swaness

— One thing we will say for the swaness, or she-swan. She makes a lovely mother! She and the cat are our ideal earthly types of the maternal relation. The mere human mother is an awkward thing alongside either of these creatures. To see the swan with her gray cygnets sailing about is not much more in itself than if she were a goose and goslings; but when she takes a mind to give the little things a ride, then we see riding pic-a-back “elevated,” as the newspapers say of circus-riding, “to the rank of a Fine Art.”