tenderness

In *The Diary of Juliet Thompson* the painter records the evening in 1912 when 'Abdu'l-Bahá visited her dying friend Marjorie Morten in her sickroom — and the strange peace that, by the next morning, had taken the place of the household's prepared grief.

Mahmúd's Diary preserves a recurring theme of the 1912 American tour: the Master's particular attention to the children who came with their parents to the meetings. He would pause the proceedings to greet them. He would set them on His knee. He would ask their names, kiss their cheeks, and send them away with a sweet from His pocket.

In *Portals to Freedom* Howard Colby Ives recounts an evening in May 1912 when, having sat through one of the great public meetings, he was invited into the Master's private room for a small cup of tea — and a quiet conversation that addressed, without his having spoken them, the very fears he had carried in.

Among the household recollections Mr. Furutan preserves in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the simple memory of how Bahá'u'lláh, in His own house, would set aside His writing to receive the children — would ask after their small concerns, would laugh at their jokes, and would send them away with blessings they remembered to the end of their lives.

In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* Mr. Furutan preserves the household memory of how Bahá'u'lláh, during the years in Bahjí, would step out into the small garden each afternoon with a handful of grain in His hand for the wild pigeons of the plain — and the gentleness of a creature who, in His own words, *did not wish to disappoint* the birds.

In March 1913 the Star of the West printed an obituary for Leslie Armstrong of Montreal — a small boy whose hands the Master had filled with fruit during the 1912 Canadian visit, on whose head the Master had laid His hand, and to whom He had said: *He will be a shining light for God.* The child died at age six from injuries in an automobile accident.