THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



At fifteen, I became a resident in a country village, more than a hundred
miles from home. The morning after my arrival--a September morning, but
warm and bright as any in July--I rambled into a wood of oaks, with a few
walnut-trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The
ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young
saplings, and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track, which I chanced
to follow, led me to a crystal spring, with a border of grass, as freshly
green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak.
One solitary sunbeam found its way down, and played like a goldfish in
the water.

From my childhood, I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
a circular basin, small but deep, and set round with stones, some of
which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked, and of variegated
hue, reddish, white, and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand,
which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam, and seemed to illuminate the spring
with an unborrowed light. In one spot, the gush of the water violently
agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain, or breaking the
glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living creature were
about to emerge--the Naiad of the spring, perhaps--in the shape of a
beautiful young woman, with a gown of filmy water-moss, a belt of
rainbow-drops, and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How would the
beholder shiver, pleasantly, yet fearfully, to see her sitting on one of
the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples, and throwing up