I advise you little folks to take a good look at me. You don’t often see a Black Swan. White Swans are very common, common as white Geese. I only wish I could have had my picture taken while gliding through the water. I am so stately and handsome there. My feet wouldn’t have shown either.

Really I don’t think my feet are pretty. They always remind me when I look down at them of a windmill or the sails of a vessel. But if they hadn’t been made that way, webbed-like, I wouldn’t be able to swim as I do. They really are a pair of fine paddles, you know.

There was a time when people in certain countries thought a Black Swan was an impossibility. As long as there were black sheep in the world, I don’t see why there shouldn’t have been Black Swans, do you?

Well, one day, a Dutch captain exploring a river in Australia, saw and captured four of the black fellows. That was way back in sixteen hundred and something, so that one of those very Black Swans must have been my great, great, great, great grandfather. Indeed he may have been even greater than that, but as I have never been to school, you know, I can’t very well count backward. I can move forward, however, when in the water. I make good time there, too.

Well, to go back to the Dutch captain. Two of the Swans he took alive to Dutchland and everybody was greatly surprised. They said “Ach!” and “Himmel,” and many other things which I do not remember. Since that time they say the Black Swans have greatly diminished in numbers in Australia. You will find us all over the world now, because we are so ornamental; people like to have a few of us in their ponds and lakes.

They say that river in Australia which the captain explored was named Swan river, and Australia took one of us for its armorial symbol. Well, a Black Swan may look well on a shield, but no matter how hard you may pull his tail-feathers, he’ll never scream like the American Eagle.