tation, had now seized the hearts of the exiles of
Ba_gh_dad and galvanized their entire beings. "So inebriated," Nabil,
describing the fecundity of this tremendously dynamic spiritual revival,
has written, "so carried away was every one by the sweet savors of the
Morn of Divine Revelation that, methinks, out of every thorn sprang forth
heaps of blossoms, and every seed yielded innumerable harvests." "The room
of the Most Great House," that same chronicler has recorded, "set apart
for the reception of Baha'u'llah's visitors, though dilapidated, and
having long since outgrown its usefulness, vied, through having been
trodden by the blessed footsteps of the Well Beloved, with the Most
Exalted Paradise. Low-roofed, it yet seemed to reach to the stars, and
though it boasted but a single couch, fashioned from the branches of
palms, whereon He Who is the King of Names was wont to sit, it drew to
itself, even as a loadstone, the hearts of the princes."

It was this same reception room which, in spite of its rude simplicity,
had so charmed the _Sh_uja'u'd-Dawlih that he had expressed to his
fellow-princes his intention of building a duplicate of it in his home in
Kazimayn. "He may well succeed," Baha'u'llah is reported to have smilingly
remarked when apprized of this intention, "in reproducing outwardly the
exact counterpart of this low-roofed room made of mud and straw with its
diminutive garden. What of his ability to open onto it the spiritual doors
leading to the hidden worlds of God?" "I know not how to explain it,"
another prince, Zaynu'l-Abidin _Kh_an, the Fa_kh_ru'd-Dawlih, describing
the atmosphere which pervaded that reception-room, had affirmed, "were all
the sorrows of the world to be crowded into my heart they would, I feel,
all vanish, when in the presence of Baha'u'llah. It is as if I had entered
Paradise itself."

The joyous feasts which these companions, despite their extremely modest
earnings, continually offered in honor of their Beloved; the gatherings,
lasting far into the night, in which they loudly celebrated, with prayers,
poetry and song, the praises of the Bab, of Quddus and of Baha'u'llah; the
fasts they observed; the vigils they kept; the dreams and visions which
fired their souls, and which they recounted to each other with feelings of
unbounded enthusiasm; the eagerness with which those who served
Baha'u'llah performed His errands, waited upon His needs, and carried
heavy skins of water for His abl