“Never as I know of. There’s more fish in the sea than ever come out of it. I expect these nimps of yourn are some of the kind that never come out.” “You never were more mistaken in your life, Job Chippit. They have been seen on the surface of the sea over and over again. We know almost all their names, and how could they have names if they were not real beings? Answer me that!” “Oh!” said Job, standing back to take a general survey of his wooden Flora. “They’re some of them heathen young women your head is always so full of, Master Torrey?” “Young women! Why they were goddesses, man, or a sort of goddesses. Was there not the white-footed Thetis, mother of Achilles? and did she not come to him with all her attendant nymphs—Melite, and Doris, and Galatea, and Panope?” “I’ve hearn tell of _her_,” said Job, touching up the wreath on Flora’s head; “it’s in Lycidas: ‘The air was calm, and on the level brine _Slick_ Panope and all her sisters played.’ “Jest so; I kinder like to read that piece. It don’t seem to have so very much meanin’ to’t, I must say, but I sort of like the sound of it. Them nimps lived in the sea, or folks thought they did, didn’t they?” “Yes, Job, as we live on the land. I’m by no means sure that I haven’t heard and seen Nereides and Oceanides myself when I’ve been out by moonlight on the bay or round the rocks.” “I guess they never was any round these parts; it’s too cold for ’em. I knew an old sailor once that said he’d seen a mermaid, but I suppose you don’t want me to stick a curly fish’s tail on your figure-head?” “No, indeed. Make her full length, like the most beautiful woman you know.” “Hev’ you any idee how them young women used to dress. Master Torrey?” asked the wood-carver. “I’d like to go as near the nature of the critter as I could. I must say the notion takes my fancy. It’ll make kind of a variety, and it’s a pretty sort of an idee to name a ship after a thing that has its life out the sea.” “I thought you’d think so,” said Master Torrey, gratified. “Ichabod Sterns said it was a heathenish name for a ship that was to sail out of Salem.” “Well, you know Ichabod. He hain’t got much notion of anything of that sort. But now what’s your notion of these ’ere water women? Kinder cold-blooded critters they must have been, I’m thinking.” There was something in this last remark which seemed to grate on Master Torrey’s feelings, whatever they were. “Why so?” he said, a little shortly. “Oh, because it’s the natur’ of all the things in the sea. It must have been but a damp, uncomfortable way to live for warm-blooded folks; but tell me what they were like, or do you happen to have a picture of one?” “I’m sorry to say I have not.” “Did they think they was like folks, or did they live for ever?” “Some said they were immortal, others that they were only very long-lived. Plutarch says they lived more than nine thousand years.”