ink. Sleep was impossible to Him. The place was chill and damp,
filthy, fever-stricken, infested with vermin, and filled with a noisome
stench. Animated by a relentless hatred His enemies went even so far as to
intercept and poison His food, in the hope of obtaining the favor of the
mother of their sovereign, His most implacable foe--an attempt which,
though it impaired His health for years to come, failed to achieve its
purpose. "'Abdu'l-Baha," Dr. J. E. Esslemont records in his book, "tells
how, one day, He was allowed to enter the prison yard to see His beloved
Father, where He came out for His daily exercise. Baha'u'llah was terribly
altered, so ill He could hardly walk, His hair and beard unkempt, His neck
galled and swollen from the pressure of a heavy steel collar, His body
bent by the weight of His chains."

While Baha'u'llah was being so odiously and cruelly subjected to the
trials and tribulations inseparable from those tumultuous days, another
luminary of the Faith, the valiant Tahirih, was swiftly succumbing to
their devastating power. Her meteoric career, inaugurated in Karbila,
culminating in Bada_sh_t, was now about to attain its final consummation
in a martyrdom that may well rank as one of the most affecting episodes in
the most turbulent period of Baha'i history.

A scion of the highly reputed family of Haji Mulla Salih-i-Baraqani, whose
members occupied an enviable position in the Persian ecclesiastical
hierarchy; the namesake of the illustrious Fatimih; designated as
Zarrin-Taj (Crown of Gold) and Zakiyyih (Virtuous) by her family and
kindred; born in the same year as Baha'u'llah; regarded from childhood, by
her fellow-townsmen, as a prodigy, alike in her intelligence and beauty;
highly esteemed even by some of the most haughty and learned 'ulamas of
her country, prior to her conversion, for the brilliancy and novelty of
the views she propounded; acclaimed as Qurrat-i-'Ayni (solace of my eyes)
by her admiring teacher, Siyyid Kazim; entitled Tahirih (the Pure One) by
the "Tongue of Power and Glory;" and the only woman enrolled by the Bab as
one of the Letters of the Living; she had, through a dream, referred to
earlier in these pages, established her first contact with a Faith which
she continued to propagate to her last breath, and in its hour of greatest
peril, with all the ardor of her unsubduable spirit. Undeterred by the
vehement protests of her father; contemptuous of the anathemas of her
uncle;