Nay , then , if the dinner-bell begins to speak , I may as well hold my peace . Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance with a large stone pitcher for me to fill . May she draw a husband while drawing her water , as Rachel did of old ! -- Hold out your vessel , my dear ! There it is , full to the brim ; so now run home , peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher as you go , and forget not in a glass of my own liquor to drink `` SUCCESS TO THE TOWN-PUMP . '' THE GREAT CARBUNCLE . -LSB- 1 -RSB- A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS . At nightfall once in the olden time , on the rugged side of one of the Crystal Hills , a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle . They had come thither , not as friends nor partners in the enterprise , but each , save one youthful pair , impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem . Their feeling of brotherhood , however , was strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that had drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck , on the lower bank of which they were to pass the night . There was but one of their number , perhaps , who had become so estranged from natural sympathies by the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended . A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement , while scant a mile above their heads was that bleak verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky . The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the mountain-stream talked with the wind . -LSB- Footnote 1 : The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant tale is founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought up in prose . Sullivan , in his history of Maine , written since the Revolution , remarks that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle was not entirely discredited . -RSB- The adventurers , therefore , exchanged hospitable greetings and welcomed one another to the hut where each man was the host and all were the guests of the whole company . They spread their individual supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a general repast ; at the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship was perceptible among the party , though repressed by the idea that the renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning . Seven men and one young woman , they warmed themselves together at the fire , which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam . As they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage , each man looking like a caricature of himself in the unsteady light that flickered over him , they came mutually to the conclusion that an odder society had never met in city or wilderness , on mountain or plain . The eldest of the group -- a tall , lean , weatherbeaten man some sixty years of age -- was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate , since the deer , the wolf and the bear had long been his most intimate companions .
He was one of those ill-fated mortals , such as the Indians told of , whom in their early youth the Great Carbuncle smote XXXXX a peculiar madness and became the passionate dream of their existence .
As At along by for from of since while with