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Updated: May 2, 2025
Augeas, king of Elis, had a herd of three thousand oxen, whose stalls had not been cleansed for thirty years. Hercules brought the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through them, and cleansed them thoroughly in one day. His next labor was of a more delicate kind. Admeta, the daughter of Eurystheus, longed to obtain the girdle of the queen of the Amazons, and Eurystheus ordered Hercules to go and get it.
Fortunately, the strains of the most tragic situations have their relief in the invincible irony of life, and there was a welcome break in the appearance on the scene of him whom all men know as "Alpheus Cleophas" the redoubtable Mr. Morton. Some men are comic by intention, some are comic unconsciously and unintentionally, some men are comic half by intention and half in spite of themselves.
It is this fable of the underground course of Alpheus that Coleridge alludes to in his poem of "Kubla Khan": "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."
As he spoke he lashed his horses and they started off at full speed through the town towards the open country. They swayed the yoke upon their necks and travelled the whole day long till the sun set and darkness was over all the land. Then they reached Pherae, where Diocles lived who was son of Ortilochus, the son of Alpheus. There they passed the night and were treated hospitably.
Then they reached Pherae where Diocles lived, who was son to Ortilochus and grandson to Alpheus. Here they passed the night and Diocles entertained them hospitably. When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, they again yoked their horses and drove out through the gateway under the echoing gatehouse.
"Anyhow," said Alpheus, "he bought sass'p'rilla and 'Arabian Balsam, and I sold him a can of that beef soup you bought three year ago last summer, when Alicia Atkins had the chicken pox." The captain entered the house quietly and tiptoed to the door of the bedroom. Emily was asleep, and the sight of the childish head upon the pillow gave him a start as he peeped in at it.
Besides the rivers of Alpheus and Erymanthus, it is watered by the gloomy stream of Styx; and its western part, intersected by innumerable brooks, is the land of Pan. Its inhabitants were long devoted to the pursuits of the herdsman and the shepherd, and its ancient government was apparently monarchical.
Alpheus, a veteran of the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his reminiscences, but the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters of solid worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read, reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, of disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in failures, provided they were those of his family; and the next evening, as he wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was pouring out his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means unpleasurable, to this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his own failure!
"Something in this stern honesty seemed to affect the father. His face turned away and it was the other's voice which was next heard. A change had taken place in it and it sounded almost mellow as it gave form to these words: "'Alpheus, we have been friends. You shall have two weeks in which to think over my demand and decide.
First, Mark saith, Christ found him when he called him, as he also found Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom; yea, Luke words it thus: "He went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom, and he said unto him, Follow me;" Mark ii. 14; Luke v. 27. Now, that this Levi, or James the son of Alpheus, was a Jew, his name doth well make manifest.
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