_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!!! * * * * * ODE TO IXION. (_By a Sympathetic, but Superficial Observer._)