So went the procession.  All walking with hands laid heavily on their paunches, or where they used to be.  Lovers had lost the light of interest from their eyes, wedded people the light of retrospection, statesmen the pride of intellect, princes and legates the pride of power.  Wealth flashed in a thousand diamonds to contrast with the heavy eyes that had no vanity in them, and religion wore the asceticism of everlasting gloom instead of the hope of immortal life.

As Mr. Andrew Waples beheld these things, and felt his thirst impel him toward the fountain of the High Rock, he became sensible of a wonderful change in the proportions of that object.  It had always been a mound or cone of sand, clay, magnesia, and lime, well oxidized, and made rusty-red by the particles of iron in the composition deposited with the other materials, through ages of overflow.  It had never been above three feet in height, and of little more diameter than a man’s stature.  The water, flowing through its middle, sparkled and discharged diamond showers of bubbles, and ran down the ochre-besmeared sides, to disappear in the ground, the cavity through which it came not more than ten inches wide.  Such had been the dimensions of the High Rock Spring.

But it was now a mountain, rising high in the air, and flowing crystal and gold, like a volcano in an eruption of jewels.  The pyrites of sulphur and motes of iron, that formerly gleamed in the rills that trickled down its slopes, were now big as cascades, filled with carbuncles and rocks of amethyst.  A mist of soft splendor, like the light of stars crushed to dust and diffused around the mountain’s head, revealed an immense multitudes of people scaling the slopes, and drinking; and some were raising their hands to Heaven in praise, and some were drawing the water from the mountain’s base by flumes and troughs.  This extensive prospect fell to a foreground of people, such as Mr. Waples had been mingling with, and these were clamoring and supplicating for water faster than a hundred dippers there could pass it up.  The dippers were of all garbs and periods, from Indians and rustics to boys in cadet uniform.  The vessels with which they dipped were of all shapes and metals, from conch shells and calabashes to cups of transparent china, and goblets of gold and silver.  Amongst the dippers, conspicuous by his benevolent face and clothing of a butternut color, was the Great Dipper himself, directing operations.

“Drink freely!” he exclaimed, “for the night is going by.  Sir William Johnson has ordered his litter, and the company is breaking up.  Drink while you may, for the sun is soon to arise, and ye who have no stomachs will be exposed and disgraced.”

“Hark ye! old friend,” whispered Andrew Waples to the Great Dipper, “are there here people alive, as well as dead people, and why do they fear exposure?”

The Great Dipper replied:  “Nobody can be said to live who has lost his stomach.  We make no other distinction here.  There are thousands who have lost them, however, and who deceive mankind.  Even these, you perceive, who drink at the High Rock Spring, flirt while they feel unutterable gloom, and so are dead women above the ground tied to living men, and men without a human hope of health mated to joyous beauty and animation.”