The one exception was in North and South America in the person of the lowly opossum. All the meat-eating animals which arose around the creature fed upon it if they could catch it. It was not very efficient in getting away from a pursuer. It developed no effective armor, like the shell of the armadillo or the quills of the porcupine, with which other weak animals managed to survive. It was not even very efficient at hiding. When man arrived on the scene with his bows and his guns, its last havens, the treetops, lost their small measure of security. All the cards were stacked against the survival of the opossum, but it developed a means of its own to keep a tenacious hold on life while far more efficient creatures—beset with new enemies and changing climates—were forced to give up. The great mammoth herds, lords of the earth for a million years, disappeared. The ferocious saber-tooth tiger and the great cave bear expired by the roadside in the race of evolution. But the poor opossum had discovered the important principle that the meek shall inherit the earth—or, at least, be allowed to live in it. It became the great pain endurer and lived by submitting and gritting its teeth. It didn’t fight nor hide. It merely suffered and learned how to endure suffering. This supreme ability of the opossum to recover from injuries goes a long way toward explaining its survival. The opossum thus appears to be the prototype of a familiar class of men and women. They are frequently encountered. As children they have almost every conceivable disease. Their adolescence is a continuous succession of broken bones. Their parents despair of raising them. When they come to adult life the story is much the same. They suffer a constant stream of misfortunes, physical and otherwise. Physicians are amazed at their recoveries. And they often survive into the 80s and 90s of life while the healthy, fortunate individuals with whom they started out are left behind in the prime of life—victims of pneumonia, heart disease or accident. When the latter die the news comes as a surprise to their acquaintances who cannot understand how the strong die and the weak survive. They ponder over the paradox that strength is weakness and weakness strength. The ancient opossum might explain that paradox if it had the means to express itself. _Mammal Prototypes of the “Mermaid”_