And Gold ramparts headlong, à outrance.
Punch. But look at the spectres behind them!
Saturn. Ah! Terrors from Tartarus, those to which only Bad Temper can blind them.
Those spectres foreshadow grim fate; they are Lawlessness, Ruin, Starvation;
To the Thunderer dismal defeat, to the conquerors blank desolation.
The Sage looked serious.
These things, mused he, are an allegory, perhaps, but of a significance not wholly Saturnian.
"Saturn, old boy" said he, "cannot what sentimentalists call 'the Dismal Science,' which as you say has been banished hither, do anything to help you out of this hobble?"
"The Dismal Science," responded Saturn, whose panaceas of Unrestricted Competition, Free Combination, Cheap Markets, Supply and Demand, &c., have landed its disciples in Sweating Dens on the one side and Universal Strikes on the other, can hardly offer itself as a cure for the New Socialism. Like Rhea of old, when asked for food, it proffers a stone."