And they said:  “But where is your patent and your novelty?”

And Ali said:  “Have I not here the stopper and on it, as good men know, the ineffable seal?  Now I have learned in Persia how that your trains that make the haste, and hurry men to and fro, and your factories and the digging of your pits and all the things that are evil are everyone of them caused and brought about by steam.”

“Is it not so?” said Shooshan.

“It is even so,” said Shep.

“Now it is clear,” said Ali, “that the chief devil that vexes England and has done all this harm, who herds men into cities and will not let them rest, is even the devil Steam.”

Then the great ones 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 words, saying: