 | Twice-told tales |  |
A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP.
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 these hot sunbeams, which fall,
scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the
water bubble and smoke, in the trough under my nose.
Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it!
And, among all the town officers, chosen at March
meeting, where is he that sustains, for a single year,
the burthen of such manifold duties as are imposed, in
perpetuity, upon the Town-Pump? The title of `town-treasurer'
is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best
treasure that the town has. The overseers of the
poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide
bountifully for the pauper, without expense to
department, and one of the physicians to the board of
health. As a keeper of the peace, all water-drinkers
will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some
of the duties of the town-clerk, by promulgating public
notices, when they are posted on my front. To speak
within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality,
and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to
my brother officers, by the cool, steady, upright, down-right,
and impartial discharge of my business, and the
constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or
winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for, all day 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 a lantern over my head, both to show
where I am, and keep people out of the gutters.
At this sultry noontide, I am cupbearer to the
parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is
chained to my waist. Like a dram-seller on the mall,
at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in my
plainest accents, 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
father Adam—better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica,
strong beer, or wine of any price; here it is, by the
hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay!
Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves!
It were a pity, if all this outcry should draw no customers.
Quaff, and away again, so as to keep yourselves in
a nice cool sweat. You, my friend, will need another
cup-full, to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as
thick there as it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that
you have trudged half a score of miles, today; and,
like a wise man, have passed by the taverns, and
stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise,
betwixt heat without and fire within, you would
have been burnt to a cinder, or melted 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 fiery fever 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 closer intimacy, till the fumes of your
breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man!
The water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet,
and is converted quite to steam, in the miniature tophet,
which you mistake for a stomach. Fill 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-by; 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
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
reminiscences. 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
time immemorial, till the fatal deluge of the fire-water
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 watering-place,
and, as it were, the washbowl of the vicinity—whither
all decent folks resorted, 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, and placed it on the communion-table
of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the
site of yonder stately brick one. Thus, one generation
after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters,
and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its
glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal
life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally,
the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all
sides, and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source,
whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mudpuddle,
at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when
its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in
clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now
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 serve you with my iron goblet.
Drink, and be refreshed! The water is as pure and
cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red Sagamore,
beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem
of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones,
where no shadow falls, but from the brick buildings.
And be it the moral of my story, that, as this wasted
and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again,
so shall the virtues of cold water, too little valued
since your fathers' days, be recognised by all.
Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my
stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water,
to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two
yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere
along that way. No part of my business is
pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look! how
rapidly they lower the watermark on the sides of the
trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened
with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time
to breathe it in, with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now
they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their
monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.
But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are
impatient for the remainder of my discourse. Impute
it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty, if I insist a
merits. It is altogether for your good. The
better you think of me, the better men and women
will you find yourselves. I shall say nothing of my
all-important aid on washing-days; though, on that
account alone, I might call myself the household god
of a hundred families. Far be it from me, also, to
hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces,
which you would present, without my pains to keep
you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when
the midnight bells make you tremble for your combustible
town, you have fled to the Town-Pump, and
found me always at my post, firm, amid the confusion,
and ready to drain my vital current in your behalf.
Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my
claims to a medical diploma, as the physician, whose
simple rule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous
lore, which has found men sick or left them so, since
the days of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view
of my beneficial influence on mankind.
No; these are trifles, compared with the merits
which wise men concede to me—if not in my single
self, yet as the representative of a class—of being the
grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such
spouts as mine, must flow the stream, that shall cleanse
our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish,
which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still.
In this mighty enterprise, the cow shall be my great
confederate. Milk and water! The Town-Pump and
shall tear down the distilleries and brewhouses, uproot
the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the tea
and coffee trade, and, finally monopolize the whole
business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation!
Then, Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding
no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may
shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims,
shall gnaw its own heart, and die. Then Sin, if she
do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now,
the phrensy of hereditary fever has raged in the human
blood, transmitted from sire to son, and re-kindled, in
every generation, by fresh draughts of liquid flame.
When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat
of passion cannot but grow cool, and war—the drunkenness
of nations—perhaps will cease. At least, there
will be no war of households. The husband and wife,
drinking deep of peaceful joy—a calm bliss of temperate
affections—shall pass hand in hand through life,
and lie down, not reluctantly, at its protracted close.
To them, the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams,
nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow
the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces shall
express what their spirits were, and are to be, by a
lingering 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 undergo for my
sake. Hereafter, they shall have the business to themselves.
two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir! My
dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated,
by my instrumentality, you will collect your
useless vats and liquor casks, into 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 my memory, let a marble fountain, richly
sculptured, take my place upon this spot. Such monuments
should be erected everywhere, and inscribed
with the names of the distinguished champions of my
cause. Now listen; for something 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, do put me in fearful
hazard of a broken nose, or even of a total overthrow
upon the 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 get tipsy with
zeal for temperance, and take up the honorable cause
of the Town-Pump, in the style of a toper, fighting for
his brandy-bottle? Or, can the excellent qualities of
cold water be no otherwise exemplified, than by plunging,
slapdash, into hot water, and wofully scalding
yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may.
In the moral warfare, which you are to wage—and,
indeed, in the whole conduct of your lives—you cannot
choose a better example than myself, who have never
and manifold disquietudes of the world around
me, to reach that deep, calm well of purity, which
may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out
that 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 as well 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,
while 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 at your sweet image
in the pitcher, as you go; and forget not, in a glass of
my own liquor, to drink—`Success to the Town-Pump!'
| Twice-told tales | |