THE HAWAIIAN STAR — SEPTEMBER 30, 1911
Are There Mermaids Living Now?
Any fond gentleman have a mermaid?
You lovers who have dreamed of the melodious Lorelei in the storied Rhine; you passionate adventurers who have longed to be Ulysses, lashed to the mast, with a penknife to cut the lashings; you bathhouse Tritons who have longed for sea-maidens who didn't wear high heels on beaches, because fishtails and bathing shoes don't gee; you Polyphemuses and you Glaucuses to whose fond fancy Galatea, porpoise-drawn, alone will suffice—for all of you the blissful news is here.
The mermaid is real. There are sirens in the sea more genuine than any song by romancing Homer, more quick with life than the noticeably healthy imitations you have been enraptured with on the operatic stage.
Be satisfied with that. Read no further. Stick to the good old tales of the shellbacks who have been wooed by sirens in shoals, and would have brought ’em along home for marriage and divorce if only some trick of balky fate hadn't ravished them from eager sailor arms.
The rest of this tale is for the girls you have been so ready to forsake? It'll comfort them more than it can please you, because, while the realty is genuine, it is very different from your poetic dreams.
The mermaid proves a creature far indeed from the ideal sea-maiden the romancers have pictured her, as far from the
