Feny Paulson Meets the Master

‘Abdu’l-Bahá and His party arrived in Salt Lake City on the afternoon of 28 September 1912. Bahá’ís traveled from other areas to have the bounty of seeing ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, including Feny Paulson, from Missoula, Montana. She had received a telegram stating that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would be in Salt Lake City on a certain date so she arrived a day early. Overnight, she shared a room at the YWCA, with which she was not impressed. Apart from the construction scaffolding in the entry hall and the dim light, the food was disgusting, with a fly in the German fries, a chicken still with many feathers attached and roaches at the soda fountain. Later, Feny Paulson received a phone call telling her to come for an interview with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. His first words to her were "Luxury and comfort are not the all-important things in this life", recalling to her vividly her mentioning the dirty conditions at the YWCA. He also said that He was her father, which strongly affected her because she had never known her father. The Master then gave her a locket-sized photo of Himself as a father gives a treasure to one of his children.

Source: Earl Redman, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Their Midst, pp. 208–209, drawing on Feny Paulson's own account (see Allan L. Ward, 239 Days, pp. 159–163). The arrival date is confirmed by Mahmúd's Diary, 28 September 1912.

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: hospitality).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/hospitality