THE GLOBE-REPUBLICAN — JUNE 04, 1890
AN OLD ARTIFICER TELLS HOW THE SIRENS ARE MADE ♢ Monkeys’ Bodies Joined to Fishes’ Tails with Cunning and Dexterity—A Favorite with Showmen—Even Doctors Deceived.
“Mermaids made and repaired.” Such an advertisement, says a writer in the Philadelphia Times,was well calculated to attract attention, and, as it confronted me one day in a little-frequented street in a large Eastern city, I determined to make the acquaintance of the maker of these incongruities. Pulling an old-fashioned brass bell-handle, a little old man crowned with a square paper cap came to the door, and after eyeing me suspiciously for a moment invited me in. There was the “beggarly array of empty boxes;” vials containing strange animals; curious stuffed birds, which peered down from high shelves and were laced together by cobwebs laden with dust, while many other objects strewn about told of the trade of the taxidermist.
“Yes,” said the old man in reply to my questions, “I am a mermaid-maker, and I flatter myself that I have produced some of the most artistic mermaids ever placed upon the market. Why, sir,” continued the speaker, warming up under the recollection of his triumphs, “I produced one that fooled even the doctors. You see, mermaids have been made as long as any thing. The Chinese manufactured them centuries ago, and so well that a largo number of people believed in them; and if the work is fairly done the production is one of the best cards a show can have.
