excerpt from the book..You may see some of the best society in New York on the top of theDistributing Reservoir, any of these fine October mornings. There weretwo or three carriages in waiting, and half a dozen senatorial-lookingmothers with young children, pacing the parapet, as we basked there theother day in the sunshine-now watching the pickerel that glide along thelucid edges of the black pool within, and now looking off upon the sceneof rich and wondrous variety that spreads along the two rivers on eitherside."They may talk of Alpheus and Arethusa," murmured an idling sophomore,who had found his way thither during recitation hours, "but the Crotonin passing over an arm of the sea at Spuyten Duyvil, and bursting tosight again in this truncated pyramid, beats it all hollow. By George,too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the Ægean Sea to Byron's eye,gazing from the Acropolis! But the painted foliage on these crags!-theGreeks must have dreamed of such a vegetable phenomenon in the midst oftheir grayish olive groves, or they never would have supplied the wantof it in their landscape by embroidering their marble temples with gaycolors. Did you see that pike break, sir?"