Lord Mayor himself."

"What is this Lord Mayor of whom thou speakest?" inquired Fakrash.

"The Lord Mayor?" said Horace. "Oh, he's unique. There's nobody in the
world quite like him. He administers the law, and if there's any
distress in any part of the earth he relieves it. He entertains monarchs
and Princes and all kinds of potentates at his banquets, and altogether
he's a tremendous swell."

"Hath he dominion over the earth and the air and all that is therein?"

"Within his own precincts, I believe he has," said Horace, rather
lazily, "but I really don't know precisely how wide his powers are." He
was vainly trying to recollect whether such matters as sky-signs,
telephones, and telegraphs in the City were within the Lord Mayor's
jurisdiction or the County Council's.

Fakrash remained silent just as they were driving underneath Charing
Cross Railway Bridge, when he started perceptibly at the thunder of the
trains overhead and the piercing whistles of the engines. "Tell me," he
said, clutching Horace by the arm, "what meaneth this?"

"You don't mean to say," said Horace, "that you have been about London
all these days, and never noticed things like these before?"

"Till now," said the Jinnee, "I have had no leisure to observe them and
discover their nature."

"Well," said Horace, anxious to let the Jinnee see that he had not the
monopoly of miracles, "since your days we have discovered how to tame or
chain the great forces of Nature and compel them to do our will. We
control the Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and make them give
us light and heat, carry our messages, fight our quarrels for us,
transport us wherever we wish to go, with a certainty and precision that
throw even your performances, my dear sir, entirely into the shade."

Considering what a very large majority of civilised persons would be as
powerless to construct the most elementary machine as to create the
humblest kind of horse, it is not a little odd how complacently we
credit ourselves with all the latest achievements of our generation.
Most of us accept the amazement of the simple-minded barbarian on his
first introduction to modern inventions as a gratifying personal
tribute: we feel a certain superiority, even if we magnanimously refrain
from boastfulness. And yet our own particular share in these discoveries
is limited to making use of them under expert guidance, which any
barbarian, after overcoming his first terror, is quite as