“I have never been able to make them confess that they were more comfortable in the old days, no matter how poor and desolate they may be,” I said.
“The divine spark in every breast,” replied Eugenio. “But where is the spring, Hoffman? I like your barren; it smacks of the outlaw and bold buccaneer, after the trim wheat fields of the North, and there is a grand sweep of sky overhead. Nevertheless, I own to being thirsty.”
“It is not ordinary thirst,” replied John; “it is the old yearning which Ponce de Leon always felt when he had come as far as this.”
“He came this way, then, did he?”
“Invariably.”
“If I had been here at the time I should have said, ‘Ponce’ (of course we should have been intimate enough to call each other by our first names)—‘Ponce, my good friend, have your spring a little nearer while you are magically about it!’ ” And taking off his straw hat the poet wiped his white forehead, and looked at us with a quizzical expression in his brilliant eyes.
“It is warm,” confessed Aunt Diana, who, weary and worried, was toiling along almost in silence. Mokes was nearly out of sight with the “other young lady;” Iris and the Captain were absorbed in that murmured conversation so hopeless to outsiders; and Spartan matron though she was, she had not the courage to climb around after the Professor in cloth boots that drew like a magnet the vicious cacti of the thicket. Miss Sharp had leather boots, and climbed valiantly.
At last we came to the place, and filed in through a broken-down fence. We found a deserted house, an overgrown field, a gully, a pool, and an old curb of coquina surrounding the magic spring.
“I wonder if any one was ever massacred here?” observed Sara, looking around.
“The Fountain of Youth,” declaimed John, ladling out the water. “Who will drink? Centuries ago the Indians of Cuba came to these shores to seek the waters of immortality, and as they never returned, they are supposed to be still here somewhere enjoying a continued cherubic existence. Father Martyn himself affirms in his letter to the Pope that there is a spring here the water thereof being drunk straightway maketh the old young again. Ladies and gentlemen, the original and only Ponce de Leon Spring! Who will drink?”