One evening, in times long ago, old Philemon and his wife Baucis sat at
their cottage door, enjoying the calm and beautiful sunset. They talked
together about their garden, and their cow, and their bees, and their
grape vine on which the grapes were beginning to turn purple.
The shouts of children, and the fierce barking of dogs in the village
near at hand, grew louder and louder, until, at last, it was hardly
possible for Baucis and Philemon to hear each other speak.
“Ah, wife,” cried Philemon, “I fear some poor traveller is seeking food
and lodging in the village yonder, and our neighbors have set their dogs
at him, as their custom is.”
“Welladay!” answered Baucis, “I do wish our neighbors felt a little more
kindness for their fellow-creatures.”
“I never heard the dogs so loud!” observed the good old man.
“Nor the children so rude!” answered his good old wife.
[Illustration: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE]
They sat shaking their heads, while the noise came nearer and nearer,
until, at the foot of the little hill on which their cottage stood, they
saw two travellers approaching, on foot. Close behind them came the
fierce dogs, snarling at their very heels. A little farther off ran a
crowd of children, who sent up shrill cries, and flung stones at the two
strangers with all their might. The travellers were very humbly clad,
and this, I am afraid, was the reason why the villagers had allowed
their children and dogs to treat them so rudely.
“Come, wife,” said Philemon to Baucis, “let us go and meet these
people.”
“Go you and meet them,” answered Baucis, “while I make haste within
doors, and see whether we can get them anything for supper.”
Accordingly, she hastened into the cottage. Philemon went forward and
extended his hand, saying in the heartiest tone, “Welcome, strangers!
welcome!”
“Thank you,” replied the younger of the two, in a lively kind of a way.
“This is quite another greeting than we have met with yonder in the
village.”
Philemon was glad to see him in such good spirits; nor, indeed, would
you have fancied, by the traveller’s look and manner, that he was weary
with a long day’s journey. He was dressed in rather an odd way, with a
sort of cap on his head, the brim of which stuck out over both ears.
Though it was a summer evening, the traveller wore a cloak, which he
kept wrapped closely about him. Philemon perceived, too, that he had on
a singular pair of shoes. He was so wonderfully light and active that it
appeared as if his feet sometimes rose from the ground of their own
accord.
“I used to be light-footed in my youth,” said Philemon to the traveller.
“But I always find my feet grow heavier towards nightfall.”
“There is nothing like a good staff to help one along,” answered the
stranger; “and I happen to have an excellent one, as you see.”
This staff, in fact, was the oddest-looking staff that Philemon had ever
beheld; it was made of olive wood, and had something like a little pair
of wings near the top. Two snakes carved in the wood were twining
themselves about the staff, and old Philemon almost thought them alive,
and that he could see them wriggling and twisting. Before he could ask
any questions, however, the elder stranger drew his attention from the
wonderful staff by speaking to him.
“Was there not,” asked the stranger, in a deep tone of voice, “a lake,
in very ancient times, covering the spot where now stands yonder
village?”
“Not in my time, friend,” answered Philemon; “and yet I am an old man,
as you see. There were always the fields and meadows, just as they are
now, and the trees, and the stream murmuring through the midst of the
valley.”
The stranger shook his head. “Since the inhabitants of yonder village
have forgotten the affections and sympathies of their nature, it were
better that the lake should be rippling over their dwellings again!” He
looked so stern that Philemon was almost frightened; the more so, that
when he shook his head, there was a roll as of thunder in the air.
While Baucis was getting the supper, the travellers both began to talk
with Philemon.
“Pray, my friend,” asked the old man of the younger stranger, “what may
I call your name?”
“Why, I am very nimble, as you see,” answered the traveller. “So, if you
call me Quicksilver, the name will fit me well.”
“Quicksilver? Quicksilver?” repeated Philemon. “It is a very odd name!
And your companion there! Has he as strange a one?”
“You must ask the thunder to tell it you,” replied Quicksilver. “No
other voice is loud enough.”
Baucis had now got supper ready and, coming to the door, began to make
apologies for the poor fare which she was forced to set before her
guests.
“All will be very well; do not trouble yourself, my good dame,” replied
the elder stranger, kindly. “An honest, hearty welcome to a guest turns
the coarsest food to nectar and ambrosia.”
The supper was exceedingly small, and the travellers drank all the milk
in their bowls at one draught.
[Illustration]
“A little more milk, kind Mother Baucis, if you please,” said
Quicksilver. “The day has been hot, and I am very much athirst.”
“Now, my dear people,” said Baucis, in great confusion, “I am sorry and
ashamed; but the truth is, there is hardly a drop more milk in the
pitcher.”
“It appears to me,” cried Quicksilver, taking the pitcher by the handle,
“that matters are not quite so bad as you represent them. Here is
certainly more milk in the pitcher.” And to the vast astonishment of
Baucis, he proceeded to fill not only his own bowl, but his companion’s
likewise. The good woman could scarcely believe her eyes.
“But I am old,” thought Baucis to herself, “and apt to be forgetful. I
suppose I must have made a mistake. At all events, the pitcher is empty
now.”
“What excellent milk!” observed Quicksilver, after quaffing the entire
contents of the second bowl. “Excuse me, my kind hostess, but I must
really ask you for a little more.”
Baucis turned the pitcher upside down to show that there was not a drop
left. What was her surprise, therefore, when such a stream of milk fell
bubbling into the bowl that it was filled to the brim, and overflowed
upon the table.
“And now a slice of your brown loaf, Mother Baucis,” said Quicksilver,
“and a little honey!”
Baucis cut him a slice accordingly; and though the loaf, when she and
her husband ate of it, had been rather dry and crusty, it was now as
light and moist as if but a few hours out of the oven. But, oh, the
honey! Its color was that of the purest gold, and it had the odor of a
thousand flowers. Never was such honey tasted, seen, or smelled.
Baucis could not but think that there was something out of the common in
all that had been going on. So, after helping the guests, she sat down
by Philemon, and told him what she had seen.
“Did you ever hear the like?” she whispered.
“No, I never did,” answered Philemon, with a smile. “And I rather think,
my dear wife, that there happened to be a little more in the pitcher
than you thought--that is all.”
“Another cup of this delicious milk,” said Quicksilver, “and I shall
then have supped better than a prince.”
This time old Philemon took up the pitcher himself; for he was curious
to discover whether there was any reality in what Baucis had whispered
to him. On taking up the pitcher, therefore, he slyly peeped into it,
and was fully satisfied that it contained not so much as a single drop.
All at once, however, he beheld a little white fountain which gushed up
from the bottom of the pitcher, and speedily filled it to the brim. It
was lucky that Philemon, in his surprise, did not drop the miraculous
pitcher from his hand. He quickly set it down and cried out, “Who are
ye, wonder-working strangers?”
“Your guests, Philemon, and your friends!” replied the elder traveller,
in his mild, deep voice. “We are your guests and friends, and may your
pitcher never be empty for kind Baucis and yourself, nor for the needy
wayfarers!”
The supper being now over, the strangers requested to be shown to their
place of repose. When left alone the good old couple spent some time in
conversation about the events of the evening, and then lay down to
sleep.
The old man and his wife were stirring betimes the next morning, and the
strangers likewise arose with the sun, and made their preparations to
depart. They asked Philemon and Baucis to walk forth with them a short
distance and show them the road.
“Ah me!” exclaimed Philemon, when they had walked a little way from
their door. “If our neighbors knew what a blessed thing it is to show
hospitality to strangers, they would tie up their dogs, and never allow
their children to fling another stone.”
“It is a sin and a shame for them to behave so!” cried good old Baucis.
“My dear friends,” cried Quicksilver, with the liveliest look of
mischief in his eyes, “where is this village that you talk about? On
which side of us does it lie?”
Philemon and his wife turned towards the valley, where at sunset, only
the day before, they had seen the meadows, the houses, the gardens, the
street, the children playing in it. But what was their astonishment!
There was no longer any appearance of a village! Even the fertile valley
in the hollow of which it lay had ceased to have existence. In its stead
they beheld the broad blue surface of a lake which filled the great
basin of the valley from brim to brim.
“Alas!” cried these kind-hearted old people, “what has become of our
poor neighbors?”
“They exist no longer as men and women,” said the elder traveller, in
his grand and deep voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo it in
the distance. “There was neither use nor beauty in such a life as
theirs; therefore the lake that was of old has spread itself forth again
to reflect the sky.
“As for you, good Philemon,” continued the elder traveller,--“and you,
kind Baucis,--you, with your scanty means, have done well, my dear old
friends. Request whatever favor you have most at heart, and it is
granted.” Philemon and Baucis looked at one another, and then one
uttered the desire of both their hearts.
“Let us live together while we live, and leave the world at the same
instant when we die!”
“Be it so!” replied the stranger, with majestic kindness. “Now look
towards your cottage.”
They did so. What was their surprise on beholding a tall edifice of
white marble on the spot where their humble residence had stood.
“There is your home,” said the stranger, smiling on them both. “Show
your kindness in yonder palace as freely as in the poor hovel to which
you welcomed us last evening.”
The astonished old people fell on their knees to thank him; but, behold!
neither he nor Quicksilver was there.
So Philemon and Baucis took up their residence in the marble palace, and
spent their time in making everybody happy and comfortable who happened
to pass that way. They lived in their palace a very great while, and
grew older and older, and very old indeed. At length, however, there
came a summer morning when Philemon and Baucis failed to make their
appearance, as on other mornings. The guests searched everywhere, but
all to no purpose. At last they espied in front of the door, two
venerable trees, which no one had ever seen there before. One was an oak
and the other a linden tree.
While the guests were marvelling how these trees could have come to be
so tall in a single night, a breeze sprang up and set their boughs
astir. Then there was a deep murmur in the air, as if the two trees were
speaking.
“I am Philemon!” murmured the oak.
“I am Baucis!” murmured the linden tree.
And oh, what a hospitable shade did they fling around them! Whenever a
wayfarer paused beneath it, he heard a whisper of the leaves above his
head, and wondered how the sound could so much resemble words like
these,--
“Welcome, welcome, dear traveller, welcome!”
--NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.