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?