Do lower the carrot, gentle Liberty, and let us talk nicely and sensibly. I don't like you as a _carotaia_, precious. Talking about the moon, it is thrilling to read the announcements of Professor Pickering of Harvard, that it's almost a dead cert that there's life on our satellite. It is almost as certain that there's life on the moon as it is certain there is life on Mars. The professor bases his assertions on photographs--hundreds of photographs--of a crater with a circumference of thirty-seven miles. I'm not satisfied. I demand to know the yards, feet and inches. You don't come it over me with the triteness of these round numbers. "Hundreds of photographic reproductions have proved irrefutably the springing up at dawn, with an unbelievable rapidity, of vast fields of foliage which come into blossom just as rapidly (sic!) and which disappear in a maximum period of eleven days."--Again I'm not satisfied. I want to know if they're cabbages, cress, mustard, or marigolds or dandelions or daisies. Fields of foliage, mark you. And _blossom_! Come now, if you can get so far, Professor Pickering, you might have a shrewd guess as to whether the blossoms are good to eat, or if they're purely for ornament. I am only waiting at last for an aeroplane to land on one of these fields of foliage and find a donkey grazing peacefully. Hee-haw! "The plates moreover show that great blizzards, snow-storms, and volcanic eruptions are also frequent." So no doubt the blossoms are edelweiss. "We find," says the professor, "a living world at our very doors where life in some respects resembles that of Mars." All I can say is: "Pray come in, Mr. Moony. And how is your cousin Signor Martian?" Now I'm sure Professor Pickering's photographs and observations are really wonderful. But his _explanations_! Come now, Columbia, where is your High-falutin' Nonsense trumpet? Vast fields of foliage which spring up at dawn (!!!) and come into blossom just as quickly (!!!!) are rather too flowery even for my flowery soul. But there, truth is stranger than fiction. I'll bet my moon against the Professor's, anyhow. So long, Columbia. _A riverderci._