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.
Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the
party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous
wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over
all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their
cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like.
They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really
begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had
been so long engraving on their brows.
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