We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common
voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments,--nay on enjoyments of any
kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread
and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his
hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes,
patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of
what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better
in him than _hunger_ of any sort,--or these wild Arab men, fighting and
jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him
always, would not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting
ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without
right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called
him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare,
not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling
his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them:
they must have seen what kind of a man he _was_, let him be _called_
what you like! No emperor with his tiara was obeyed as this man in a
cloak of his own clouting during three-and-twenty years of rough actual
trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of
itself.
His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling
up, in trembling hope, towards its Maker.
Pages:
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281