ewitness,
describing the reaction of the community to the news of Baha'u'llah's
approaching departure, "witnessed a commotion associated with the turmoil
of the Day of Resurrection. Methinks, the very gates and walls of the city
wept aloud at their imminent separation from the Abha Beloved. The first
night mention was made of His intended departure His loved ones, one and
all, renounced both sleep and food.... Not a soul amongst them could be
tranquillized. Many had resolved that in the event of their being deprived
of the bounty of accompanying Him, they would, without hesitation, kill
themselves.... Gradually, however, through the words which He addressed
them, and through His exhortations and His loving-kindness, they were
calmed and resigned themselves to His good-pleasure." For every one of
them, whether Arab or Persian, man or woman, child or adult, who lived in
Ba_gh_dad, He revealed during those days, in His own hand, a separate
Tablet. In most of these Tablets He predicted the appearance of the "Calf"
and of the "Birds of the Night," allusions to those who, as anticipated in
the Tablet of the Holy Mariner, and foreshadowed in the dream quoted
above, were to raise the standard of rebellion and precipitate the gravest
crisis in the history of the Faith.

Twenty-seven days after that mournful Tablet had been so unexpectedly
revealed by Baha'u'llah, and the fateful communication, presaging His
departure to Constantinople had been delivered into His hands, on a
Wednesday afternoon (April 22, 1863), thirty-one days after Naw-Ruz, on
the third of _Dh_i'l-Qadih, 1279 A.H., He set forth on the first stage of
His four months' journey to the capital of the Ottoman Empire. That
historic day, forever after designated as the first day of the Ridvan
Festival, the culmination of innumerable farewell visits which friends and
acquaintances of every class and denomination, had been paying him, was
one the like of which the inhabitants of Ba_gh_dad had rarely beheld. A
concourse of people of both sexes and of every age, comprising friends and
strangers Arabs, Kurds and Persians, notables and clerics, officials and
merchants, as well as many of the lower classes, the poor, the orphaned,
the outcast, some surprised, others heartbroken, many tearful and
apprehensive, a few impelled by curiosity or secret satisfaction, thronged
the approaches of His house, eager to catch a final glimpse of One Who,
for a decade, had, through precept an