"As you see," said Uncle Fritz, "an inventor was set down as a magician. I think you can remember more instances." Yes. Almost all the young people remember that in Marco Polo's day there was a distinguished Venetian engineer with the armies of Genghis Khan, whose wonderful successes gave rise, perhaps, to the story of Aladdin.[5] The scene of his successes was Pekin; and it is to be remembered that the story of Aladdin is not properly one of the Arabian Nights, and that the scene is laid in China. This led them to trying to match the wonders of Aladdin and of the Arabian Nights by the wonders of modern invention; and they pleased themselves by thinking of marvels they could show to unlearned nations if they had the resources of Mr. Edison's laboratory. "Aladdin rubbed his lamp," said Blanche. "You see, the lamp was his electrical machine; and when he rubbed it, the lightnings went flying hither and thither, and said, 'Here we are.'" "That is all very fine," said Jack Withers; "but I stand by the Arabian Nights, after all, and I think I shall, till Mr. Edison or the Taunton locomotive shop will make for me some high-stepper on whose back I may rise above the clouds, pass over the length and breadth of Massachusetts, descend in the garden where Blanche is confined by the hated mistress of a boarding-school in Walpole, and then, winning her ready consent, can mount again with her, and before morning descend in the garden of a beautiful cottage at Newport. We will spend six weeks in playing tennis in the daytime, dancing in the Casino in the evenings, and in sailing in Frank Shattuck's yacht between whiles. Then, and not till then, would I admit that the Arabian Nights have been outdone by modern science." They all laughed at Jack's extravaganza, which is of a kind to which they are beginning to be accustomed. But Mabel stuck to her text, and said seriously, that Uncle Fred had said that what people now called science sprung from the workshops of these very magicians. "The magicians then had all the science there was. And if magic had not got a bad name, should we not call the men of science magicians now?"