The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

AMONGST THE MERMAIDS “Wack up!” he shouted from the tent door. ‘“ Walk up! Walk up! and see the marvellous mermaid! Only four sous !” It was at the Gingerbread Fair of Neuilly, and the showman was a squat little fellow, ridiculously like the gingerbread figures which his neighbour was selling, and from which the Fair derives its name. I admit I did not expect to see a mermaid, but I was tired of peep-shows and waxworks and fasting men, and there was something so incongruous in the idea of a mermaid, even an imaginary one, being exhibited in this rickety booth, by the light of a naphtha lamp, that, for a moment, I stopped to listen. The man stood in the doorway, shouting, to attract the passer- by, and there was a picture too, to aid him: the picture of a wondrous creature with flaxen hair and a hectic flush, and decked with a silvern tail. Ilistened to his patter. She must be a wonderful person, this mermaid: she could swim, she could eat, and, at times, she could even talk. She was as large as life, and, by all accounts, she was more than twice as natural. So, at length, I paid my twopence, and I saw—a seal! There it lay, at the bottom of a miniature bear-pit, and with its wistful face and its great pathetic eyes it really did look quite as human as the majority of its audience. The thing was a I ¥ 337