The Royal Penmanship

Bahíyyih Khánum, the daughter of Bahá’u’lláh, recalled one of the stories told of His two years in the mountains of Kurdistan:

One day, near a village in the mountains, Bahá’u’lláh saw a young boy weeping bitterly. My father, always compassionate for anyone in sorrow, especially if it were a child, said, "Little man, why art thou weeping?" The boy looked up at the one who spoke, and saw a dervish! "Oh Sir!" and he fell to weeping afresh. "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." "Weep no longer. 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." When the schoolmaster saw the writing which the boy had brought, he was astonished, for he recognized it as of the royal penmanship, this amazing script. "Who gave this to thee?" said the master. "He wrote it for me, the dervish on the mountain." "He is no dervish the writer of this, but a royal personage," said the schoolmaster. This story being noised abroad, caused certain of the people to set out to find this one, of whom many wonderful things were said. So great was the throng which pressed in upon Him, that He had to go further away; again and again, He moved from place to place, hiding Himself from the crowds, in the caves of the mountains, and in the desert places of that desolate land.

Source: Lady Blomfield, The Chosen Highway, Part II, “A Spoken Chronicle” (the recollections of Bahíyyih Khánum).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: bahaullah-sulaymaniyyih).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/bahaullah-sulaymaniyyih