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One day when we were walking through the little village of Strathdee we turned the corner of a quiet side street and came suddenly upon something altogether strange and unexpected.
A stone cottage of the everyday sort stood a trifle back from the road and bore over its front door a sign announcing that Mrs.Bruce, Flesher, carried on her business within; and indeed one could look through the windows and see ruddy joints hanging from beams, and piles of pink-and-white steaks and chops lying neatly on the counter, crying, 'Come, eat me!' Nevertheless, one's first glance would be arrested neither by Mrs Bruce's black-and-gold sign, nor by the enticements of her stock-in-trade, because one's attention is rapped squarely between the eyes by an astonishing shape that arises from the patch of lawn in front of the cottage, and completely dominates the scene.

Imagine yourself face to face with the last thing you would expect to see in a modest front dooryard,--the figurehead of a ship, heroic in size, gorgeous in colour, majestic in pose! A female personage it appears to be from the drapery, which is the only key the artist furnishes as to sex, and a queenly female withal, for she wears a crown at least a foot high, and brandishes a forbidding sceptre.

All this seen from the front, but the rear view discloses the fact that the lady terminates in the tail of a fish which wriggles artistically in mid-air and is of a brittle sort, as it has evidently been thrice broken and glued together.
Mrs Bruce did not leave us long in suspense, but obligingly came out, partly to comment on the low price of mutton and partly to tell the tale of the mammoth mermaid.