rtunity and
acquitted herself of the task with which she had been entrusted! The
delicacy and extreme gravity of such functions as she, from time to time,
was called upon to fulfil, when the city of Ba_gh_dad was swept by the
hurricane which the heedlessness and perversity of Mirza Yahya had
unchained, as well as the tender solicitude which, at so early an age, she
evinced during the period of Baha'u'llah's enforced retirement to the
mountains of Sulaymaniyyih, marked her as one who was both capable of
sharing the burden, and willing to make the sacrifice, which her high
birth demanded.

How staunch was her faith, how calm her demeanour, how forgiving her
attitude, how severe her trials, at a time when the forces of schism had
rent asunder the ties that united the little band of exiles which had
settled in Adrianople and whose fortunes seemed then to have sunk to their
lowest ebb! It was in this period of extreme anxiety, when the rigours of
a winter of exceptional severity, coupled with the privations entailed by
unhealthy housing accommodation and dire financial distress, undermined
once for all her health and sapped the vitality which she had hitherto so
thoroughly enjoyed. The stress and storm of that period made an abiding
impression upon her mind, and she retained till the time of her death on
her beauteous and angelic face evidences of its intense hardships.

Not until, however, she had been confined in the company of Baha'u'llah
within the walls of the prison-city of Akka did she display, in the
plentitude of her power and in the full abundance of her love for Him,
those gifts that single her out, next to 'Abdu'l-Baha, among the members
of the Holy Family, as the brightest embodiment of that love which is born
of God and of that human sympathy which few mortals are capable of
evincing.

Banishing from her mind and heart every earthly attachment, renouncing the
very idea of matrimony, she, standing resolutely by the side of a Brother
whom she was to aid and serve so well, arose to dedicate her life to the
service of her Father's glorious Cause. Whether in the management of the
affairs of His Household in which she excelled, or in the social
relationships which she so assiduously cultivated in order to shield both
Baha'u'llah and 'Abdu'l-Baha, whether in the unfailing attention she paid
to the everyday needs of her Father, or in the traits of generosity, of
affability and kindness, which she manifested, the Grea