Baron Bruno Author:Louisa Morgan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EOTHWALD: THE YOUNG SCULPTOR. IT will not surprise you, dear children, to learn that after Hans Christian Andersen wrote his touching story of "The Little Me... more »rmaid," the whole world sighed with a strong desire to behold the true likeness of that loving and lovely heroine. Painters and sculptors wandered anxiously by the sea-shore ; not alone in Denmark, but in many other countries, seeking thus to obtain a glimpse of one of the mermaidens—whose whole race has been for ever immortalized by the gentle Dane—longing to depict on canvas, or to carve in marble, the fair lineaments of the faithful sea-child who gave her voice and her life for the Prince she loved. Now for successive ages it has been well known among the denizens of the ocean that trouble and misfortune must certainly fall on the mermaiden whoshould visit the shore too frequently, or permit her likeness to be taken in any form whatsoever. Long, long ago, the most beautiful of the sea- nymphs rose in her gambols to the surface of the billows; and as in those days mermaids wore no tails, and were consequently unable to steer themselves properly, she was carried on shore by the force of the waves, where such was the confusion caused by her charms, that gods and goddesses themselves quarrelled about her, and artists in their enthusiasm neglected everything else to depict in all its bewildering beauty the sea-born loveliness of " Aphrodite." Great was the indignation excited by the appearance of this fair interloper in the aerial courts, and " Here," the Queen of Olympus, persuaded her husband, the awful " Jove," to issue a decree ordaining that henceforth and for evermore all mermaidens should bear long tails; thus confining their dangerous influence to. their own native element; and furthermore forbidding them, o...« less