They fill reservoirs out of which
great steam-engines pump the water to quench the thirst of Brooklyn.
Even the smaller streams tarry long enough in their seaward
sauntering to irrigate a few cranberry-bogs and so provide that
savoury sauce which makes the Long Island turkey a fitter subject
for Thanksgiving.
But this brook of which I speak did none of these useful things.
It was absolutely out of business.
There was not a mill, nor a reservoir, nor a cranberry-bog, on all
its course of a short mile. The only profitable affair it ever
undertook was to fill a small ice-pond near its entrance into the
Great South Bay. You could hardly call this a very energetic
enterprise. It amounted to little more than a good-natured consent
to allow itself to be used by the winter for the making of ice, if
the winter happened to be cold enough. Even this passive industry
came to nothing; for the water, being separated from the bay only by
a short tideway under a wooden bridge on the south country road, was
too brackish to freeze easily; and the ice, being pervaded with
weeds, was not much relished by the public. So the wooden ice-
house, innocent of paint, and toned by the weather to a soft, sad-
coloured gray, stood like an improvised ruin among the pine-trees
beside the pond.
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