Blessing the six-year old son of Juliet’s maid

[After the marriage ceremony ‘Abdu’l-Bahá went upstairs, to the front room on the third floor] I soon followed him there, taking with me our coloured maid, Mamie, and her little adopted son, George, a child six years old. Mamie wanted to have the Master bless him.

On the way up in the bus I had (idiotically) asked: “Do you know who the Master is, George?”

“No, ma’am,” very positively.

“Well, you will know some day, for by the time you grow up the whole world will know Who the Master is and then you will be so proud and happy to remember that He blessed you.”

The blessing the Master gave George was not an obvious one, there was nothing ceremonial about it. He just took the child on His knee and talked playfully with him and caressed him. But how it impressed that little boy!

While we were going downtown in the bus, he rolled his big eyes up at me and out of a dead silence said: “I know now, ma’am.”

And when Mamie’s husband, Cornelius, opened the door for us, George rushed to him, crying out: “The Master blessed me, dearie, and I will show you just how.”
Then he clattered down the basement stairs and I was spared the scene! I never did know how George demonstrated it — he couldn’t have taken Cornelius on his knee! — but the next day Mamie told me of something else.

“Dearie,” George had asked, “is the Master that blessed me this evening the same Master that holds the moon in His hand and makes the sun shine?”

“Go to bed, child,” said Cornelius.

“But,” repeated George, “is the Master that same Lord that makes the sun shine and the rain come down?”

“The Lord that makes the sun shine,” said Mamie, “is in the Master that blessed you this evening, George. It was the Holy Spirit that blessed you.”

Footnote 1947: Thirteen years later a handsome young man came to my door. At first I thought he was Syrian. “Do you remember George?” he asked. Almost at once he spoke of the Master. “I have had a rough life among my own people,” he said, “but the blessing He gave me has lived like a fountain in my heart. It has protected me through all my sufferings. It has inspired me with the resolve to work for better conditions among my people. And,” he went on, “that other time when He spoke at a big meeting on the first floor and you brought me up from the basement and stood me on a chair so that I could see Him plainly, I thought He was God then and was frightened.” Then he described the Master to the minutest detail: the colour of His eyes, His skin, His hair, even the two tones of white in the turban He wore.

A few years ago, during the Second World War, I heard of George again from his real mother. He was in England, practising medicine and working with the wounded in the hospitals.