Saturn.  That’s scarcely god-lingo, my boy; but ’tis much as you
    say, and no wonder. 
  Free imports have ruined my realm—­I refer to Bad-Temper and Blunder,
  Two brutish and boobyish Titans—­they’ve wholly corrupted our morals,
  And taught us “Boycotting,” and “Strikes,” and “Lock-outs,” and all
    sorts of mad quarrels. 
  I hope you don’t know them down there, in your queer little speck of
    a planet,
  These humbugging latter-day Titans?

Punch.  That cannot concern you—­now can it?

Saturn.  Just look at the shindy down yonder!

Punch.  By Jove, what the doose are they doing?

Saturn.  Oh, settling the Great Social Question!

Father Time.  It looks as though mischief were brewing.

Saturn.  Sort of parody of the old fight, which was splendid at least,
    if tremendous,
  ’Twixt Jove and the Titans of old.  That colossus, gold-armoured,
    stupendous,
  Perched high on the “Privilege” ramparts, and bastioned by big bags of
    bullion,
  Is “Capital”; he’s the new Jove, and each Titan would treat as his
    scullion,
  But look at the huge Hundred-Handed One, armed with the scythe and the
    sickle,
  The hammer, the spade, and the pick!

Father Time.  Things appear in no end of a pickle!

Saturn.  Precisely!  That’s Labour-Briareus; backed up by “Bad Temper”
    and “Blunder,”
  And egged on by “Spout” (with a Fog-Horn); he’s “going for” him of the
    Thunder,
  And Gold ramparts headlong, a 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.

[Illustration]

“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.”

“Ah!” quoth Father TIME, “you manage these things much better on the Earth, doubtless.”

“Doubtless,” replied the Sage, drily, as he and Father TIME took their departure.