WILD WATER POND. There is a magnet-like attraction in That links the viewless with the visible, Campbell. In the early part of my life, I was fond of sporting, and possessed an adventurous turn of mind, which frequently led me many days' journey from home, exploring the country, with little care for any means of subsistence beyond my dogs and gun. In one of these rambles, about the month of December, I continued to follow my game far into the Low Counties, where I was swamped and bewildered amongst wild fowl of every description. My eagerness led me on and on, I knew not whither, till I found myself, towards dusk, in the middle of a large moor, which seemed destined to be my bed for the night. The prospect was not very comfortable, for I was wet through, and well nigh starved. Whilst musing what was to become of me, I reached the broken towing path of an old, and apparently deserted, river, for I could perceive no recent trace of horses, and a dilapidated lock, hard by, was covered with moss, as though it had not been opened for a month. I took my seat upon the decayed handle of the gate, and looked wistfully along the banks, in the faint hope of spying some solitary barge which might supply my necessities. Fortune was disposed to favour me; for, as my eye gradually rose towards the cold, blue distance, I could distinctly see a little column of moving smoke. In a moment afterwards, I discovered a red night-cap, and heard the smack of a whip. Never did any thing come more opportunely. In a few minutes the boat arrived at the lock. It was laden with coals, but my habits had rendered me not over difficult as to accommodation, and it answered my purpose as well as could be wished. The captain, who was likewise all the attendants, excepting a ragged boy who flogged the horses, was an intelligent fellow enough for his kind, and informed me that I was ten or a dozen miles from the nearest house, which it was impossible for me to find, and twenty from Wild Water Pond, whither he was bound. As he described the country onwards to be a grand rendezvous for wild ducks, and it signified very little in which direction I travelled, I stepped on board, and took up my quarters in his little smoky cabin. My companion had been chosen for his present occupation (for which beings of civilized regions would have had little fancy) from the vagrant tribes of those parts, who were in the habit of being driven about from place to place by the floods, and my predilections for wandering appeared to win much upon his regard. He told me long stories of the weariness of working a barge along a river where nothing was moving, and how it was only supportable in winter time, when it was cold sleeping under a hedge, and the fowls went home to roost, and suppers were scarce. He consoled himself likewise with the reflection that it was excellent sport to steal after the wild birds, occasionally with an old brass fire-lock, six feet long, and stocked up to the muzzle, and that, if the place was lonely, there was the less danger of interruption from gamekeepers and justices of the peace. Things, however, were shortly to undergo a vast revolution. All the bog which I saw to the right and left was to be turned into parks and pleasure-grounds, all the peat holes were to be fish ponds, and every bulrush was to spring up into an oak tree. And then for fine houses! they were to stand as thick as daisies! Upon inquiring who was to perform all these prodigies, I was told that they were to be the work of the great man who had built a house in the Pond. This great man, it appeared, was not very great yet, but meant to be so shortly. He had the character of having undertaken wonderful projects which no one else had ever thought of, and, though they had never yet repaid his pains, he was allowed on all hands to be the greatest genius in the world, and sure to be strangely rich some day or other. In other words, he had been an unsuccessful speculator, and was determined to persevere until he made or marred himself. Amongst other wise calculations, he had taken it into his head that it was cheaper to buy water than land, and had purchased Wild Water Pond, an interminable sheet of that element, only broken by a few beds of bulrushes, and small islands of quagmire, for the purpose of draining it, and planting it, and doing heaven-knows-what with it, till both the lord and the land were to thrive for all the world like Jack and the bean stalk. Like speculators in general, Mr. Carrol, which was the wise man's name, was too much occupied to consider the comforts of those who depended upon him, and had brought a patient, gentle-hearted wife, to recruit a sickly constitution in the strong holds of typhus and the ague. There was likewise a young lady whom he called his daughter, but who went by another name. From this I concluded that the mother had been married twice, and had probably herself been the subject of a speculation, and made her fortune à stepping-stone to the Pond, in which they stood so good a |