青春之泉 第1期

Long, long ago, somewhere among the mountains of Japan, there lived a poor woodcutter and his wife. They were very old and had no children. Every day the husband went alone to the forest to cut wood, while the wife sat weaving2) at home.

One day the old man went further into the forest than usual to seek a certain kind of wood, and he suddenly found himself at the edge of a little spring he had never seen before. The water was strangely clear and cold, and he was thirsty. So he took off his straw hat, knelt down, and took a long drink.

That water seemed to refresh him in a most extraordinary way. Then he caught sight of his own face in the spring, and was startled. It was certainly his own face, but not at all as he was accustomed3) to seeing it in the bronze mirror at home. It was the face of a very young man! He couldn't believe his eyes. He put up both hands to his head which had been quite bald4) only a moment before, when he had wiped it with the towel he always carried with him. But now it was covered with thick black hair. And his face had become smooth as a boy's: every wrinkle5) was gone. At the same moment he discovered himself full of new strength. He stared in astonishment at the limbs6) that had been so long withered7) by age: they were now shapely and hard with young muscle. Unknowingly he had drunk of the Fountain of Youth and been transformed8).

First he leaped high and shouted for joy; then he ran home faster than he had ever run before. When he entered his house, his wife was frightened because she took him for a stranger. When he told her the wonder, she could not believe him at first. But after a long time he was able to convince her that the young man she now saw before her was really her husband. Then he told her where the spring was.

Then she said, "You have become so handsome and so young that you cannot continue to love an old woman, so I must drink some of that water immediately. But it will never do for both of us to be away from the house at the same time. You wait here while I go." And she ran to the woods all by herself.

She found the spring, knelt down, and began to drink. Oh! How cool and sweet that water was! She drank and drank and drank, and stopped for breath only to begin again.

Her husband waited for her impatiently and expected to see her come back changed into a pretty slender girl. But she did not come back at all. He got anxious, shut up the house, and went to look for her.

When he reached the spring, he could not see her. He was just on the point of returning when he heard a little wail9) in the high grass near the spring. He searched there and discovered a baby, a very small baby, perhaps six months old, lying in his wife's clothes.

1. Lafcadio Hearn: 拉夫卡迪奥・赫恩(1850~1904)，作家，生于希腊，长于爱尔兰，后移居美国，最后定居日本。他写了很多关于日本的著作，因撰写日本传说故事集与日本灵异故事集而闻名。

2. weave [wiːv] vi. 纺织；织布

3. accustomed [əˈkʌstəmd] adj. 惯常的，通常的

4. bald [bɔːld] adj. 秃头的，秃顶的

5. wrinkle [ˈrɪŋkl] n. 皱纹

6. limb [lɪm] n. 肢；臂；腿

7. withered [ˈwɪðəd] adj. 枯槁的，萎缩的

8. transform [trænsˈfɔːm] vt. 使变形，使改观

9. wail [weɪl] n. 恸哭(声)，嚎啕(声)