Returning to New York: The Master After the Western Tour

Mahmúd's Diary records the return of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's party to New York in late November 1912 — the closing chapter of the American tour, before the December departure on the steamship *Celtic* for the homeward voyage to Liverpool and on to Egypt.

1 / 8

The party had been on the road, on and off, since the previous April. The western swing of September through November — Buffalo, Chicago, Minneapolis, the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco and the Bay Area, the southern route back through Denver and Cincinnati and Washington — had been physically demanding. The Master, then sixty-eight, had borne the entire schedule with His characteristic refusal to claim weariness. Mahmúd notes, with the discreet observational care of his diary's voice, that the return to New York was nevertheless a relief.

2 / 8

The New York friends had been waiting. Many of the pilgrim visits paid to the Master at Akká in earlier years had been by believers from the New York area. The Master's months of absence in the western states, during which they had been only correspondents to His distant journey, had left them eager for the renewed direct presence.

3 / 8

The Master, on arrival, took up His residence in the rooms that had been engaged for Him in the Manhattan apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Kinney — the same suite of rooms He had occupied in the spring before the western swing began. He resumed, almost immediately, the daily reception of believers and inquirers. The Kinneys' Manhattan apartment, for the weeks that followed, became again the gathering place that the New York Bahá'í community had been missing.

4 / 8

Mahmúd records the rhythm of those December weeks. The Master held a morning reception for the friends. He took private interviews through the late morning. The midday meal was taken with whichever guests had not yet had their private audience. The afternoon was reserved for sermons and address — sometimes in the Kinney apartment, sometimes in a rented hall in Manhattan or Brooklyn. The evening was for further private visitors, including a steady stream of curious Christian clergy, university professors, journalists, and inquirers from outside the Bahá'í community.

5 / 8

The Master also addressed the small ongoing organisational work of the New York friends. He met with the executive committee of the local body. He counselled, in particular, on the spiritual qualifications of the believers' future representative institutions. The notes Mahmúd preserves of those meetings would, in subsequent years, serve as one of the foundation documents for the New York Local Spiritual Assembly's eventual establishment.

6 / 8

The departure on the *Celtic* was set for 5 December. The New York friends knew, by then, that the visit was ending. They came in greater and greater numbers in the closing days, each wanting one final word, one final blessing, before the voyage home that none of them could now follow.

7 / 8

*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entries for the November-December 1912 New York return; see original for full text.*

8 / 8