m better; good, not bad.
Generous things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the
thing he answers is, in his own dialect, everyway sincere, and yet
equivalent to that of Christians, 'The Lord giveth, and the Lord
taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' He answered in like
manner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the
believers. Seid had fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's
fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done
his Master's work, Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well
with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over the body;--the
old gray-haired man melting in tears! "What do I see?" said she.--"You
see a friend weeping over his friend."--He went out for the last time
into the mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he had injured
any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A
voice answered, "Yes, me three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion.
Mahomet ordered them to be paid: "Better be in shame now," said he,
"than at the Day of Judgment."--You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by
Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us
all, brought visible through twelve centuries,--the veritable Son of
our common Mother.

Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant. He is a rough
self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is
not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go
much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of
his own clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek
Emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about
himself, 'the respect due unto thee.' In a life-and-death war with
Bedouins, cruel things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy,
of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology
for the one, no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of
his heart; each called-for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A
candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince
matters! The War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men
refused, many of them, to march on that occasion: pleaded the heat of
the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget that. Your
harvest? It lasts for a day. What will become of your harvest through
all Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was hot; 'but Hell will be hotter!'