"Mermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Among these valuable water plants, I noted various seaweed: some Cladostephus verticillatus, peacock's tails, fig-leafed caulerpa, grain-bearing beauty bushes, delicate rosetangle tinted scarlet, sea colander arranged into fan shapes, mermaid's cups that looked like the caps of squat mushrooms and for years had been classified among the zoophytes; in short, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... parlor is comfortable, especially here where the old man sits in his old arm-chair; but on Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relicts of the Mermaid's knee-timbers—the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and clearer, be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in the village and the light of our household mirth flash far across ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in her arms and we broke into merry laughter. Then to please her I said that I would gather flowers for her hair—and she would be the stranded mermaid and I the fisherman whom she besought to put her back in the sea and rewarded with three wishes—and I sought flowers everywhere in the hollows and crevices of the bald old Watchman, where, through years, some soil ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... of the landscape might be French, these flowers were unmistakably Californian. The two pools, ornamented with the Arthur Putnam fountain of the mermaid, in duplicate, decidedly French in feeling, were brilliant with the reflected coloring from both the flowers and ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... of amusement flitted through the mind of Caius at the thought of the sidelight this threw on Jim's character. For Jim was not incapable of casting stones at even so rare a curiosity as a mermaid. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... with us money wherewith to pay the charges of the ship-master. From the manor-house to Scarborough there was a distance of twenty odd miles, and therefore we rode our horses. Sir Thurstan had given us instructions to put up at the Mermaid Tavern, near the harbor, and there we accordingly stabled our beasts and made arrangements for our own accommodation. The ship which we were expecting had not yet arrived, and was not likely to come in before the next day, so that we had naught to do but look about us and derive what ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... of the vessel than that part of it which had served him so well could he see; this fragment seemed rent from the bow; yes, there was the yellow wooden mermaid bobbing to the waves; but not as of old! Poor cast-out trollop,—now the seas made sport of her who once had held her head ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... and saw that the sunbeams were running over the wet skerry, and the Mermaid was still sitting by his side. But presently the whole thing changed before his eyes. It was the sun shining through the window-panes, on a bed in the Finn's hut, and by his side sat the Finn girl supporting his back, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the worthy farmer and his family a good while to sit down to supper, which that night included a kettle of furmety, a mermaid pie, and a taffaty tart. What were they? A very reasonable question, especially as to the mermaid pie, since mermaids are rather scarce articles in the market. Well, a mermaid pie was made of pork and eels, and was terribly rich and indigestible; a taffaty tart ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... natives, who have a way of bestowing all particularly grand and rugged sites upon that disagreeable personage; but Sara, having no mind to give up her favorite spot to his satanic majesty, always named it to herself the "Mermaid's Castle," and had a childish legend of her own about an enchanted princess confined here and guarded by the sea until the coming of ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the last century. "His son would not else have been so clever a youth! But here is Captain Ludlow looking at the ocean, as if he expected to see my niece rise out of the water, in the shape of a mermaid." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... he would catch me a Little mermaid, Some island where he lands, With her dripping curls, And her crown of pearls, And the looking-glass in her hands! Hail! Ho! Sail! Ho! Sail far o'er the fabulous main! And if I were a sailor, I'd sail with you, Though I never ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... author adds: "The merchant took the pearl, gave him what he considered its value—at all events enough to make Sulu ring with his generosity—and sent the pearl to China; but what became of it afterwards I could never distinctly trace; but I learned that a pearl in Bengal called 'The Mermaid' originally came from China, and as the one found in Sulu was said to be shaped like a woman's bust, it is probably ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of Allan. In love with Lucy Ashton, daughter of Sir William Ashton, lord-keeper of Scotland. The lovers plight their troth at the "Mermaid's Fountain," but Lucy is compelled to marry Frank Hayston, laird of Bucklaw. The bride, in a fit of insanity, attempts to murder the bridegroom, and dies in convulsions. Bucklaw recovers, and goes abroad. Colonel Ashton appoints a hostile meeting ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... poems which deal with the nocturnal sides of nature. These have at times a strange, shivering resonance, like an old violin whose notes ripple down your spine. I refer especially to such untranslatable poems as "Draugen," "Finn-Shot," "The Mermaid," and "Nightmare." The mood of these is heavy and uncanny, like that of the "Ancient Mariner." But they are indubitably poetry. It is by no means sure that the world has not lost a poet in Jonas Lie; but probably a lesser one than the novelist that ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... old gentleman rabbit, and before he could turn the spyglass the other way a lovely mermaid swam up and handed him her card, and on it was written ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... is not Beauty I demand, A crystal brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... ready to do so Nancy flew back to the table and blew out the light, and the next minute Huldah Spiller, dripping like a mermaid, was standing in the middle of the darkened room, and Doss Provine, breathing short, was barring ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... compared to some people," said Mr. Bellingham. "If anybody wanted a figurehead for a new Ship of Fools, I sometimes think a portrait of myself would be singularly appropriate. There are times when I should fix upon a friend for the purpose. Mermaid—half fish—figurehead, half man, half fool. That's ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... cutter sailed, he, Flucker, had seen her perched on a rock, like a mermaid, watching their progress, which had been slow, because the skipper, infatuated with so sudden a passion, had made ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... lianes, matapalos, orchids, wild pines with long air-roots or gray beards; and last, but not least, that strange and lovely parasite, the Rhipsalis cassytha, which you mistake first for a plume of green sea-weed, or a tress of Mermaid's hair which has got up there by mischance, and then for some delicate kind of pendent mistletoe; till you are told, to your astonishment, that it is an abnormal form of Cactus—a family which it resembles, save in its tiny flowers and fruit, no more than it resembles the Ceiba-tree on ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Annette's various athletic resources. It is good photography, and a big idea so far as the swimming episodes are concerned. An artist haunted by picture-conceptions equivalent to the musical thoughts back of Wagner's Rhine-maidens could have made of Annette, in her mermaid's dress, a notable figure. Or a story akin to the mermaid tale of Hans Christian Andersen, or Matthew Arnold's poem of the forsaken merman, could have made this picturesque witch of the salt water truly significant, and still retained the most beautiful parts of the photoplay as ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... gardenia?' replied a friend, idiomatically. 'That is Sir Runan Errand, the amateur showman—him that runs the Live Mermaid, the Missing Link, and Koot Hoomi, the Mahatma of ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... Indians saw the girls' clothes on the beach, and so looked out for the wearers. They found them in the water, and pursued them, and tried to capture them, but they were so slimy that it was impossible to take them, till one, catching hold of a mermaid by her long black ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... memories of sheepsheads and flanneled bathers and 'tis not for these that the poet gazes into the emerald depths whence the pearly scum, like tears of mermaids—Ah! Mermaids! Mr. P. had never seen a mermaid. These were not among his memories He deeply woulded that he could—and lo! he did! The creature came gliding to his very feet, and he had barely time to bound back before she reached the shore. Shaking the water from her spectacles, she came up, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... The / Mermaid's Prophecy / and other / Songs relating to Queen Dagmar / By / George Borrow / London: / Printed for Private Circulation ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... cordial and jolly and kind. We all went ashore, and pitched tents, and ate ducks and penguins till the men grew strong. I scraped her, nearly down to the bends, for the grass floated by our side like a mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the once swift Florida would not make four knots an hour on the wind;—and this was the ship I was to get into Bahia in good order, at ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... caused him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causeways, and to go lurking about in boats, putting this and that together. But, according to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. And Mr Inspector could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no Judge and Jury would ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... too tall, lithe and slim and sinuous as a mermaid, yet well enough rounded to make each delicate curve a charm, not merely of promise but of fulfilment. She wore a flowing morning-gown that made negligee seem to the suddenly intoxicated secretary the glorified costume for a woman. It was a richly embroidered ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... exclaimed Joe Dumsby, a short, thickset, little Englishman, who, having been born and partly bred in London, was rather addicted to what is styled chaffing. "Was you arter a mermaid, shipmate?" ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... if Lawrence, hired to grace His costly canvass with each flatter'd face, Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush, Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush? Or should some limner join, for show or sale, A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail? Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen) Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen? Not all that forced politeness, which defends Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends. Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems The book, which, sillier than a sick ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the Magdaleine, and the Mule, those "capital caverns," celebrated in Pantagruel's conference with the Limosin student, which has conferred upon them an immortality like that of our own hostel, the Mermaid, were wholly neglected; the dice-box was laid aside for the nonce; and the well-used cards were thrust into the doublets of these thirsty ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... flagon toward him, tilted it, and found it empty. His rueful face made me laugh. My lord laughed too,—somewhat loudly,—but ordered no more wine. "I would I were at the Mermaid again," lamented the now drunken Secretary. "There we did n't split a flagon in three parts.... The Tsar of Muscovy drinks me down a quartern of aqua vitae at a gulp,—I've seen him do it....I would I were the Bacchus on this cup, with the purple grapes ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... melodies, clung to her husband, protested her inability to leave him, and went, appearing torn away. As well bid healthy children lie abed on a bright summer morning, as think of holding this fair young woman bound to the circle of safety when she has her view of pleasure sparkling like the shore-sea mermaid's mirror. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was to gather sea-weed, of various kinds, and make herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... laying his left hand on the wrist that hung over the edge of the sofa. 'Ay, I hope that wicked little siren has done no great damage. Pulled you below, true mermaid fashion—eh?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Old Fish Street, Three Crowns in the Vintry, And now, of late, St. Martin's in the Sentree; The Windmill in Lothbury; the Ship at th' Exchange, King's Head in New Fish Street, where roysters do range; The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand, Three Tuns, Newgate Market; Old Fish Street, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... old skipper, 'I only wish that I was a young man, for the girl is said to be as handsome as a mermaid, and as for money, I s'pose she's worth devilish nigh upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... stations them at Chatteris. He meets Miss G—-, and her converse suggests a love passage between Pen and Blanche. Why did he dislike fair women so? It runs all through his novels. Becky is fair. Blanche is fair. Outside the old yellow covers of "Pendennis," you see the blonde mermaid, "amusing, and clever, and depraved," dragging the lover to the sea, and the nut-brown maid holding him back. Angelina, of the "Rose and the Ring," is the Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba is brune. In ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... I quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... joy in waiting on her! The morning sun sprinkled gold on her hair, and made her fair skin look milky white, like pearl; then, when she would pass under the arbour of trees, the shadows threw a glimmering veil over her, and turned her into a mermaid deep down in the ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... delightful boy, Will. Had tea been known in Shakespeare's time, how much more closely he would have brought his sexes, under one roof, instead of sending the more animal of the two off to The Boar's Head and The Mermaid, leaving the ladies ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... meeting of the two families at Walmer, and there, the shock of bathing nearly took out of her all the little life there was. I believe she would have gone into fits if mother had not heard her screams, and dashed on the nurse like a vindictive mermaid, and then made uncle Robert believe her. My aunt trusts the nurse, you must know, and lets her ride rough-shod over every one in the nursery. The poor little thing was always whining and fretting whenever she was not in Essie's arms or the Monk's, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this time a young beginner, thought what he got for the preceding time to be very well, and in a few days after this arrived at Windsor, where he stayed one night, and there being a gentleman's family bound for London, that lay that night at the Mermaid Inn in the town, he changed his lodging and removed to the inn; and having stayed there that night, he minded where they put their valuable baggage up. The next morning he paid his reckoning and came away, and got about four miles out of the town before them; then coming up and making the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... seaman, has a characteristic dialect; but that is very different from continually letting out his ruling passion. This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the personage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose -to turn into a mermaid. I approve the idea much: I like too the restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman. She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gradation to produce Barbara, without making her too glaringly bright without any intermediate shade. In truth, as you certainly may write ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Mitre and the Mermaid were celebrated taverns, which the poets, wits, and gallants were accustomed to visit. Mr. Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street, is in possession of a manuscript full of songs and poems, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... mercies, it pleased his diuine maiestie to moue my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to his glory, and to the contentation of euery Christian minde. Whereupon falling into consideration that the Mermaid, albeit a very strong and sufficient ship, yet by reason of her burthen was not so conuenient and nimble as a smaller bark, especially in such desperate hazzards; further hauing in account her great charge to the aduenturers being at 100. li. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... wer-wolf in the wood, Or was it mermaid in the sea, Or wicked man, or wile woman, My ain true ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... started all the mermaid stories? Round head, soft tender eyes, and a fish's tail? Seals! Obviously! And, if you notice old pictures of mermaids the tail is drawn as if it were split in two, just like the two long flippers of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... say anything about legs, and there aren't any in the pictures." "I can't help it, Nibble!" replied Brighteyes, rather pettishly. "I can't cut off my legs, and I am going to play mermaid. I can be the queen, and queens have everything they want, I know." And she turned round, displaying to my view a superb tail of seaweed, fastened to her sash, and ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish, whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been so ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of these lovers gave occasion to various fictions and conjectures. Some are of opinion, that they were changed into stars; others imagine, that Anningait was seized in his passage by the genius of the rocks, and that Ajut was transformed into a mermaid, and still continues to seek her lover in the deserts of the sea. But the general persuasion is, that they are both in that part of the land of souls where the sun never sets, where oil is always fresh, and provisions always warm. The virgins sometimes throw ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of gaping faces, Which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice; All jointly listening, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice, Some high, some low, the painter was so nice; The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... furrow'—when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'— when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you— the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... stoopid, for it has,' replied Louie, triumphantly. 'It's t' Mermaid Pool. Theer wor a Manchester mon at Wigsons' last week, telling aw maks o' tales. Theer's a mermaid lives in 't—a woman, I tell tha, wi' a fish's tail—it's in a book, an he read it out, soa theer—an on Easter Eve neet she cooms out, and walks about t' Scout, combin her hair—an if onybody sees her an wishes for soomthin, they get it, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe, a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history as calmly as if they were discussing the age of their deceased great-grandmothers. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the daughters of the sun; and hence the twelve birds of Russian Story. To the same cycle belong the Seal-tales of the Faroe Islands (Thorpe's Northern Mythology) and the wise women or mermaids of Shetland (Hibbert). Wayland the smith captures a wife by seizing a mermaid's raiment and so did Sir Hagn by annexing the wardrobe of a Danubian water-nymph. Lettsom, the translator, mixes up this swan-raiment with that of the Valkyries or Choosers of the Slain. In real life stealing women's clothes is an old trick and has often ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... destructive grasp she had wrested herself, but in whose friendly embrace she remained. She was already placing securely the foundations of commercial wealth and civil liberty upon those shifting quicksands which the Roman doubted whether to call land or water. Her submerged deformity, as she floated, mermaid-like, upon the waves was to be forgotten in her material splendor. Enriched with the spoils of every clime, crowned with the divine jewels of science and art, she was, one day, to sing a siren song of freedom, luxury, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" [Othello]; teratology. [unconformable to the surroundings] fish out of water; neither one thing nor another, neither fish ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her sister's husband, attempted, by a discourse in rhyme, when alone with him, to make him kinder to Adriana. In reply he told her that he was not married, but that he loved her so much that, if Luciana were a mermaid, he would gladly lie on the sea if he might feel beneath him her ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... roof above him, In his home a cloak around him; Better far if thou hadst sent me Far below the salt-sea surges, To become the whiting's sister, And the friend of perch and salmon; Better far to ride the billows, Swim the sea-foam as a mermaid, And the friend of nimble fishes, Than to be an old man's solace, Prop to stay him when be totters, Hand to aid him when he trembles, Arm to guide him when he falters, Strength to give him when he weakens; Better be the whiting's sister And the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... to Britain's pride Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died;— With the gallant good Riou;— Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave! While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles; Singing glory to the souls ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... she said. "Mother says there is no such thing as a mermaid, but I like to think there is. Have ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lizards and flying dragons of the Jurassic Epoch. Such a picture is really just as absurd, or, to speak more correctly, a thousand times absurder, than if one were to speak of those grand old times when Homer and Virgil smoked their pipes together in the Mermaid Tavern, while Shakespeare and Moliere, crowned with summer roses, sipped their Falernian at their ease beneath the whispering palmwoods of the Nevsky Prospect, and discussed the details of the play they were to produce to-morrow in the crowded Colosseum, on the occasion of Napoleon's ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... went out upon the sea, and called to the Mermaid, and she rose out of the water and sang to him. Round and round her swam the dolphins, and the wild gulls wheeled ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... she?—that the condition of Eleanor's fine spun locks on her arrival the night before, had been attributable to the fact that the O'Farrel baby had stolen her comb, and Eleanor had been too shy to mention the fact, and had combed her hair mermaid-wise, through her fingers. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the rest Of his ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... King"; one is called "May Colvin," and relates the story of a king's daughter who was beguiled from her father's house by a false Sir John; the other, intitled "Clerk Colvil," treats of a young man who fell into the snares of a false mermaid; the latter, indeed, bears a still stranger resemblance to the Danish tradition of "The Erl-King's Daughter." The fragment of "The Water King" may be found in ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... made strong running on Mermaid, Through furrows that led to the first stake-and-bound, The crack, half extended, look'd bloodlike and splendid, Held wide on the right ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... The other mermaid, that hight Sieglind, said, "Be warned, Hagen, son of Aldrian. My aunt hath lied to thee because of her clothes. If ye go to the Huns, ye are ill-advised. Turn while there is time, for ye bold knights have been bidden that ye may die ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... executive management, and also I put in a very large amount of my own money. My work was to be that of business director, for I did not know an iron or a coal mine from an alabaster ledge in the lunar spheres, and not half as much about an iron smelter as I did about converting whiskers into mermaid's tresses. However, one of the greatest iron men in New England, Aretas Blood, president of the Manchester Locomotive Works, and of the Nashua Steel and Iron Company, was at the head of the enterprise, which apparently safeguarded it. Well, it turned out that ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... instance, that if a person was to tell me that he had seen a mermaid, with the body of a woman and the scaly tail of a fish, I should at once say that I could not believe him. And why? because it is contrary to the laws of nature. The two component parts of the animal could not be combined, as the upper portion would belong to the mammalia, and be a hot-blooded ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... being regaled with the music we could see nothing to enlighten us as to its source, and were inclined to pronounce it a trick played by our fun-loving sailing-master. He, however, denied all agency in the matter, but counseled us to "keep a close look-out on the lee bow" if we wanted to see a mermaid. We had noticed a sort of thrilling motion on the lower deck, not unlike the sensation produced by the charge of an electro-galvanic battery; and this, the Parsee captain gravely assured us, was the mermaids' dance, and their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... of little water-creatures as fairy tenants; she had friends and playmates among the gulls and peeps, and learned curious things by watching crabs, horse-shoes, and jelly-fishes; and every day she looked for a mermaid. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... left about half of herself at eighteen years of age behind, and grafted the rest on to the relict of the late Mr F.; thus making a moral mermaid of herself, which her once boy-lover contemplated with feelings wherein his sense of the sorrowful and his sense of the comical ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... was it war-wolf in the wood, Or was it mermaid in the sea, Or was it maid or lurdon auld, He'd carry ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... here?" said the King. "It's a mermaid," said one. "It's a grampus," said another. "It's the devil," said a third. But they were all wrong; It was only Robert de Shurland. "Gramercy" said the King, "that fellow was ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... sevenpence. Treating Tony, and then he wouldn't shoot, so I did, one and eightpence. Living Skeleton, a penny—no, Tony treated me, the Living Skeleton doesn't count. Skittles, a penny, one and ninepence. Mermaid (but when we got inside she was dead), a penny, one and tenpence. Theater, a penny (Priscilla Partington, or the Green Lane Murder. A beautiful young lady, sir, with pink cheeks and a real pistol); that's one and elevenpence. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... that," went on the scientist. "We are going to make a voyage to the interior of the earth in our Flying Mermaid." ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... It is somewhat of an exception to the general rule of Browning's work. A large proportion of it is critical rather than creative, a criticism of critics; perhaps it would be at once more correct and concise to call it "Robert Browning's Apology." Pacchiarotto, At the "Mermaid", House, Shop and Epilogue, are all more or less personal utterances on art and the artist, sometimes in a concrete and impersonal way, more often in a somewhat combative and contemptuous spirit. The most important part of the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... impulse of hurrying up, or not hurrying, expecting to find James making breakfast himself, and cross at being made late for school, she turned on her pillow, half doubting whether she had dreamt these two years in one long night, and remembering that captive mermaid, who had but to resume her maritime headgear and return to her native element, to forget the very existence of her fisherman husband and children. No! Isabel was not come to that! but she was almost ashamed to enjoy her extra hour's repose; and then the leisurely breakfast—nay, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fairy Land, there lived a young mermaid who was very proud of her good looks. She was one of a family of mere or lake folks dwelling not far from the sea. Her home was a great pool of water that was half salt and half fresh, for it lay around an island near the mouth of ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... he was besieged by the trolls until morning. In Bornholm a chalice and paten belonging to the church are said to have been made out of a cup stolen in the same way by a peasant whose mother was a mermaid, and who had inherited some portion of her supernatural power; hence, probably, his intercourse with the trolls, of which he took so mean an advantage. At Vioel, near Flensborg, in Schleswig, is a beaker belonging to the church, and, like the chalice at Aagerup, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... days of Queen Elizabeth, tea, coffee, and chocolate were unknown save to travellers and savants, and the handmaidens of the good queen drank beer with their breakfast. When Shakespeare and Ben Jonson forgathered at the Mermaid Tavern, their winged words passed over tankards of ale, but later other drinks became the usual accompaniment of news, story, and discussion. In the sixteen-sixties there were no strident newspapers to destroy one's equanimity, and the gossip of the day began ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... magic comb changes little Mary Louise into a mermaid. The Polar Bear Porter on the iceberg Express invites her to take a trip with him and away they go on a ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... songs charm 'em like magic; so's they plunge into the waves to get to the mermaids. But the mermaids haven't any hearts, Trot, no more'n a fish has; so they laughs when the poor people drown an' don't care a fig. That's why I says, an' I says it true, that nobody never sawr a mermaid an' ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... with fear. "We are dead men now," he muttered; for, not many feet below him, seated on the crest of a massive wave, he saw the form of a beautiful woman, with a cruel face and long fair hair, which floated like a veil on the top of the water. 'Twas a mermaid, and he knew what ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... month we spoke his Majesty's ship Mermaid, with a convoy from England to New York. On the 15th the Orpheus took a schooner from Martinique, with a cargo of claret, so that with another sloop she had taken she had now five prizes. It was not, however, till the 26th of the month that ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... of this, the wicked step-mother sprang to her, and thrust her on a sudden overboard. The young girl was carried away by the blue waves, and came to the mermaid who rules over all those who are drowned in ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... always have the luck of picking up a mermaid," she declared. "I may find Father Neptune, or the Sirens, if I go a little farther; or perhaps I might drag back the sea serpent, as a neat little specimen for the school museum. If the trippers are often going to provide us with such entertainment, ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... by quoting Ben Jonson on poetry. The passage sent us to the bookcase to look up the "axioms" about poetry stated by another who was also, in spirit at least, an habitue of The Mermaid. In that famous letter from Keats to his publisher and friend John Taylor, February 27, 1818, there is a fine fluent outburst on the subject. All Keats lovers know these "axioms" already, but they cannot be quoted too often; and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... allurements. Charm is the Lat. carmen, a song, also used in the sense of 'magic verses'; wily full of wile (etymologically the same as guile). Train here denotes an artifice or snare as in 'venereal trains' (Sams. Agon. 533): "Oh, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note" (Com. of Errors, iii. 2. 45). See Index, Globe Shakespeare. Some would take 'wily trains' as ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... last of her receptacles, and, dismissing the matter, for want of better employment, her scissors were tinkering upon a tiny hand-glass with a setting thickly crusted in crystals, a trifle that one clear day a sailor diving from her father's ship had found upon the bottom of the sea,—a very mermaid's glass dropped in some shallow place for Eve herself, a glass that had reflected the rushing of the storm, the sliding of the keel above, the face of many a drowning mariner. Careless of all that, at the moment, she held it up now to the light to see if further ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... yourself a Tudor House would be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have planned himself a Norman Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the wine-cellar, and the fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall. His fellow cronies of the Mermaid would have thought him stark, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Pepys called it, was essentially a debating society for the dissemination of republican opinions. It was preceded only, in the reign of Henry IV, by the club called La Court de Bone Compagnie; by Sir Walter Raleigh's Friday Street, or Bread Street, club; the club at the Mermaid tavern in Bread Street, of which Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Raleigh, Selden, Donne, et al., were members; and "rare" Ben Jonson's Devil tavern club, between Middle Temple Gate ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the Hero Hogen, he Grew wrathful at her speech; He strook the wretched mermaid That she fell dead on ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... by fretting, however, and luckily other matters were soon absorbing Peggy's attention. She wrung the water from Dorothy's drenched hair and clothing, and set her in the sun to dry, a forlorn little figure of a mermaid. And then she performed a like service for herself, stopping at intervals to lift her voice in a ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... to Britain's pride Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died, With the gallant good Riou: Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave; While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls Of ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... hurried on, and when they came up close to the rocks they saw sitting on a flat and polished stone a mermaid combing her golden hair, and singing a strange sweet song that brought the tears to their eyes, and by the mermaid's side was a ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... rules in a society of actors and dramatists and amateurs who must have been incessantly talking about plays and play-writing, and some of whom were ardent champions of the rules and full of contempt for the lawlessness of the popular drama? Who can doubt that at the Mermaid Shakespeare heard from Jonson's lips much more censure of his offences against 'art' than Jonson ever confided to Drummond or to paper? And is it not most probable that those battles between the two which Fuller imagines, were ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... found ourselves in the snuggery of a quaint tavern, which was often to figure hereafter in our sentimental history, though probably little in these particular chapters of it. The things 'seen done at "The Mermaid "' may some day be written in another place, where the Reader will know from the beginning what to expect, and not feel that he has been induced to buy a volume ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... seized upon by consciousness as a presentation, and to the extent to which one is aware of this object of consciousness, he is said to recognize, or to know it. A state of consciousness is always, therefore, a state of knowledge, or of intelligence. Thus, whether we perceive this chair, imagine a mermaid, recall the looks of an absent friend, experience the toothache, judge the weight of this book, or become angry, our conscious state ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... information concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian makara, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite," and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," pp. 382 et seq. and 399 et seq.; and especially the detailed reports in de Morgan's ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... remarked David Duffy, who was no respecter of names or persons, "it ain't a wreck, it's a mermaid. I've bin told they weigh over six ton when young. Look out when ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... know'. 'Well, it 'ad bin empty for a long time and we found this 'ere table in a cupboard under the stairs. A bloody fine table it was too. One of them bracket tables what you fix to the wall, without no legs. It 'ad a 'arf-round marble top to it, and underneath was a carved hoak figger, a mermaid, with 'er arms up over 'er 'ead 'oldin' up the table top—something splendid!' The man on the pail waxed enthusiastic as he thought of it. 'Must 'ave been worth at least five quid. Well, just as we pulled ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Detail—Pacific Photo and Art Co. "The End of the Trail"—J. L. Padilla "The Pioneer" The Court of Palms. Portal between the Courts of Palms and Seasons—Pacific Photo and Art Co. Fountain of Summer—J. L. Padilla The Mermaid Fountain Fountain of "Beauty and the Beast" The Palace of Machinery Palace of Machinery, Interior Vestibule, Palace of Machinery—Gabriel Moulin Palace of Fine Arts Open Corridor, Palace of Fine Arts Detail of Rotunda, Palace of Fine Arts Colonnade, Fine Arts, and Half-Dome, Food Products ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... lower down were other bushy weeds growing in all forms and positions, while further away in the deeper water rose up great feathery fronds and waving arms, like the tentacles of some giant octopus feeling for its prey. This bed of snake-like brown arms was a weird spot, which only wanted a mermaid or two to make it complete; but I, as a mere man, could only complete the picture by magnifying in my mind's eye the innumerable fishes which swam in and out among the luxuriance of marine vegetation, so as to fancy them mermaidens, and thus ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the dragon,' thought Dick one day, as he sat contemplating the features of Miss Sally Brass. 'I suspect if I asked any questions on that head, our alliance would be at an end. I wonder whether she is a dragon by-the-bye, or something in the mermaid way. She has rather a scaly appearance. But mermaids are fond of looking at themselves in the glass, which she can't be. And they have a habit of combing their hair, which she hasn't. No, she's ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Lushington. Mr. Walker, our Surgeon. Mr. Powell, Surgeon. Corporal R. Auger, Corporal John Coles, and Private Mustard of the Corps of Sappers and Miners. J.C. Cox, a Stock-Keeper. Thomas Ruston, a Sailor who had been on the coast of Australia in the Mermaid with Captain King. Evan Edwards, a Sailor. Henry Williams and R. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... merry place, Where he goes with fondest face, Brightest eye, brightest hair: Tell the Mermaid where ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the story goes—had always longed to see a Merrow. Merrow is the Irish name for seafolk; indeed, it properly means a mermaid. And Jack, you know, lived in a fairy tale, and not in lodgings at a watering-place on the south coast; so he saw his Merrow, though we never ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... enterprise. When Shirley returned from Alexandria he found, to his disgust, that the transports still lay at the wharf where he had left them on his departure.[253] The muskets arrived at length, and the fleet sailed on the twenty-second of May. Three small frigates, the "Success," the "Mermaid," and the "Siren," commanded by the ex-privateersman, Captain Rous, acted as convoy; and on the twenty-sixth the whole force safely reached Annapolis. Thence after some delay they sailed up the Bay of Fundy, and at sunset on the first of June anchored within five ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have scandalized a fashionable mermaid. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... and there were white mouldings like dolphins in the ceiling-angles. Even that one touch of colour visible in the red satin pincushion bore affinity to coral; even that dark, shining glass might have mirrored a mermaid. When I closed my eyes, I heard a gale, subsiding at last, bearing upon the house-front like a settling swell upon a rock-base. I heard it drawn and withdrawn far, far off, like a tide retiring from a shore of the upper world—a world so high ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... in the idea of an unicorn, your questioner included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn, as an antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon—and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... The mermaid noticed that the lower floor was full of water. 'Why,' cried she, 'that is just the place for us, for we can't live quite out of water.' So saying, she and her brother swam in and took up a position in the bathroom, the princess ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... created, but only as the spirit of nature created around him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand un-named English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which we can form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... his berth with his head turned so that he could gaze through the open port-hole at the glorious, glistening sea, and as the doctor very softly pushed the door a little open there came clearly to the listeners' ears a scrap of the old sea song, "The Mermaid":— ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... widower, but his old mother kept house for him; she was a clever woman, but so proud of her noble birth that she wore twelve oysters on her tail, while the other grandees were only allowed six. Otherwise she was worthy of all praise, especially because she was so fond of the little mermaid princesses, her grandchildren. They were six beautiful children, but the youngest was the prettiest of all; her skin was as soft and delicate as a roseleaf, her eyes as blue as the deepest sea, but like all ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... lady followed the mermaid through a winding gallery, which led from the chief hall far into the marble hill. All was dark, and they had neither lamp nor torch, but at the end of the gallery they came to a great stone gate, which creaked like thunder on its hinges. Beyond that there was a narrow ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... ye ill woman, Ye're no come here for gude; Ye're but some witch or wil' warlock, Or mermaid o' the flood.' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here. There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers — the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue. I know ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... first touch of Neptune's hand. Only the professional mermaid can look well at sea. The other women either lie on deck in pale green rows and live throughout the voyage on sea biscuits and sherry, or, giving up completely, seek burrows in the ship and hibernate like animals awaiting spring. Yes, even now I think I recognise the blonde divinity. She's ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... like the Nereids, So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... rhythm seems to be not merely his trade but his morning exercise. Noyes's own relish filled and quickened glees and catches like Forty Singing Seamen (1907), the lusty choruses in Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (1913), and the genuinely inspired nonsense of the earlier Forest of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... the cup that does more than cheer, neither he himself conceals it, nor is evidence to the same effect wanting on the part of his contemporaries. Drayton says that he was in the habit of 'wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid Tavern, where he drank seas of Canary; then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... a mermaid, came to land with a grin. Under one arm a pasty sack of flour was tucked, under the other a smoked venison haunch. "An' I took a ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Newman distinguished himself by a most gallant action which he fought off the coast of Ireland. He was then in command of the Mermaid, 32-gun frigate, and was cruising in consort with the Revolutionnaire, of 38 guns, Captain Twysden, and the Kangaroo, gun-brig, commanded by Captain Brace. On the 15th October, when near Black Cod Bay, two very large French frigates were seen and pursued, but they were ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... formed. This difficulty ceases when we consider, that it is as easy to form an idea of feminine features with male organs of reproduction, or of male features with female ones, as the contrary; as we conceive the idea of a sphinx or mermaid as easily and as distinctly as of a woman. Add to this, that at the time of procreation the idea of the male organs, and of the female features, are often both excited at the same time, by contact, or ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the Cheap Jack's wife saw them all. The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the penny theatre, and a mermaid in ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... waves seemed gathering upward to descend and crush the house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady, transformed into a mermaid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. Beyond that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but as he looked at the dismal horizon the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Architects Colonnade, Palace of Fine Arts. Bernard R. Maybeck, Architect The Setting Sun. Adolph A. Weinman, Sculptor The Nations of the West. A. Stirling Calder, Frederick C. R. Roth, Leo Lentelli, Sculptors The Mermaid. Arthur Putnam, Sculptor The Adventurous Bowman Supported by Frieze of Toilers Details from the Column of Progress. Hermon A. MacNeil, Sculptor The End of the Trail. James Earl Fraser, Sculptor Autumn, ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... scoffers my brier was known as the Mermaid. The mouth-piece was a cigarette-holder, and months of unwearied practice were required before you found the angle at which the bowl did ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... disappear and not be missed, for an American will take my place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant things are expected of you, which you neglect at your peril. It is like the old fable of the mermaid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order that she might win his affection, she prayed that she might have the limbs and feet of a human maiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met her prince; but every step she took was as if she trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit in your chair ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... literature, and had to devote evenings to the wits. To him has been ascribed the institution, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of the Mermaid Tavern meetings in Bread Street, Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's, Camden's, and Donne's club. It is very likely; so likely that the intrinsic probability of the fact might be a motive for a fiction. Whether as founder or guest ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... where it was the custom of that day to entertain considerably. The old Red Lion Inn at North Second and Noble streets, a picturesque gambrel-roof structure of brick with a lean-to porch along the front, is an interesting survival of the inns and taverns of Colonial days, as was also the old Mermaid Inn in Mount Airy, until torn down not long ago. At such gatherings were represented the most brilliant minds this side of the Atlantic, and scintillating wit and humor enlivened the festive board, as contrasted with the bitter religious ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... devotedly attached to their veteran dictator, his reminiscences, opinions, affections, and enmities. And we hear, too, of valorous potations; but in the words of Herrick addressed to his master, Jonson, at the Devil Tavern, as at the Dog, the Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... you rowed me over here, my good fellow, but no fair lady accompanied me, unless it might have been some mermaid. I hope you are satisfied,' said he, turning to my companions, 'that the man who has brought you here has played ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she came—he thought she came—in the form of a mermaid, raising herself aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this window, and below it we saw the deep moat in ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... and unschooled. Not too sure of instrumentalism, oft the note was hesitating, soliciting a compliant ear as became a modest wooer of the muses, polishing his unceremonious serenade to some, shy mermaid, or ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of Zennor, about a quarter of a mile distant, lies in a wild and stony district. Within the very interesting church are some quaint bench ends, one of which depicts a mermaid, complete with comb, mirror, and fishy tail, but the carving is of a very primitive order. On Zennor Beacon is the famous Zennor Quoit or Cromlech, the largest in Cornwall, and one of the finest in the country. Between Zennor and St. Ives a wild tract of country forms the parish of ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... kind Professor Henderson made for use in the Flying Mermaid, in which we went to the center ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... all colours Came floating in with the foam; They were wond'rous bright and beautiful, For they grew in the mermaid's home. ...
— At the Seaside • Mrs. Warner-Sleigh
... work; and that he ran off to the Low Countries, and there enlisted as a soldier. On his return to London, he began to write for the stage. Jonson was a friend and companion of Shakespeare's; and at the Mermaid, in Fleet Street, they had, in presence of men like Raleigh, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and other distinguished Englishmen, many "wit-combats" together. Jonson's greatest plays are Volpone or the Fox, and the Alchemist— both comedies. In 1616 he was created Poet-Laureate. For many years he was ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... the beautiful banks of a lake and Nature's embellishment of reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. In another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while a most sheep-like ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Hudson was despatched in 1607 with a crew of ten men and a boy. He reached Spitzbergen, and reached 80 deg. N., and in the following year reached the North (Magnetic) Pole, which was then situated at 75.22 deg. N. Two of his men were also fortunate enough to see a mermaid—probably an Eskimo woman in her kayak. In a third voyage, in 1609, he discovered the strait and bay which now bear his name, but was marooned by his crew, and never heard of further. He had previously, for a time, passed into the service of the Dutch, and had guided ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... such as one might entertain when looking at a mermaid or an inhabitant of Mars, that I first saw a genuine Negrito in a prison at Manila. The wretched pigmy had been brought in to the city from his inaccessible retreat in the great forest; he was dazed and frightened at the white men and the things they did. He was a miserable little fellow, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... are charming, and the occasion prettily prepared for a vocal show piece. She invokes the shell as the cradle of Aphrodite, hears in its murmurs the song of the sea nymphs, the humming of bees amid the oleander's aeolian whispers, and the soft confessions of a mermaid. Then the sounds grow wild, and stimulate her fancy to a picture of rushing waters, flying foam, and wrathful surge—the vision which is realized in the last act. Here the suggestion for musical delineation is obvious, and Signor Mancinelli has utilized it in such ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... there the little girl remained perched upon a rock, at the foot of which the waves now only sullenly washed, for the night was beautifully calm and clear. To a passer on the ocean she might have been mistaken for a mermaid who had left her watery bower to look upon ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in with a newspaper in his hand, to read me a curious account of a mermaid, that was seen singing a Gaelic song, and combing its hair with a tortoise-shell comb, someway terrible far north about Shetland, by a respectable minister of the district, riding home in the gloaming after a presbytery dinner. So, as he was just taking off his spectacles cannily, and saying to me—"And ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Liberty," he alludes to the tradition that Mona, the druidic stronghold, was long covered with an enchantment of mist—work of an angry mermaid: ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... I hear, with awful dread, The plaintive music of the dead; They leave the amber fields of day: Soft as the cadence of the wave, That murmurs round the mermaid's grave, They mingle in the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... to assume a virtue which she cannot assimilate, still it is like a foreigner who speaks your language to perfection in all but accent, and whom you long to hear in his own tongue. Put her back in her Welsh castle, and the scales would fall from her as from a mermaid who loves. If she returns to her father at the end of the season, I think I will call upon her six months later. She should go now, though; scales are apt to corrode. But what is the mystery about ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Lady mar, gently inclining toward Wallace, "might the beautiful mermaid of Corie Vrekin keep her court! Observe how magnificently those arching cliffs overhang the hollows, and how richly they are studded ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... nearly sealed the Mermaid's fate with Captain King, we found to lie half a mile north-west from the north-east end of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... was the lady's bath: and, in spite of the oppressive nature of the waking thoughts which had succeeded her delicious dream, in spite of that conviction of loneliness which lay like a weight of lead upon her soul, she disported in the waters like a mermaid. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of note about town hath or had its club. The Mermaid Tavern is immortalized as the house resorted to by Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and Beaumont; the Devil—which, Pennant informs us, stood on the site of Child's-place, Temple Bar—was the scene of many a merry meeting of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... why she wept so, and Aino replied: 'I weep, O mother, because thou hast promised me to the aged Wainamoinen, to be his comforter and caretaker in his old age. Far better if thou hadst sent me to the bottom of the sea, to live with the fishes and to become a mermaid and ride on the waves. This had been far better than to be an old man's slave ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... a Jenny Wren, now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The Times? Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved wife of Mr. Capt'n Peter Quilliam, of a boy—a girl,' I mane. Aw, the wonder there'll be all the island over—everybody getting ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... graceful bay-windows—altogether pleasing. Wherever one wanders one meets with these charming dwellings, especially in West Street and Pump Street; the oldest house in Rye being at the corner of the churchyard. The Mermaid Inn is delightful both outside and inside, with its low panelled rooms, immense fire-places and dog-grates. We see the monogram and names and dates carved on the stone fire-places, 1643, 1646, the name Loffelholtz seeming to indicate some foreign refugee ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... of Heaven O'er your grave! While the billow mournful rolls And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing—glory to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman |
