To the gray-haired and decrepit, with wrinkles and hollowed tooth.
And the breeze came to the ears of men, who believed it to be no lie.
So the agéd De Leon chimeras chased, in the land where he was to die.
JUAN PONCE DE LEON:
DREAMER AND SEARCHER FOR THE
FOUNTAIN OF PERPETUAL
YOUTH.
(1460-1521)
ONCE there lived in the island of Porto Rico, which became the property of the United States in 1898, a Spanish Knight who had fought against the Moors in Spain and who had helped to drive them from his native country. His name was Juan Ponce de Leon, and he was rich in slaves, in plantations, and in money.
The good knight was growing old. As he gazed in his mirror he saw that his once coal-black beard was now silvered with gray, that his head was not only bald, but also grizzled, and, as for his joints, well, he had strange rheumatic pains when he bent over, and he did not leap out of bed in the morning with the same spirit of enthusiasm that he had had twenty years before.