“But, Mother!” exclaimed Alice, as they drew up in front of a rather dilapidated, low building, “this isn’t it! I know what it looks like from the picture and it’s nothing like this.”
“This is the ‘Fountain of Youth’ all the same,” answered Mrs. Merrill. “Those pictures that are used so much were taken years ago when there was an open pavilion over the spring. In recent years it has been housed in as you see it now. You won’t be disappointed with the inside though—it’s as curious and interesting as ever. Come in and get a drink.”
Mary Jane and Alice followed her down three narrow steps, through a low doorway and into a dim room. At first they couldn’t see anything interesting but as they looked about longer they changed their minds. Bubbling out of the ground, almost at their feet, was a little spring—the very same spring that the Spaniard, Ponce de Leon, had discovered over three hundred years ago.
“But, Mother,” objected Mary Jane, “couldn’t he see that this was just a common, every-day spring and that it was just so ordinary this way?”
“Oh, it didn’t look ordinary to him, you may be sure,” said Mrs. Merrill. “You must remember that he had landed after a long, long sea voyage and fresh water, bubbling from the ground, looked more than usually good. Then all this place where we are standing was a forest of bloom—thousands of flowers he had never before seen were here and it must have looked very lovely and magical to him.”
“Yes, that would make a difference,” admitted Alice.
“Then, too,” continued Mrs. Merrill, “even before he came here, the Indians had a legend that this was a magic well and he who drank thereof would never die. That, I think, is because it is a mineral spring and the water tastes different from most spring water. Try it yourselves and see.” And then as the girls filled their cups she added, “So you can hardly blame the stranger if he thought he had found the spring of youth he had set out to locate, can you?”
The girls made faces over the water—they didn’t like the taste a bit. “I know why he called it the ‘Fountain of Youth,’” laughed Alice as she tried to finish her cupful. “He had to call it something interesting or folks would never drink it!”
“What are those stone paths?” asked Mary Jane as she set her cup down.
“Those aren’t paths, little girls,” said the guide who had stood near by. “Those stones make a cross—but such a big cross you hardly notice it at first. See! There are fifteen stones for one part and thirteen for the other. We are told that Ponce de Leon himself laid those here to mark the year he discovered the spring; that was in fifteen-thirteen.”