STILL WATERS 



191 



margins. Almost every town has a local body 

 of water of this description which answers to 

 the adjective of " Silver," " Blue," " Fresh," 

 or "White."' The sarcasm of the name 

 is unconscious but not the less biting, for 

 the pond is generally a stagnant, malarious 

 little place, with the frog, the bull-head, and 

 the snake for occupants its waters yellow and 

 its shores green with scum and parasitical 

 vegetation. Its principal charm lies in what it 

 may reflect of light and color from the sky. 



Quite different from this is the pond that lies 

 away from civilization, hidden, perhaps, in the 

 depths of some forest where tall trees come 

 close down to the shore and peer into the 

 water, where the vines and underbrush make 

 an almost inaccessible bank, and where the 

 brown water, lying over sunken trees and beds 

 of leaves, makes a dark mirror for the sky. 

 The silence, the solitude, the utter isolation 

 of the woodland lake seem to give it inter- 

 est. So, too, with the prairie pond, lying 

 out on the treeless plains in its fringe of wild 

 rice the spot where once the swan and the 

 wild goose paused in their migratory nights, 

 where once the buffalo came to wallow, and the 

 Indian and his pony to drink. Birds and 



