(_Per favour of Mr. Punch._)
_Mr. Punch._ So you've not been signalling to Mother Earth, after
all, my noble Warrior?
_Mars (with a wink)._ What do _you_ think? Why should I dig
canals 100 miles wide, and 2,000 miles long, or build bonfires as big
as Scotland, when I can always communicate what I may have to say
through you?
Because Mars looks spotty or misty,
Some dreamers, with intellects twisty,
Imagine, old horse,
Mars is playing at Morse!
All bosh! You ask DYSON or CHRISTIE.
_Mr. Punch._ Mr. MAUNDER "has you under his special charge," hasn't he?
_Mars._ Much obliged to Mr. MAUNDER, I'm sure! Wants to take my photo,
doesn't he? As if I were a mere politician, a popular comedian, or
'ARRIET at the seaside on a Bank Holiday!
_Mr. Punch._ Have you any Bank Holidays in your planet?
_Mars._ Thank Sol, _Mr. Punch_, we have outlived the epoch of taking our
pleasure in spasms, like your cockney victims of the vulgar voluptuary's
St. Vitus's dance!
_Mr. Punch._ Don't be uppish, old man! 'Tis an ill-bred age of Kodaks,
and Interviews, and other phases of popular Paul Pryism. But you've had
your ignominious moments, Mars. If a "snap-shot" could have been taken
at you when held prostrate, chained, and captive, at the feet of Otus
and Ephialtes, or, still worse, when caught with Venus in the iron net
of Vulcan:--
All heaven beholds, imprison'd as they lie,
And unextinguish'd laughter shakes the sky.
_Mars._ Spare me, excellent _Punch_. Eugh! Thank heaven Olympus knew no
Kodaks then, or "the gay Apollo" would yet longer have had the laugh of
me.
_Mr. Punch._ Pardon me for awaking unpleasant memories! But even gods
should not be bumptious, especially when, like the _Second Mrs.
Tanqueray_, they "have a past."
_Mars._ Well, anyhow I've been able to baffle the camera-wielders up to
now. My ruddy countenance and "bluish radiance" have beaten Greenwich,
and even licked the Lick! As they themselves admit, "Mars up to the
present has defied cameral detection."
_Mr. Punch._ But what about those "bright spots"?
_Mars._ Have you no "bright spots" even on your dull and foggy old
planet? I have often noticed one at 85, Fleet Street. In June and
December it emits thousands of brilliant sparks of a "bluish radiance,"
too. But I don't jump to the conclusion that you are "signalling" to me.
Look, the naked eye can see the Punchian "_projection lumineuse_" even
from here!
_Mr. Punch._ I do not have to "signal" my messages to "Hellas" or
"LOCKYER'S Land" by canals or "ten million arc lights of 100,000
candle-power apiece." Like the Sun, I am self-luminous, and do not, like
the finest planets, shine by reflected light.
_Mars._ True for you. And from your own intellectual observatory, like
TEUFELSDROECKH "alone with the stars," you ofttimes scan the heavens
when, as LONGFELLOW says:--
"----the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars."
_Mr. Punch._ Precisely!
[_Murmurs musingly._
And earnest thoughts within me rise
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies
The shield of that red star.
A star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailéd hand,
And I am strong again.
The star of the unconquered will
He rises in my breast.
Serene, and resolute and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
_Mars._ Ah yes! that's all very pretty and poetical, and I'm much
obliged to HENRY WADSWORTH and the other bards who have lyrically
glorified me. But _Punch_, old man, _you and I know better_! Mother
Earth has ever paid, and payeth still, far too much worship to Mars--the
Mars of her own militant fancy. To tell you the truth, _Punch_, I'm sick
of my old _métier_, especially since Science stepped in and bedevilled
it past bearing with her big guns, and dynamite-bombs, and treacherous
torpedoes; weapons more fit for grubby Vulcan's subterranean Cyclops
than a god, a gentleman and a soldier like me.
_Mr. Punch._ Hoho! That's the way the (LOCKYER'S) land lies, eh?
_Mars._ Exactly, _I_ wasn't signalling to your stupid, conservative,
bellicose old world, which, like the Bourbons, learns nothing and
forgets nothing. Could I write in plain Titanic capitals across a
thousand square miles of my smoothest surface Mars's Straight Tip to
Mother Earth, viz.:--
FIGHTING'S AN EXPENSIVE BORE,
SO DISARM AND WAR NO MORE!
what effect would it have on any of you, from civilised England, with
you to enlighten it, to the furious fighting dragons who are tearing
each other in the eastern seas? None! But if any of your quidnuncs
really want to know what I _would_ say if I _did_ signal, tell them old
Mars, grown wiser, has turned up War; has nailed his raven to a
barn-door as a warning; has made a pet of Peace's soft-plumed dove; and
strongly advises the belligerent boobies on earth who take his old name
in vain, and play his abandoned game still, to--_go and do likewise_!!!
_Mr. Punch._ By the cestus of Venus, and so I will!!!
* * * * *