"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 competent to do as we are.
It is a harmless vanity enough, and especially pardonable in Ventimore's case, when it was so desirable to correct any tendency to "uppishness" on the part of the Jinnee.
"And doth the Lord Mayor dispose of these forces at his will?" inquired Fakrash, on whom Ventimore's explanation had evidently produced some impression.
"Certainly," said Horace; "whenever he has occasion."
The Jinnee seemed engrossed in his own thoughts, for he said no more just then.