Page 211 - Adventures in shadow-land

held up as an example to any of the younger ones
who showed any signs of similar weakness. To

care anything for human creatures is counted dis­
graceful in mer society, and the older members of

the family for the most part felt it their duty to
express the greatest possible animosity to the
whole human race. The old professor of magic

had once said that he would swim a hundred
miles to see a shipwreck if he were only sure the

people would all be drowned, but he was strongly
suspected of having saved a drunken sailor who

fell overboard from a Cape Cod schooner. The
professor himself used to deny this story with

great indignation, and say it was of a piece with
the slanderous invention about his family's con­
nection with Gulnare of the sea and her misalli­

ance.
His grandson, however, if the story was hinted

at in his presence^ would look grave and say that
he had never supposed the story was true, but if it

were, his grandfather had only obeyed the dictates
of mcrmanity* This was a shocking speech in the

ears of the merpeople. Our young merman,
however, had distinguished himself in the war,