Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 1.3.6

1.3.6

By the same rule, an open table for a dozen of persons, and an exhibition of fine dancers once a week, ought to be two important parts of the politics of a Fodjdar of such a city in time of war : these will attract successively all the company good or bad in the city : men naturally unbend their minds and fall off their guard in such assemblies of pleasure ; and if he be an intelligent man himself, and by all means an abstemious one, and also heartily mixes in conversation, he will learn more in one week's time with an open table, than fifty harcaras or spies could tell him in six months. Mr. B. seated at the top of a towering lofty tree, could descry from afar the elephants and rhinoceroses that came to tear off some branches of the tree, and the tigers and bears that wanted to climb up to it : In the humble station in which I moved, close to the trunk, I was too low to discover any thing of those elephants and tigers, but very properly seated, however, to discover those myriads of white ants that were approaching the trunk in their covered galeries; and although I pretended to no knowledge either in politics or in physics, I knew for certain, that if ever they devoured the bark, there was an end of the tree.