Read Online An Embarrassment of Riches by James Howard Kunstler - Free Book Online

asked.
    â€œHow old was I? Three score and twelve, sir. And this was back in ’96, mind you.”
    Bilbo rolled his eyes in calculation.
    I beat him to it. “I shall be eighty on the first of October next.”
    â€œBy Jehovah’s short hairs!” Bilbo exclaimed. “Ain’t it a marvel, though! Go on, lad.”
    â€œYes. Well, the effect was almost instantaneous. I experienced it as a fugue of bodily sensations, not altogether pleasant. Frankly, I thought myself at first in the grip of an apoplexy, a coupe de sang as it were. I seized a trunk of a young box elder”—
    â€œ Acer negundo ,” Uncle said.
    â€”“and the attack passed. I climbed back upon Old Tom, my horse, and went my way.”
    â€œThis was on Zane’s Trace?” Bilbo inquired avidly.
    â€œThis was off the Trace,” I replied.
    â€œHard by the Trace, perhaps?”
    â€œSome distance from it. A day’s march, at least.”
    â€œDear me,” Bilbo shrank back into his seat. “Well, what happened next?”
    â€œI became aware, in a very vivid degree, of the aroma of sassafras, of wild roses, of bear dung—all the scents of the woods—and realized it had been long since I had enjoyed such olfactory delights. Years. Decades! I was near besotted with it. That is no exaggeration, sir. Soon, I began to feel a tingling in every joint in my body. My eyes were assaulted by a clarity, a brightness of vision—”
    â€œLike the effect of phrensyweed,” Uncle inserted. “Furor muscaetoxicus.”
    â€œThank you, brother. Ahem . It was then that I chanced to look down at my hands, gripping the pommel of my saddle, and damn me if all the gnarls of gout, all the deformities of arthritis, all the liver spots and blue veins of dotage had vanished! Suddenly, I gasped for my very breath, and realized that my cravat was like to choke the life out of me. I reached for my throat and ripped the collar open. But all my clothes were now tight beyond endurance. My frock coat bit into my shoulders as if it had suddenly shrunk two full sizes. My breeches went slack at the waist. Without that premeditation of movement that is a hallmark of old age, I leaped from Old Tom to the ground and landed on legs that had the spring of a young roebuck’s, then at once cast off my clothing. Had this occurred on any civilized highway or city street, I would have been trundled off to the nearest lunatics’ asylum, no doubt. But I looked down upon myself and, by heaven, I was a youth again! Gone were the sagging gut, the teatlike bosoms, the broomhandle arms and spindly legs. I reached for my face and ran my fingers across it like a blind man feeling the face of a long-gone loved one. The dewlaps and wattles had vanished! I was transfigured!”
    â€œBy Jupiter’s thundering bungchute!”
    â€œIndeed, sir, my very sentiments—”
    â€œSammy!”
    â€œI must be candid, brother, though it pollute your morals. But, there I was: a new man. Being of a lifelong skeptical bent, I puzzled my brains to discover what might be the cause of this momentous transformation. For breakfast I had consumed the ham of a bear and a cupful of mulberries—nothing more. It had to be something in that spring, thought I. I hastened to retrace my steps to it, and this time brought up Old Tom to sip from its modest pool. In a matter of moments he too began to submit to the most startling transformation. Where his coat had been dull and listless, it suddenly shone like waxed mahogany. Where his old spine had swayed under two decades of saddlery, it became as straight as an oak beam. Where mane and tail had hung in graying tatters was suddenly luxurious black hair, as stiff as that of a hussar’s charger—”
    â€œBy God’s flaming gorget!”
    â€œMy thoughts exactly, sir. But Old Tom’s throes did not end there, for he was seized by such a thirst that he would not