320 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
The Bag of Pearls
I SAW an Arab sitting in a circle of jewellers and relating as follows •
Once on a time, having missed my way in the desert and having
no provisions left, I gave myself up for lost, when I happened to find
a bag full of something. I shall never forget the relish and delight
that I felt on supposing it to be fried wheat; nor the bitterness and
despair which I suffered on discovering that the bag contained pearls
A Persian writer of the 12th century
No Man Slept the Night He Died
No man in England slept the night he died :
The harsh, stern spirit passed without a pang,
And freed of mortal clogs his message rang,
In ever wakeful mind the challenge cried :
Think not of me : one servant less or more
Means nothing now : hold fast the greater thing •
Strike hard, love truth, serve England and the King I
Servant of England, soldier to the core,
What does it matter where his body fall ?
What does it matter where they build his tomb ?
Five million men, from Calais to Khartoum,
These are his wreath and his memorial.
Christopher Morley on Lord Kitchener,
drowned during the Great War
The Hand That Ceased to Write
AMONG- the drivers of the Balkan Convoy was a young Irishman
who had vainly tried to enter the British Army but had been
rejected for ill-health, and who died in Sglonica: In his last letter
he wrote: -
The risks, as the days go by} seem of smaller and smaller account.
I miss many, very many, of the little luxuries at home, but I have enough
and to spare. We are all so prone to put our own selves before the part
we are playing in stemming the tide of human suffering that never seems
to ebb.
While in the main we are happy, we never cease to talk of home.
Daily we conjure up what we shall do when that great day of peace shall
dawn, the hours we shall laze in the morning between sheets of snowy
white, the meals we shall have, the visits to our old haunts. There is
much to do in the meantime, work which will daily bring'us near to
suffering and self-sacrifice, and teach us perhaps some lessons in un-
selfishness and bring us nearer to finding our souls. On the whole there
is renewed courage out here, and the hope of brighter-___
The letter ends abruptly, for the writer's hand was cold.
Laurence Binyon