"How long is it since you left your parent's roof, young woman?"

"I cannot tell, sir, exactly. It was about the time of the first Punic war."

"Punic war? I never heard of such a war as that; Come no deception, miss; I know you better than you think for"-poor Jerry trembled from head to foot-" what is your father's name? We'll see about this matter."

Galatea now rose, with the blood of a goddess mantling in her cheek. She saw the danger they had fallen into, but she had a woman's wit to get out of it. She commended and flattered her examiner, for his zealous vigilance, but besought him not to condemn her by appearances. She told him that she had lately been obliged to fly from her native land, on account of some popular excitement against her family, which, she said, had always furnished the rulers and judges of the country. That on her voyage of expatriation she had been shipwrecked upon Raccoon beach. That her life had been saved by her betrothed, and she had determined to give him herself and her treasures forever.

This was plausible, although, in the main, terribly destitute of fact. She added, further, that her fortune was ample, and that most of it was rescued from the wreck, and that she intended to make a generous present to the magistrate who should make her happy.

The good justice's heart was affected by this recital, and particularly by the concluding part of it. He began to see the case more clearly.

He assured her, that he had not intended to say any thing unpleasant, and the ceremony should be finished with all speed. First, however, he said it was his duty to write in the book the christian names of her father and mother.

This was a poser of a requisition; but Galatea simply said that the names of her parents were Nereus and Doris. So, down it went into the book, "Gally Teer, daughter of Nereus Teer and Doris Teer, spinster."

The formality was now soon completed, and without further trouble; although Jerry once told a particular friend of the grandfather of the narrator of this legend, that the justice looked "most almighty awful," when Galatea pulled off her glove, and presented her hand for the investment of the wedding ring. He must have noted, in that dangerous moment, the submarine conformation of the lady's fingers. But on that same afternoon, a keg of Hollands found its way into the cellar under the bridal altar, and before many months the justice built a new house.

Thus Providence rewards discreet and considerate magis

trates.

The aforesaid narrator told me once, when I was a boy, that "he had a drink out on to that 'ere same liquor, in his honor's new house, several times, and that it was the best gin he ever tasted."

Of all the meannesses of which a man can be guilty, none equals the treachery of a friend who blabs your secret, provided, of course, he is well paid to keep it. Let not the juxta-position of this axiom, and the precedent narrative, lead any one to believe that the justice told Peet. Waters that he believed Jerry's wife was a mermaid. Scandal is an impalpable essence, and Hermes cannot seal it up. The tongue may be dumb, and the ear may be deaf, and the hand may be tied, yet does this entity extricate itself from its supposed place of confinement, and insinuate itself into other dwelling places, vainly believed to be surely fortified against its admission. It is like the pressure of the mighty VOL. I.-19

sea upon a closely sealed empty bottle. It passes out of and into the eyes. The pores of the flesh, the touch of the hand, the air, are all its sure and well regulated avenues of travel. Mist, fog, and steam,-particularly of the tea-kettle, are the frequent vehicles of its portation.

The beginning of the third year after Jerry's marriage, saw him the father of two as fine boys as a man could wish to look on; and a happier couple than he and his wife never existed. But suspicion was abroad, and dark surmises threatened the family on the beach. In sorrowful truth, it became pretty generally known, that Galatea was not, exactly after the order of women, although no one ventured to call her, in so many words, a mermaid. She was too good, and too human-like for that. Yet Peet. Waters swore he heard her singing, one night, out in the breakers; and that he believed that more than one vessel had been lured on shore by the magic of her voice. Alas! alas! malice and envy were working fearful sorrows for the daughter of the sea.

One melancholy night, at the time when rumor was most busy, and danger was most imminent, Galatea came home from the wide waters, where she had been disporting, pale and in deep distress. She told her husband that she had seen her father-that he had warned her of sudden peril, and insisted that she, with her sisters, must leave the inhospitable coast forever. Forever! Husband and wife !— that tells the story of the scene that followed. But there was a rosy-cheeked little fellow in the cradle-" Oh! my boy!"-what else Galatea said could hardly be understood —a woman always talks so thick and unintelligibly, when she is crying and kissing-and kissing her child, and bidding it good-by, never to see it again. The morrow's sun

lighted to the beach the virtuous Peter and a constable. Galatea had been indicted under the statute against witches.

"Where is your wife?" was the first gruff sentence that broke the still air of the morning.

The response of " gone, gone, and buried in the sea," added a mortified, if not a much grieved gentleman, to the trio of mourners which the beach had already possesed.

Yes-Galatea had torn herself away, and had departed with her sisters in search of some more charitable clime. Jerry could never be induced to tell the circumstances of their separation. All that he ever related, was that, about three o'clock in the morning, just as the moon was going down, he was awakened by the mermaid music. Galatea sprang out of bed, burst into tears of bitter agony, and saying, "they have come for me-farewell, farewell," she bounded into the surf. Jerry followed, with a breaking heart, but was waved back by the mermaids, with an authority and a spell which he could not resist. He then stood upon the beach, watching their fading forms, as they glided away to the southeast, singing a mournful dirge; and he traced them until they came to where the sky and the water met, when they seemed to open a door in the blue firmament, and disappeared from his aching eyes,

Since that time, not a mermaid has been seen on the south side of Long Island.

It was not long before Jerry left a spot full of such painful associations. Within a few weeks he removed down east, and laid the foundation of the ancient city of Smithtown. His boys were the greatest sea-dogs in the country; and to this day, not a man on Long Island can clam, crab, jack, shoot, or draw a net for bony fish with the

skill and success of those who have inherited the honorable name of " Smith."

NOTE. The lover of classical proprieties, to whom the interesting facts of this narrative are new, must not shake his incredulous head, without making some inquiry into the matter. That a sea-nymph should take a fancy to a fisherman, is nothing new nor strange. All women whether of the land or of the sea, will bestow their hearts upon whom they please. As to the fact of mermaids having lived on the coast, there is now no doubt whatever. Every man of literary pretensions on Long Island, will confirm the wellattested tradition. Moreover it is incontrovertibly shown, by the laborious author of the "Parakalummata Hamerikana," that after the general spread of christianity throughout Greece, the divinities of the air, earth and sea, all abandoned their neglected shrines, and migrated to this country. Every body knows, that the American Antiquarian Society points to its demonstration, that the old fortifications and other extensive works at the west, were constructed by Vulcan and the cyclops, as the chef d'œuvre of its learned labors. If anything farther be needed, reference may be had to the very man, mentioned above as the particular friend of the grandfather of the narrator of this legend, and who is now living at Jerusalem, very old, but very sensible. He is the same veracious chronicler who tells the story well known all over the island, as legend of Brickhouse Creek."

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