Hold out your vessel, my dear!There it is, full to the brim; so now run hone, peeping at your sweetimage in the pitcher, as you go; and forget not, in a glass of my ownliquor, to drink--"SUCCESS TO THE TOWN PUMP!"