|
A survey, however inadequate of the varied and immense activities of Abdu'l- Baha in His tour of Europe and America cannot leave without mention some of the strange incidents that would often accompany personal contact with Him. The bold determination of a certain indomitable youth who, fearing Abdu'l- Baha would not be able to visit the Western states, and unable himself to pay for a train journey to New England, had traveled all the way from Minneapolis to Maine lying on the rods between the wheels of a train; the transformation effected in the life of the son of a country rector in England, who, in his misery and poverty, had resolved, whilst walking along the banks of the Thames, to put an end to his existence, and who, at the sight of Abdu'l- Baha's photograph displayed in a shop window, had inquired about Him, hurried to His residence, and been so revived by His words of cheer and comfort as to abandon all thought of self- destruction; the extraordinary experience of a woman whose little girl, as the result of a dream she had had, insisted that Jesus Christ was in the world, and who, at the sight of Abdu'l- Baha's picture exposed in the window of a magazine store, had instantly identified it as that of the Jesus Christ of her dream-- an act which impelled her mother, after reading that Abdu'l- Baha was in Paris, to take the next boat for Europe and hasten to attain His presence; the decision of the editor of a journal printed in Japan to break his journey to Tokyo at Constantinople, and travel to London for "the joy of spending one evening in His presence"; the touching scene when Abdu'l- Baha, receiving from the hands of a Persian friend, recently arrived in London from Ishqabad, a cotton handkerchief containing a piece of dry black bread and a shrivelled apple-- the offering of a poor Baha'i workman in that city-- opened it before His assembled guests, and, leaving His luncheon untouched, broke pieces off that bread, and partaking Himself of it shared it with those who were present-- these are but a few of a host of incidents that shed a revealing light on some personal aspects of His memorable journeys.
(290:2)
|