Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world. THE SPIRIT OF LODIN “I look down from my height on nations, And they become ashes before me; Calm is my dwelling in the clouds; Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.”[164] Man is as singular as God. * * * * * There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once, I am accustomed to answer such, “Yes, I can live on board nails.” If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. That cuts the matter short with them. For my own part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to see if he could live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his tooth for his only mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women may be alarmed, who own their thirds in mills.[165] * * * * * Khaled would have his weary soldiers vigilant still; apprehending a midnight sally from the enemy, “Let no man sleep,” said he. “We shall have rest enough after death.” Would such an exhortation be understood by Yankee soldiers? * * * * * Omar answered the dying Abu Beker: “O successor to the apostle of God! spare me from this burden. I have no need of the Caliphat.” “But the Caliphat has need of you!” replied the dying Abu Beker. * * * * * “Heraclius had heard of the mean attire of the Caliph Omar, and asked why, having gained so much wealth by his conquests, he did not go richly clad like other princes? They replied, that he cared not for this world, but for the world to come, and sought favor in the eyes of God alone. ‘In what kind of a palace does he reside?’ asked the emperor. ‘In a house built of mud.’ ‘Who are his attendants?’ ‘Beggars and the poor.’ ‘What tapestry does he sit upon?’ ‘Justice and equity.’ ‘What is his throne?’ ‘Abstinence and true knowledge.’ ‘What is his treasure?’ ‘Trust in God.’ ‘And who are his guard?’ ‘The bravest of the Unitarians.’” It was the custom of Ziyad, once governor of Bassora, “wherever he held sway, to order the inhabitants to leave their doors open at night, with merely a hurdle at the entrance to exclude cattle, engaging to replace any thing that should be stolen: and so effective was his police, that no robberies were committed.” Abdallah was “so fixed and immovable in prayer, that a pigeon once perched upon his head mistaking him for a statue.”