CARRYING OFF HUMAN BEINGS.     Numerous instances are related of these people of the sea having carried off human beings, conveying them to their pearl-lined grottoes in the depths. Mermen have in this manner often obtained human girls for brides, while mermaids not infrequently seek to secure for husbands good-looking youths from dry land. Sometimes the individuals who are entrapped or seduced into taking up a submarine manner of life have found it much more enjoyable than their former terrestrial existence, but in a majority of the cases on record they have sought to escape sooner or later. In Denmark one day a merman enticed a maiden to the bottom of the ocean. She became his wife and bore him several children, but she always felt a longing to go up when she heard the bells in the steeple, of her native village. Finally her husband permitted her to go, on promise that she would return, but she never did come back, and his wails from the depths are often heard. AN ARAB BELIEF.     The Arabs believe that certain fishmen live on islands in the Indian ocean and eat drowned people. In a Japanese story a boy has his fish carried off by a large fish. A merman appears and sets him afloat in a basket, in which he sinks to the palace of the sea dragon, whose daughter he falls in love with and marries. In the tale of the Lord of Dunkerron he encounters a mermaid. “For a beautiful spirit of ocean, ’tis said. The Lord of Dunkerron would win to his bed. When by moonlight the waters were hushed to repose The beautiful spirit of ocean arose. Her hair, full of luster, just floated and fell O’er her bosom, that heaved with a billowy swell.”

SOME EXTRAORDINARY TALES.     It is said that a mermaid asked a Scotchman who was reading the Bible if there was any comfort in the book for her. He replied that there was mercy for the sons and daughters of Adam, whereupon she screamed and disappeared. In the year 1619 two councillors of Christian IV of Denmark, while sailing between Norway and Sweden, discovered a merman swimming about with a bunch of grass on his head. They threw out a hook and line, baited with a slice of bacon, which the merman seized. Being caught, he threatened vengeance so loudly that he was thrown back into the sea. One extraordinary tale relates to a maiden who while on a voyage is seen and beloved by a merman. He bores a hole in the ship and transforms her into a serpent, thus enabling her to escape through the hole, after which he changes her into a mermaid and makes her his wife. In a Sicilian story a maiden treacherously thrown into the sea is carried off by a merman and chained to his tail. On one occasion a peasant is said to have chalked a cross upon a water sprite’s back, preventing him from going into his natural element until the cross was removed.     A Party of fishermen once found a lump of ice in the sea and gave it to St. Theobald, their bishop, to cool his gouty feet. He heard a voice inside and succeeded by saying thirty masses in liberating and saving the soul of the spirit within. Every lake, river and pond in Germany is inhabited by water spirits. Some are good and others bad. They often come ashore, when they may be known by the wet hem of their garments. Norwegian sailors believe in a mysterious water goblin who singes their hair while they are asleep, knots ropes and commits all sorts of absurdities. He is a small man, with