would have rebuked him but one said: "No, let us
hear him, perhaps his patent may improve on steam."

And to them hearkening Ali went on thus: "O Lords of this place, let
there be made a bottle of strong steel, for I have no bottle with my
stopper, and this being done let all the factories, trains, digging of
pits, and all evil things soever that may be done by steam be stopped
for seven days, and the men that tend them shall go free, but the
steel bottle for my stopper I will leave open in a likely place. Now
that chief devil, Steam, finding no factories to enter into, nor no
trains, sirens nor pits prepared for him, and being curious and
accustomed to steel pots, will verily enter one night into the bottle
that you shall make for my stopper, and I shall spring forth from my
hiding with my stopper and fasten him down with the ineffable seal
which is the seal of King Solomon and deliver him up to you that you
cast him into the sea."

And the great ones answered Ali and they said: "But what should we
gain if we lose our prosperity and be no longer rich?"

And Ali said: "When we have cast this devil into the sea there will
come back again the woods and ferns and all the beautiful things that
the world hath, the little leaping hares shall be seen at play, there
shall be music on the hills again, and at twilight ease and quiet and
after the twilight stars."

And "Verily," said Shooshan, "there shall be the dance again."

"Aye," said Shep, "there shall be the country dance."

But the great ones spake and said, denying Ali: "We will make no such
bottle for your stopper nor stop our healthy factories or good trains,
nor cease from our digging of pits nor do anything that you desire,
for an interference with steam would strike at the roots of that
prosperity that you see so plentifully all around us."

Thus they dismissed Ali there and then from that place where the earth
was torn up and burnt, being taken out of pits, and where factories
blazed all night with a demoniac glare; and they dismissed with him
both Shooshan, the barber, and Shep, the maker of teeth: so that a
week later Ali started from Calais on his long walk back to Persia.

And all this happened thirty years ago, and Shep is an old man now and
Shooshan older, and many mouths have bit with the teeth of Shep (for
he has a knack of getting them back whenever his customers die), and
they have written again to Ali away in the country of Persia with
these word