Whether the shrimps or crawfish gray, Or crafty mermaids stole them away, Nobody knew; and nobody knows How the Pobble was robbed of his twice five toes!

Thus there may be not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea-serpents engulf every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity.

Children call them "mermaids' purses."

The fisherman understood that these were mermaids who lived on desolate rock islands far out at sea and had assumed seal disguises in order to come up on land and enjoy the moonlight on the green islets.

At first all was play and laughter, which was changed to weeping and wailing when one of the mermaids could not find her seal robe.

"'Don't you recollect how you danced with the mermaids?'

For it is thus with mermaids: one who beholds them must needs find them more beautiful than any one else, and the mermaid's blood being mixed with the water that bathed the shores, her beauty was transferred to both.

He made us understand in fish-language that he had found a wonderful, wonderful cave, where a party of mermaids had collected a lot of shells, oh, enough to fill a great house!

Now, I can't tell a thing as to the truth about mermaids.

And the mermaids are said to be daughters of the river-god that have lived ever in the deep and sounding ocean.

Sirens were sometimes thought to be different from mermaids, but we fishes know them to be one and the same thingthat is, if they exist at all.

Still, there are both Folks and fishes that believe in the mermaids and their songs, and what am I that I should dare dispute them!

whisperI have heard that Folks who do not know so very much, will tell about "goblins," "spooks," and "catch-ums," and whenever there is talk about the mermaids and the sirens, I think of those Folks who believe in creatures that "never were.

But it would not do to talk in my watery home as if I had no belief in mermaids, because, you see, as most fishes have never been with Folks, and learned a thing or two from them, they do not know any better than to believe in these sweet, dangerous creatures.

"'The mermaids refuse my offering,' I said; 'will you accept it?'and I handed it, dripping with salt-water, to the fairy who sat so silently before me.

and, when she saw him enter the boat, wished aloud, that he might return with plenty of skins and oil; that neither the mermaids might snatch him into the deeps, nor the spirits of the rocks confine him in their caverns.

The gardener who had directed the growth of the aquarium believed in kelpies, undines, and mermaids, and had made for them the superbest playground conceivable even by sprites.

"Isn't it a curious thing, now, to think that we're all at sea a-eatin', and drinkin', and slaapin'or goin' to slaapjist as if we wor on the land, and the great ocean away down below us there, wid whales, and seals, and walruses, and mermaids, for what I know, a-swimmin' about jist under whare we sit, and maybe lookin' through the ice at us this very minute.

Vain, vain to say "Haunt not with night The Day!" THE MERMAIDS Sand, sand; hills of sand; And the wind where nothing is Green and sweet of the land; No grass, no trees, No bird, no butterfly, But hills, hills of sand, And a burning sky.

He looked at her with a kind of awe; for a moment the strange tales he had so often heard of mermaids and witches recurring to his mind.

I started early, took my dog, And visited the sea; The mermaids in the basement Came out to look at me, And frigates in the upper floor Extended hempen hands, Presuming me to be a mouse Aground, upon the sands.

In the middle is a pretty triangular fountain of the German Renaissance, which, besides having scepters, nymphs, angels, dolphins, and mermaids, serves as a pedestal to the Virgin Mary.

He has tales of giants, harpies, mermaids, and sea-serpents.

" And now Sall wanted him to stay at home, he informed us, with her and the children, but somehow or other he could never tarry long at the hearth, for the sea pulled him like it was his mother, and the spell of the tides was on him, and he must foller even if he went to his own destruction, like them men that liquor lures to loss, or the love of mermaids.

Rother embarked with this little train, and sailed for Constantinople over the summer seas; and as he sat on deck, playing on his harp, the mermaids rose from the deep to sport around his ship.