The Cleverness of Mortals

Say what you have to say."

"It's not far I've been," said the fairy; "only around here in the city that's all about us; but many things I've seen, and wonderful things. Ah, Your Majesty, don't blame me for what I'm saying, but what's to become of us all and of you yourself, I dunno. We know all about magic; we've known all about it for years—aye, for ages. And we thought that made us better than mortals. We thought they could never do the things we could do; maybe they never can. But oh, Your Majesty, they're doing things as good as we can do, or better. You wouldn't believe what the mortals in this country do, if you wasn't after seein' it. They do things as wonderful as we ourselves, and it's iron, iron, iron everywhere. We can do nothing with iron—we can't touch it—and what will we do at all to be ahead of them, or even up with them?"

"What's all this they do?" said the King.

"You saw yourself," the fairy said, "the coaches that went along up in the air. They go on bridges, miles long, built of iron. And they run on bars of iron. You saw for yourself that they had no horses, and the coach in front that pulls them is all made of iron, and men ride in them, as if it was no harm at all to touch iron. And that's not all. There are other coaches that go in the streets without horses. They have no iron coach in front to pull them. They go in different ways. Sometimes there's an iron rope, that's all the time moving and moving along under the street, and there's a gripping iron under the coach that takes hold on it, and so it's pulled along. And sometimes there's only a little string—not iron, I think, but some other metal—and something just reaches down from the coach and touches it, and that makes it go. I dunno how it is, but it makes it go. And sometimes there's fire comes out of it."

Then another fairy came out of the crowd and stood before the King. "Your Majesty," he said, "I can tell you more than that. I have been about the city, too, and I went into some of the houses.