A survey, however inadequate of the varied and immense activities of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá 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-Bahá 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-Bahá’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-Bahá’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-Bahá 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-Bahá, receiving from the hands of a
Persian friend, recently arrived in London from I_sh_qábád, a cotton
handkerchief containing a piece of dry black bread and a shrivelled
apple—the offering of a poor Bahá’í 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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