Life — December 26, 1889 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

with from and from toall ne is * LIFE: MYTHOLOGY FOR MODERNS. JUPITER AND 10, ‘Dp OMESTIC troubles were not so easily arranged in the days before the divorce courts had started in busi- mess as they are now. Therefore Juno had to get along with Jupiter's eccen- tricities as best she could, and she never missed an opportunity to make it unpleasant for the lady in the case. ~ One afternoon Jupi- ter telegraphed up that he was detained in the office and would be late to dinner. This aroused Juno's suspi- cions. She ordered the coupé and drove down town. The first thing that met her gaze was her lord and master seated in Delmonico’s, di- viding a bottle of ambrosia brut with a young person named Io. “By me,” exclaimed Jove, “there comes her royal nibs!" and, being something of a sleight-of- hand performer, he pro- ceeded to turn Io into an Alderney heifer. “Why, Jupiter,” said Juno, as she came in and sat down at the table, “what is that cow doing here?” “Oh, I always do that,” replied Jupiter, in an off-hand way. “I am afraid of pleuro-pneumonia, and I always like to see my beef on the hoof before I eat it.” “She's too pretty to kill; won't you please give her to me?” begged Juno, who knew all of Jupiter's tricks and rather suspected the identity of the heifer. Of course Jupiter didn’t want to give To away, but he was a little bit afraid of his wife and, under the circumstances, there was nothing else to do. “Why, cer’nly, my dear,” he replied, and Juno drove home, leading Io behind her coupé. She im- mediately sent for a “gentleman friend” of hers named Argus. Argus was a sort of centipede in the matter of eyes, and was willing to undertake the task of watching Juno's new Alderney. Jupiter was in a frame of mind. It would never do to leave Io in Juno's possession, so he sent a District Telegraph boy for a friend of his bachelor days named Mercury. Mercury was one of the most gentlemanly thieves and expert bunko-steerers in Upper Broadway. “Dat's all right, Jupe,” said Mercury, when the case was explained to him; “I'd swipe de whole dairy if you said so. But if I git de cow me brudder goes on de police. See?” Jupiter saw, and Mercury started on his mission, Mer- cury approached Argus in an affable way and told him he was well acquainted with his brother, the cashier of the First National Bank of Olympus. He talked with Argus a long time and gave him several nips from his flask, but Argus resolutely refused to go to sleep with all of his eyes at the same time. Mercury told him fairy tales, ghost stories and negro-minstrel gags without number, but still part of Argus remained awake. Sixty or seventy of his eyes would go to sleep, but thirty or forty would remain awake, and when the others woke up they would take their turn off duty, Not until Mercury began to read to him from the Atlantic Monthly did Argus go completely to sleep, and then Mercury cut his head off. But Io’s troubles did not end with her escape from Argus. Juno sent a New Jersey mosquito to bother her, and it chased Io from one end of the earth to the other, Fi- nally Jupiter could stand it no longer and confessed the whole thing to his wife. At his piteous entreaties Juno was softened and Io was given back her human shape. Co-in- cidentally, Juno appeared in a new sealskin sack. Juno was not unmindful of Argus's services and, to re- ward him, had his eyes polished and set in the tail of her favorite peacock. comicbooks.com