shorter than ours. We sometimes live for three hundred years,
but when we cease to exist here, we become only foam on the surface of
the water and have not even a grave among those we love. We have not
immortal souls, we shall never live again; like the green seaweed when
once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on
the contrary, have souls which live forever, even after the body has
been turned to dust. They rise up through the clear, pure air, beyond
the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water and behold all the
land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which
we shall never see."

"Why have not we immortal souls?" asked the little mermaid, mournfully.
"I would gladly give all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to
be a human being only for one day and to have the hope of knowing the
happiness of that glorious world above the stars."

"You must not think that," said the old woman. "We believe that we are
much happier and much better off than human beings."

"So I shall die," said the little mermaid, "and as the foam of the sea I
shall be driven about, never again to hear the music of the waves or to
see the pretty flowers or the red sun? Is there anything I can do to win
an immortal soul?"

"No," said the old woman; "unless a man should love you so much that you
were more to him than his father or his mother, and if all his thoughts
and all his love were fixed upon you, and the priest placed his right
hand in yours, and he promised to be true to you here and
hereafter--then his soul would glide into your body, and you would
obtain a share in the future happiness of mankind. He would give to you
a soul and retain his own as well; but this can never happen. Your
fish's tail, which among us is considered so beautiful, on earth is
thought to be quite ugly. They do not know any better, and they think it
necessary, in order to be handsome, to have two stout props, which they
call legs."

Then the little mermaid sighed and looked sorrowfully at her fish's
tail. "Let us be happy," said the old lady, "and dart and spring about
during the three hundred years that we have to live, which is really
quite long enough. After that we can rest ourselves all the better. This
evening we are going to have a court ball."

It was one of those splendid sights which we can never see on earth. The
walls and the ceiling of the large ballroom were of thick but
transparent cry