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
diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial till
the fatal deluge of the firewater 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 afterward--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 mud-puddle 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 their grave. But in the course
of time a town-pump 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