test Holy Leaf had
by that time abundantly demonstrated her worthiness to rank as one of the
noblest figures intimately associated with the life-long work of
Baha'u'llah.

How grievous was the ingratitude, how blind the fanaticism, how persistent
the malignity of the officials, their wives, and their subordinates, in
return for the manifold bounties which she, in close association with her
Brother, so profusely conferred upon them! Her patience, her magnanimity,
her undiscriminating benevolence, far from disarming the hostility of that
perverse generation, served only to inflame their rancour, to excite their
jealousy, to intensify their fears. The gloom that had settled upon that
little band of imprisoned believers, who languished in the Fortress of
Akka contrasted with the spirit of confident hope, of deep-rooted optimism
that beamed upon her serene countenance. No calamity, however intense,
could obscure the brightness of her saintly face, and no agitation, no
matter how severe, could disturb the composure of her gracious and
dignified behaviour.

That her sensitive heart instantaneously reacted to the slightest injury
that befell the least significant of creatures, whether friend or foe, no
one who knew her well could doubt. And yet such was the restraining power
of her will--a will which her spirit of self-renunciation so often prompted
her to suppress--that a superficial observer might well be led to question
the intensity of her emotions or to belittle the range of her sympathies.
In the school of adversity she, already endowed by Providence with the
virtues of meekness and fortitude, learned through the example and
exhortations of the Great Sufferer, Who was her Father, the lesson she was
destined to teach the great mass of His followers for so long after Him.

Armed with the powers with which an intimate and long-standing
companionship with Baha'u'llah had already equipped her, and benefiting by
the magnificent example which the steadily widening range of
'Abdu'l-Baha's activities afforded her, she was prepared to face the storm
which the treacherous conduct of the Covenant-breakers had aroused and to
withstand its most damaging onslaughts.

Great as had been her sufferings ever since her infancy, the anguish of
mind and heart which the ascension of Baha'u'llah occasioned nerved her,
as never before, to a resolve which no upheaval could bend and which her
frail constitution belied. Amidst the dust and heat o