Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of four old friends, one glass of miraculous water, and a lesson nobody learns.
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Ten words unlock the story. Work through the four short activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words from the story: folly · vanity · withered. Match each definition to the right word — out loud, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen — Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne — and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures who had been unfortunate in life. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigour of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost everything in a mad speculation and was now little better than a beggar. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, his health and his fortune in the pursuit of sinful pleasures. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame — until time had buried him in obscurity. And the Widow Wycherly had been a great beauty once; but scandalous stories had turned the town against her, and she had lived many years in deep seclusion. It is worth stating that each of the three old gentlemen had once been an early lover of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake.
"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study." His study was a very curious place: dim, old-fashioned, festooned with cobwebs, crowded with books — and, between two bookcases, a tall mirror in a tarnished gold frame, in which, it was said, the ghosts of all the doctor's dead patients dwelt. In the centre of the room stood a table, and on it a beautiful cut-glass vase. Four champagne glasses were set around it.
From among his folios the doctor lifted a heavy old book, and from its black-bound pages he took a rose — or what had once been a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals were of one brownish hue, and the flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in his hands. "This rose," said the doctor with a sigh, "was given me five-and-fifty years ago by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs there. I was to have worn it at our wedding. Five-and-fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now — would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?" "Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly with a peevish toss of her head. "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again." "See!" answered Dr. Heidegger. He threw the rose into the water of the vase. Soon the crumpled petals stirred; they grew crimson; the leaves turned green; and there was the rose of half a century, as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover.
1. Who are the four guests, and what ruined each of them?
2. What does the doctor do with the fifty-five-year-old rose — and what happens?
1. Mr. Medbourne, a merchant ruined by wild speculation; Colonel Killigrew, wrecked by sinful pleasures; Mr. Gascoigne, a disgraced politician; and the Widow Wycherly, a former beauty ruined by scandal. All three men were once her rivals in love.
2. He drops the withered rose — kept since his dead bride-to-be gave it to him — into the vase of water. Petal by petal, it blooms again, as fresh as fifty-five years before.
"That is certainly a very pretty trick," said the guests, "— pray, how was it done?" "Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth," asked Dr. Heidegger, "which the Spanish adventurer Ponce de León went in search of, two or three centuries ago? A friend of mine has sent me the water you see in the vase. And before you drink, my respected friends," he continued, "it would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time through the perils of youth. 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 friends answered him with 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. Almost immediately, a healthier glow crossed their cheeks; they sat straighter; they felt like new-made beings in a world of new-made joy. "Give us more of this wondrous water!" they cried eagerly. "We are younger — but we are still too old! Quick — give us more!" "Patience, patience!" said Dr. Heidegger, watching with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely you might be content to grow young in half an hour!" But he refilled the glasses, and as the water's delicate bubbles rose, the guests drank again — and now they were in the happy prime of youth.
And youth, it appeared, had swallowed the lifetime of experience whole. The guests were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberance of their feelings. Mr. Gascoigne's mind ran on political topics — mouthing patriotic speeches to no one; Colonel Killigrew trolled out a jolly drinking song while his eyes wandered towards the widow's figure; Mr. Medbourne was calculating a mad scheme for supplying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror, curtseying and simpering to her own image, greeting it as the friend she loved better than all the world. "My dear old doctor," she cried, "pray favour me with another glass!" "Certainly, my dear madam," replied the complaisant doctor. "See! I have already filled the glasses." And the four guests drank a third time.
1. What warning does the doctor give before the first drink — and how do the guests receive it?
2. What does each guest immediately return to, once young?
1. He suggests they draw up rules, using a lifetime's experience, so they can be models of wisdom the second time through youth. They laugh at the very idea that they could ever repeat their mistakes.
2. Exactly what ruined them: Gascoigne to political speech-making, Killigrew to drink and desire, Medbourne to insane money-making schemes, and the widow to her mirror and her vanity.
The three young men were soon on fire with the bewitching beauty of the young widow. They caught her round the waist; she struggled, laughing; they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. In the struggle the table was overturned, and the vase was dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, where a dying butterfly — grown old in the summer's decline — had alighted; the insect fluttered its wings, rose, and flew away. The guests stood still. "Come, come, gentlemen! — come, Madam Wycherly!" exclaimed the doctor. "I really must protest against this riot." They stood still and shivered; for it seemed that grey Time was calling them back from their sunny youth.
Dr. Heidegger sat in his carved armchair, holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. He watched it: even while the party gazed at it, the flower continued to shrivel, till it became as dry and fragile as when he had first thrown it into the vase. "I love it as well thus," he said, "as in its dewy freshness." His guests shivered again. Was it an illusion? Had the marks of age been merely hidden for a moment? They looked at old Dr. Heidegger's mirror, and fancied that a wrinkled, withered figure looked back at each of them. Yes — they were old again. With a miserable impulse the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face. "Yes, friends, ye are old again," said the doctor; "and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it — no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!"
But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountain of Youth.
1. How does the Water of Youth come to be lost — and what small creature benefits?
2. What lesson does the doctor draw — and what do the guests do instead?
1. The three men fight over the widow, overturn the table, and shatter the vase; the water spills across the floor, where it revives a dying butterfly, which flies away.
2. The doctor declares he would not drink the water even if the fountain ran at his door — the experiment has confirmed that youth without wisdom simply repeats itself. His guests learn nothing: they resolve that very evening to travel to Florida and drink from the fountain morning, noon and night.
The story is one long "what if": What would you do if you had your youth back? English uses the second conditional for situations that are imaginary, unlikely or impossible — exactly the territory of magic water.
Fill each gap with the correct form of the verb in brackets.
1. If the guests (be) truly wise, they would refuse the third glass.
2. The doctor says he (not / drink) the water even if the fountain gushed at his door.
3. If you (find) a bottle of the Water of Youth tomorrow, who would you tell?
1. were (if-clause: past form, "were" for all persons)
2. would not drink / wouldn't drink (main clause: would + base verb)
3. found (if-clause: past simple)
Give each guest advice using If I were you, I would / wouldn't…. Write the missing words.
1. To Mr. Medbourne, planning his whale-and-iceberg scheme: "If I you, I invest a single coin."
2. To the Widow at the mirror: "If I were you, I less time consulting the glass and more consulting your memory."
3. To all four, reaching for the bottle: "If I were you, I for the effect of the first glass before demanding a second."
1. were · wouldn't (advice + negative)
2. would spend
3. would wait
Fill each gap with the correct second-conditional form of the verb in brackets. Read the whole paragraph aloud when you finish.
If youth (return) with wisdom attached, the experiment might end differently. But if these four (become) young a hundred times, they (make) the same mistakes a hundred times over. And if the fountain itself (flow) at my doorstep, I (not / stoop) to drink from it.
returned · became · would make · flowed · would not stoop
Notice: past simple in every if-clause, would + base verb in every main clause — and none of it is about past time. It is all imagination.
Hold on to this structure — the whole Speak tab is built on "What would you do if…?"
Hawthorne published this story in 1837, and it carries his lifelong obsessions: sin, second chances, and scientists who experiment on human souls. He even hints, mischievously, that the whole thing may have been an illusion — the guests may only have believed themselves young. The story works either way, which is exactly the point.
This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than racing through it.
Tell the story of Dr. Heidegger's Experiment in your own words, as if to someone who has never heard it. Move through the arc: the four ruined guests → the withered rose that blooms → the warning and the laughter → three glasses, and youth returned → the quarrel, the shattered vase → old again — and the pilgrimage to Florida.
Use at least two second conditionals (if they were wise, they would…) and at least five key words (experiment, melancholy, sparkle, folly, vanity, withered, quarrel, youth, wisdom).
The glass is in front of you: one afternoon of youth, with your memories intact. Build your answer as an argument, not just a yes or no: What would you do with the hours? What would tempt you to a second glass? And knowing the guests' fate — would you still reach for the first one? Use second conditionals throughout.
The story is about imagined second chances. Talk through an imagined life of your own — seriously or playfully — using If I…, I would….
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: