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Educated in the most aristocratic college in Paris . . . at eighteen . . . call of duty . . . with General Lee to the very last cruel minute . . . after that catastrophe end of the world—return to France—to old friendships, infinite kindness—but a life hollow, without occupation. . . Then 1870—and chivalrous response to adopted country’s call and again emptiness, the chafing of a proud spirit without aim and handicapped not exactly by poverty but by lack of fortune.
Upon these virtues and qualities, no less than upon the elimination of the evils referred to, must depend, to a very great extent, the ability of that community to lay a firm foundation for the country’s future role in ushering in the Golden Age of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh.
There is something of good and kindly feeling in perpetuating the delusion that has lasted for so many years of life, and making the very resting-place of their meritorious services recall to them the details of those duties, for the performance of which they have reaped their country’s gratitude.
Here they settle at what hour of the night the public-houses shall be closed, at what hour of the morning they shall be permitted to open, how soon it shall be lawful for people to eat their dinner on church-days, and other great political questions; and sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in the two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants of Mudfog that its little body of legislators, like a larger and better-known body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a whit more profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into the night, for their country’s good.
Manuscripts, containing secrets of our country’s history, which are now lost forever, were scattered to the winds. The old ancestral portraits, whose fixed countenances looked down on the wild scene, were rent from the walls. The mob triumphed in their downfall and destruction, as if these pictures of Hutchinson’s forefathers had committed the same offences as their descendant.
But our misfortunes seem to be coincident with my country’s mishaps.... So I thought if they sent an officer who would be kind enough to understand " "I understand ... L’Ombre has appeared in the moat again, has it not?" "Yes, it came a week ago, suddenly, at five o’clock in the afternoon." "And the clocks?" "For a week they have been all wrong." "What hour do they strike?" he asked curiously.
What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully touching such an instance of a people’s sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to commemorate the glorious day when they so nobly sustained their country’s honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and sorrowing over their degradation.
There the two great contestants are country and self, and unless the spirit of patriotism guides the vote our country is sure to lose. To be faithful citizens we must be honest in our politics. The political star which guides us should be love for our country and our country’s laws.
The consequences were as little anticipated by the Faith’s persecutors as they were by its defenders. Throughout the long decades in which the believers in the cradle of the Faith suffered intermittent persecution for their beliefs, the mullás, who instigated and led these attacks, acted in concert with the country’s succession of monarchs.
Living! why, I have heard say that he blew a fife—for he was a musical as well as a Christian professor—a bold fife, to cheer the Guards and the brave Marines, as they marched with measured step, obeying an insane command, up Bunker’s height, whilst the rifles of the sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and thick amidst the red-coated ranks; for Philoh had not always been a man of peace, nor an exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter, but had even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country’s service before his six-foot form required rest, and the grey-haired veteran retired, after a long peregrination, to his native town, to enjoy ease and respectability on a pension of ‘eighteenpence a day’; and well did his fellow-townsmen act, when, to increase that ease and respectability, and with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they made him clerk and precentor—the man of the tall form and of the audible voice, which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife.
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