“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.
    “One day a man came to me, and I knew the moment I saw him that he was a showman. He said he had mermaids, but that on the last trip a man had offered to wager him five hundred dollars that he would not dare to allow the mermaid to be cut open; so he wanted something that would bear inspection and be ready for such a contingency. I told him I could do it, and received the order to go ahead.
    “Generally in cheap work I stuffed the skins with cotton or something of the kind and let them go, but in this case I went to work on scentific [sic] principles. I took the skin of a monkey and separated it at the waist; then allowed it to dry as a mummy would, all of which I helped along by the application of heat. I now took a fish, common in the China Sea—one that would not be familiar—and treated it in a similar way, and finally I joined them.together. I fastened scales upon the monkey portion and carefully graded them up among the hairs, then introduced some hairs down upon the fish portion. Barnacles were fastened here and there and a great cut was left open up and down the abdomen, through which any one could readily see the ribs and the joining of the vertebræ.
    “The face had been given an agonized look, the hands were clenched, and, all in all, it was one of the most disagreeable sights I ever saw—even though I did produce it.
    “Yes, it gave complete satisfaction. When they exhibited it a cloth was thrown over the body, and when this question was raised the proprietor would say that he would leave it to a committee of medical men, thus being confident of obtaining some notoriety. In one case a number of provincial doctors were completely deceived, and signed a paper retracting certain statements which they had made to the effect that the mermaid was a sham.”

The Globe-Republican. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.), 04 June 1890. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.