Looking back on my life I can recall many meetings with fellow pilgrims that apparently were purely accidental, yet they left their mark upon my life. Meetings such as those, when two souls thrown together by the force of circumstances, in quiet far-away places; or in the marts of the world, become in a few short hours like old and tried friends. How often have I heard it said, even after one short hour, "I feel as if I had known you all my life." Such I look upon as epochs in my pilgrimage, milestones and guiding stars on my life's road. Yet the limitations of such epochs are obvious enough. Time on earth is circumscribed, still there is subconsciously the instant recognition of two kindred souls who hear and remember, who instinctively know that once, perchance many times before, they have landed together on the shores of time, from the storm-tossed bark of life. It seems strange that those chance meetings should have no continuity. I remember one such meeting in the East, and how utterly by chance it seemed to come about. It lasted for three days, yet after three hours I knew more of my fellow pilgrim and he of me than we would have known of each other in three months at home. We were both quite alone, but I remember his recalling the pre-Buddha words written a thousand years before the coming of the Christ: "Thou shalt not separate thy Being from Being, and the rest, but merge the ocean in the drop, the drop within the ocean. So shalt thou be in full accord with all that lives, bear love to men as though they were thy brother pupils, disciples of one teacher, the sons of one sweet mother." When we bade each other good-by and I boarded my ship we told each other we would meet again, but instinctively we knew we never should. I have forgotten his name, but all else I can remember very clearly, and the wonderful comradeship two souls, drifting together for a second in time, can give each other. He gave me the sufi mysticism of Omar Khayyam, and I can still see the English face burnt dark with eastern suns, under the snowy turban, and the brilliant parrot swinging on a palm bough above his head. I can still hear the low grave voice reciting the quatrains of Persia's astronomer poet, written a thousand years ago. They fitted in with our surroundings:-- "There was a door to which I found no key. There was a veil past which I could not see! Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There seemed, and then no more of Me and Thee." I suppose we all have many such recollections in our lives, and it is impossible (for me) to believe them to be a mere matter of chance, for, always on parting, I have been conscious that I have received some lasting good, or it has mercifully chanced that I have been able to help a stranger and pilgrim on a difficult way.