Project Gutenberg's The Man In The Reservoir, by Charles Fenno Hoffman

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Title: The Man In The Reservoir

Author: Charles Fenno Hoffman

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23167]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR ***

Produced by David Widger

THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR

By Charles Fenno Hoffman

You may see some of the best society in New York on the top of the
Distributing Reservoir, any of these fine October mornings. There were
two or three carriages in waiting, and half a dozen senatorial-looking
mothers with young children, pacing the parapet, as we basked there the
other day in the sunshine-now watching the pickerel that glide along the
lucid edges of the black pool within, and now looking off upon the scene
of rich and wondrous variety that spreads along the two rivers on either
side.

"They may talk of Alpheus and Arethusa," murmured an idling sophomore,
who had found his way thither during recitation hours, "but the Croton
in passing over an arm of the sea at Spuyten Duyvil, and bursting to
sight again in this truncated pyramid, beats it all hollow. By George,
too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the AEgean Sea to Byron's eye,
gazing from the Acropolis! But the painted foliage on these crags!-the
Greeks must have dreamed of such a vegetable phenomenon in the midst of
their grayish olive groves, or they never would have supplied the want
of it in their landscape by embroidering their marble temples with gay
colors. Did you see that pike break, sir?"

"I did not."

"Zounds! his silver fin flashed upon the black Acheron, like a restless
soul that hoped yet to mount from the pool."

"The place seems suggestive of fancies to you?" we observed in reply to
the rattlepate.

"It is, indeed, for I have done up a good deal of anxious thinking
within a circle of a few yards where that fish broke just now."

"A singular place for meditation-the middle of the Reservoir!"

"You look incredulous, sir; but it's a fact. A fellow can never tell,
until he is tried, in what situation his most earnest meditations may be
concentrated. I am boring you, thoug