Page 210 - Adventures in shadow-land

mg for the pepper and vinegar. After this acci­

dent the professor could never be induced to re­
peat the performance except in a small circle of

his intimate friends.
Now, there was one curious thing about this
family* and one which makes me think there was

some truth in the legend of their descent from
Gulna.re and the King of Khorassan,

All the other merpeople have the greatest ob­
jection to human beings, and shun all inhabited
coasts, seaport towns and ships. But every once

in a while a member of this race would show the
oddest fancy for the shore and a kind of longing

after human society— a longing which of course
they never could gratify, for they could not live
out of the water, and if they had been able to de­

sert the sea, the forked ends of their long tails
would have been of 110 use on land.

A few years before the family left the English
coast, a younger son had actually married a human
girl who went back to her friends and deserted

him on the shamefully false pretence that she
wanted to go to church. The poor merman went

out of his wits and died, and was ever afterward