Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

Dr. Heidegger was a strange old scholar who once invited four old friends to his study for a curious experiment.All four guests had lived unlucky, disappointed lives: Mr. Medbourne had lost his fortune in bad business, Mr. Gascoigne had ruined his good name, Colonel Killigrew had spent his health and youth on empty pleasures, and the Widow Wycherly had outlived all her beauty and her friends.As young people, long ago, all three gentlemen had been in love with the Widow Wycherly, and their old rivalry had never quite faded.

Dr. Heidegger showed his guests a small, dry, blackened rose, fifty years old, that his own fiancée had given him before she died suddenly on their wedding day.He dropped the ancient rose into a tall glass vase filled with water he claimed had come from the legendary Fountain of Youth, discovered far away in Florida.To the astonishment of everyone in the room, the withered rose slowly opened, turning fresh and pink again, exactly as it must have looked fifty years before.

Dr. Heidegger then poured four glasses of the same water and invited his old friends to drink, warning them gently that he himself was in no hurry to be young again.The four old people looked at each other, hesitated only a moment, and then drank the water down eagerly, every one of them.Almost at once, a change came over them: their voices grew stronger, their backs straightened, and the deep lines began to fade from their faces.

Growing bolder, they asked for more of the water, and with each new glass they seemed to shed another ten years.Soon the three gentlemen were young men again in spirit, laughing loudly and arguing over who among them the Widow Wycherly, now young and lovely once more, would choose to dance with.The widow herself ran to a mirror, delighted to see her old beauty return, and flirted with all three at once, exactly as she once had in her youth.

In their new, reckless youth they became careless and a little wild, knocking over Dr. Heidegger’s vase in a scuffle over the pretty widow, and spilling the last of the magic water onto the floor.But even as they laughed, the strange light of youth began to fade from their faces, and one by one, they felt themselves growing old again.Within a few more minutes, all four stood exactly as they had at the beginning of the evening — wrinkled, gray, and worn by time once more.

Dr. Heidegger, who had not tasted a drop of the water himself, said quietly that he had learned enough from watching them, and would not drink from the Fountain of Youth even if it flowed right outside his own door.But his four old friends, having felt young again for even a few minutes, agreed at once that they would set off for Florida the very next day, determined to drink from the fountain morning, noon, and night.