Think what a sin and shame it
would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become
patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"
The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a
feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that,
knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error,
they should ever go astray again.
"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so
well selected the subjects of my experiment."
With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. The
liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed
to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it
more wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or
pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and
always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat
stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their
souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young
again. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on the
table.
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