Life — July 14, 1892 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

24 TWO KINDS. HER eyes, her beautiful eyes ! How they melt when she sobs or she cries ; How they droop When she blushes, How they flash When she crushes The love she’s compelled to disguise. O her i's, her beautiful i's, Who can tell them apart though he tries, From her m's Or her e's N’s or u's As you please In her letters? I offer a prize. Tom Hall. “ MYTHOLOGY FOR MODERNS. VENUS AND ADONIS. N the first place Venus was a very pretty woman. She was also the mother of Cupid, the god of Love. The combination was naturally too much for her, When a pretty woman plays with Love, as Venus often did, something is likely to occur, In Venus's case it happened that she pricked herself with one of Cupid's arrows. This kind of vaccination al- ways works, and the result was that Venus fell head over heels in love with the first man she happened to meet, namely, Adonis. Adonis was a good looking chap but a monomaniac on the subject of hunting. His spare moments were given over to cleaning guns, loading cartridges, and swapping lies with other hunters about the size and number of beasts he had killed, (or come pretty near killing), and he consequently had little time for love affairs. Venus repeatedly invited Adonis to dinner and sent him any number of useless embroidered game bags and gun cases, but all without effect. Finally she got in the habit of sending notes to his office asking him to meet her on the corner for just five minutes. At first Adonis used to go, but these demands became so frequent that finally he took refuge in sending word that that was his busy day and he couldn't leave the office. Venus one day hit on a great scheme. She made Adonis promise to tell her whenever he was going hunting, and she arranged to come after him on these occasions and drive him to the station in her coupé. Then she would walk up and down the platform with him, clinging to his arm and snug- gling her head on his shoulder until the train started. “ Now, darling,” she would say under these circumstances, “ please be careful. I don't see why you can’t be content to shoot clay pigeons from traps as other sagacious hunters do. 1 wouldn't mind even if you went after reed-birds, but you ADONIS DEPARTS FOR THE CHASE. don’t know how unhappy it makes me to think that some day you may be eaten up by a bear, or a fox, or a woodchuck, or something.” Adonis was saved the necessity of a reply by the conductor's shouting “All aboard for Peekskill and way stations!” Venus gazed after Adonis, who stood on the back platform carelessly lighting a cigar, until the tears came into her lus- trous orbs, and then threw herself into her coupé in a Pparoxysm of weeping. Her convulsive sobs shook the coupé until one of the springs broke, and her tears utterly ruined the p’nk satin upholstery of her favorite conveyance. Adonis did not have much luck that day. He had bagged three elephants and a brace of mugwumps, but found no traces of the grumwadgies he was looking for. He had turned to go home, when he heard a noise behind him. Turning quickly, he saw a large, yellow grumwadgy coming towards him with great leaps. Like all hunters, he knew that a grumwadgy’s only vulnerable point is his left tonsil. Adonis let fly at this part with both barrels of his ele- phant-bore Winchester, but without arresting the progress of the furious beast. Then he drew his cutlass and stood on guard in tierce.* But it was too late. The grum- wadgy inserted an eye-tooth in Adonis’s aesophagus and shut off that young man’s supply of oxygen for good and all. When Venus received the news, she repaired to the station with the family under- taker, and it is said that to this day no young man ever had a finer funeral than the one which Venus provided for Adonis. The entire Vol- unteer Fire Department, of UPON THE PLATFORM. comicbooks.com