What of the progress of Bahaism in America? It is making no marked progress. In some sections it seems to have gone forward, as on the Pacific coast and around New York and Washington. It has decreased in the South and in the headquarters of the movement, Chicago. The organization at Atlanta has disappeared from the list. The South will not take kindly to the advocacy by Abdul Baha of the miscegenation of the races. He recommends that efforts be made towards the intermarriage of the coloured and white races as the ideal panacea for the present estrangement.[633] I understand that a Washington negro has married an English Bahai woman, the courtship having occurred when both were pilgrims, and under the encouragement of Abdul Baha. Of the condition of the cause in Chicago I can speak from personal investigation. I attended the regular Sunday service in St. John's room, eighteenth floor of the Masonic Hall. It was a pleasant May day. About sixty were present--twenty men and forty women. I questioned the men and found that six of them were Bahais and fourteen, like me, were visitors. The man next to me on the right was a member of an ethical culture society that meets on the twelfth floor. I asked the man on my left to what organization he belonged. He replied, "To the kingdom of God." I inquired what was his opinion of Abbas Effendi. He pulled from his pocket a much used New Testament and pointed to the verse in Revelation which refers to the beast and said, "That is he." I conversed with several of the Bahai ladies, two of whom acted as instructors of the meeting. The Sunday-school held at an earlier hour, I learned, was a class in Esperanto. To my question as to the number of Bahais in Chicago, she replied "that Baha Ullah has told us that there must be a falling away before the triumph," from which I inferred that conditions were not prosperous. The next man, a Bahai, told me the number was about one hundred and fifty. The leader, Mrs. C. True, told me about three hundred. One of the opposing sect told me there are only sixty, while his sect has lost all organization and numbers only forty in the whole country. But if we take the number at the highest estimate given, the number is less than fifteen years ago.