and refine humanity may
bungle even with the "fool-proof" lift which takes him up to his own
eyrie in Flat-land, but he is none the less civilised.

They would have us believe that petticoats and pantaloons are the
hall-mark of Christian civilisation, and one of their favourite sneers
at Arabia (as a proof of its benighted condition and need of their
ministrations) is "a land without manufacture where machinery is looked
on as a sort of marvel." As a matter of fact, Arabia can manufacture all
she really wants, and did so when we blockaded her coasts; nor is
machinery any more of a marvel to the average Arabian Arab than it is to
the average Occidental. Both use intelligently such machinery as they
find necessary in their pursuits and occupations, though neither can
make it or repair it except superficially, and both fumble more or less
with unfamiliar mechanical appliances. The young man from the country
blows the gas out or tries to light his cheroot at an incandescent bulb,
and may be considered lucky if he does not get some swift, silent form
of vehicular traffic in the small of his back when he is gaping at an
electric advertisement in changing-coloured lights. It has been my
object, and to a certain extent my duty, on several occasions to try to
impress a party of chiefs and their retinue when visiting Aden from the
wildest parts of Arabia Felix (which can be very wild indeed). On the
same morning I have taken them over a man-of-war, on the musketry-range
to see a Maxim at practice and down into a twelve-inch casemate when the
monster was about to fire. They never turned a hair, but asked many
intelligent questions and a few amusing ones, tried to cadge a rifle or
two from the officer showing them the racks for small arms, condemned
the Maxim for "eating cartridges too fast" and were much tickled by the
gunner-officer's joke that they could have the big cannon if they would
take it away with them.

These wild Arabians, when trained, make the most reliable machine-tenders
in the East, as they have a _penchant_ for mechanism of all sorts and
will not neglect their charge when unsupervised.

We are all inclined to boast too personally of our enlightened
civilisation with its marvellous mechanical appliances, but what is it
after all but the specialist training of the few serving the wants of
the many? If the average missionary swam ashore with an Arab fireman
from a shipwreck and landed on an uninhabited island of o