The Master's Gift on Riverside Drive

With all of His spiritual knowledge and vision ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was extremely practical. On His third visit to New York He spent much time with the Kinneys at their home on West End Avenue. This was only one block from Riverside Drive, where, often, He would walk. One late afternoon He came back with His snowy 'aba' wrapped close around Him and He was laughing. It seemed that on the Drive, He had come across a poor man whose trousers were literally in rags. So ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had taken him behind some thick shrubbery where quickly He had taken off His own trousers, stripped the rags from the man, and got him decently clothed. How amazed that poor man must have been. And how amused ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who, with His aba wrapped tight around Him to hide His trouserless condition, came back laughing.

Source: Reginald Grant Barrow, Mother's Stories: Stories of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Early Believers told by Muriel Ives Barrow Newhall to her son, p. 40. During His third stay in New York (November 1912) Mahmúd's Diary records that the Master lodged in a house on Riverside Drive, walked daily along the river, and spent afternoons at the Kinneys' home.

Collected from bahaistories.com.

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