... description: 1915, Clark Box 3 Henrietta Clark Wagner author: Henrietta C. Wagner (Aunt Etta) title: Pilgrim Notes notes: ... # Pilgrim Notes ## Henrietta C. Wagner (Aunt Etta) ### 1915, Clark Box 3 Henrietta Clark Wagner ------ ## Pilgrim Notes ### Received from Henrietta C. Wagner (Aunt Etta) ### February 16, 1915 Mrs. Elizabeth Clark 10651 Tibbs Circle #2 Garden Grove, CA 92640 Tele: (714) 636-4664 Home of Bahá’u’lláh ‘Akká, Palestine February 16, 1915 Dear Friends: Today about 11 o’clock the Beloved ‘Abdu’l-Bahá came out of the house and I followed Him on His walk. It was a perfect day, the City of ‘Akká was bathed in the war rays of the sun, and something filled my heart and whispered the words, “It is good to be here”. Recently the news of the war has set a train of thought in the minds of the people; the Turkish government has sent spies all over the country to find out what the people are thinking and doing. Thus suspicion and mistrust are eating away the very heart of confidence and mutual relationship from amongst the inhabitants. It was apropos of the above conditions that the Beloved spoke as follows: “Suspicion, like unto the hot blast of mid-summer, withers the roots of the sweet and delicate flowers of trust and confidence. It extinguishes the light of love and spreads the darkness of surmise and doubts. It blights the immortal plants of faith and reliance, and increases the germs of destruction and ruin, It is worse than the venom of serpent and more harmful than the armies of locusts. The poison of an adder kills the body, but the virus of suspicion destroys the spirit. It has been demonstrated by eminent biologists that a single bacterium, after twenty-four hours of self-production and generation, would reach the total number of 16, 776, 216 bacteria. This is true in a higher degree of the germs of suspicion, for the generative energy is most marked end its power of fecundity well pronounced. The numerous colony of our bacteria had at least one bacterium for their primal ancestor, but suspicion cannot even claim as much. It is always uncertain origin; it sulks in the darkness. It cannot shop its genealogical tree, its genesis is never established. It jumps into the midst of a company, nobody knows from where, and immediately it starts flying around in the dust of doubt and hesitation. The individual members of the company fl a strange and unexplainable sensation creeping over their souls and benumbing their liner spiritual sensibilities. They look at each other with different eyes; they begin to suspect one another and shun each other’s association.