SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (SECOND SOWING).AND what did the visitors say of the Swans?
They said, “Oh, what a number of them!”—which was all that was to be said by persons ignorant of the natural history of aquatic birds.
And what did the visitors say of the lake?
Some of them said, “How solemn!” Some of them said, “How romantic!” Some of them said nothing—but privately thought it a dismal scene.
Here again the popular sentiment struck the right note at starting. The lake was hidden in the centre of a fir wood. Except in the middle, where the sunlight reached them, the waters lay black under the sombre shadow of the trees. The one break in the plantation was at the farther end of the lake. The one sign of movement and life to be seen was the ghostly gliding of the swans on the dead-still surf
