A Copy for a Weeping Schoolboy

*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield, from the recollections of Bahíyyih Khánum. Read the [full text](https://bahai-library.com/blomfield_chosen_highway) for the original account.*

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From 1854 to 1856 Bahá'u'lláh lived in the mountains of Sulaymáníyyih in Kurdistán, having left Baghdád without telling anyone where He was going. He went dressed as a dervish, and no one there knew who He was. His family had word of Him only when His son and His brother overheard two people speaking of a dervish in those mountains, "The Nameless One," who had "magnetized the country-side with his love."

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His daughter, Bahíyyih Khánum, later told Lady Blomfield some of the stories of those two years, which the family heard when He returned. One of them was this.

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One day, near a village in the mountains, Bahá'u'lláh saw a young boy weeping bitterly. Always compassionate towards anyone in sorrow, especially a child, He asked, "Little man, why art thou weeping?"

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The boy looked up and saw a dervish. "Oh Sir!" he said, and wept again. "The schoolmaster has punished me for writing so badly. I cannot write, and now I have no copy! I dare not go back to school."

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"Weep no longer," Bahá'u'lláh told him. "I will set a copy for thee, and show thee how to imitate it. And now thou canst take this; show it to thy schoolmaster."

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When the schoolmaster saw the writing the boy brought back, he was astonished, for he recognized it as royal penmanship. The schoolmaster asked the boy who had given it to him.

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"He wrote it for me, the dervish on the mountain."

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"He is no dervish the writer of this, but a royal personage," said the schoolmaster.

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As the story spread, people set out to find this dervish, and so great a crowd pressed around Him that He moved further away, going from place to place and hiding from the crowds in the caves of the mountains.

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*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** (Lady Blomfield). See the book for the complete account.*

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