But the whites treat us as if we were mere buffoons, who play for their amusement; they make no distinction between the wandering conjurer, with his tricks of dexterity, and the masters, who have powers that have been handed down from father to son for thousands of years, who can communicate with each other though separated by the length of India; who can, as you have seen, make men invisible; who can read the past and the future.

They see these things, and though they cannot explain them, they persist in treating us all as if we were mere jugglers.
"They prefer to deny the evidence of their own senses rather than admit that we have powers such as they have not; and so, even in the eyes of our own countrymen, we have lost our old standing and position, while the whites would bribe us with money to divulge the secrets in which they profess to disbelieve.

No wonder that we hate you, and that we long for the return of the old days, when even princes were glad to ask favors at our hands.

It is seldom that we show our powers now.

Those who aid us, and whose servants we are, are not to be insulted by the powers they bestow upon us being used for the amusement of men who believe in nothing.
"The Europeans who first came to India have left records of the strange things they saw at the courts of the native princes.