onslaughts of
malicious and unreasoning assailants. It demonstrated beyond the shadow of
a doubt what the indomitable spirit of a band of three hundred and
thirteen untrained, unequipped yet God-intoxicated students, mostly
sedentary recluses of the college and cloister, could achieve when pitted
in self-defense against a trained army, well equipped, supported by the
masses of the people, blessed by the clergy, headed by a prince of the
royal blood, backed by the resources of the state, acting with the
enthusiastic approval of its sovereign, and animated by the unfailing
counsels of a resolute and all-powerful minister. Its outcome was a
heinous betrayal ending in an orgy of slaughter, staining with everlasting
infamy its perpetrators, investing its victims with a halo of imperishable
glory, and generating the very seeds which, in a later age, were to
blossom into world-wide administrative institutions, and which must, in
the fullness of time, yield their golden fruit in the shape of a
world-redeeming, earth-encircling Order.

It will be unnecessary to attempt even an abbreviated narrative of this
tragic episode, however grave its import, however much misconstrued by
adverse chroniclers and historians. A glance over its salient features
will suffice for the purpose of these pages. We note, as we conjure up the
events of this great tragedy, the fortitude, the intrepidity, the
discipline and the resourcefulness of its heroes, contrasting sharply with
the turpitude, the cowardice, the disorderliness and the inconstancy of
their opponents. We observe the sublime patience, the noble restraint
exercised by one of its principal actors, the lion-hearted Mulla Husayn,
who persistently refused to unsheathe his sword until an armed and angry
multitude, uttering the foulest invectives, had gathered at a farsang's
distance from Barfuru_sh_ to block his way, and had mortally struck down
seven of his innocent and staunch companions. We are filled with
admiration for the tenacity of faith of that same Mulla Husayn,
demonstrated by his resolve to persevere in sounding the a_dh_an, while
besieged in the caravanserai of Sabsih-Maydan, though three of his
companions, who had successively ascended to the roof of the inn, with the
express purpose of performing that sacred rite, had been instantly killed
by the bullets of the enemy. We marvel at the spirit of renunciation that
prompted those sore pressed sufferers to contemptuously ignore the