_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."
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!