“Why, do you want to see him?” “I want him to see me.” “He will see you his life-long in dreams,” I said, “whether he lives to be old, or dies tomorrow.” Coming toward us across the sea was the form of a woman wringing vapory hands. “Where is my child? Where is my child?” she was saying over and over. “Mother, I am here!” cried the little girl, and the two forms melted in a close embrace. “I have found you! I have found you!” the mother and child repeated over and over, as they clung together. I remained near them a little while, for I wanted to help them to free themselves from the sadness of their fate. “Will you not come with me?” I asked them, when they could listen. “But where shall we go?” “Away from here.” “I want to go home,” said the child. “We are homeless now,” the mother answered; “we are in the other world.” “Then you also know what has happened?” I asked her. “Oh, yes, I know, I know!” “Will you not come away with me?” I repeated. “Are you an angel?” asked the mother, even as the child had asked. I told her who I was and what I was doing there. “Is there no help for us?” she asked. “It is to help you that I have come.” “But where shall we go?” “Anywhere, away from here.” As we stood talking together, another woman came toward us looking for a lost child; another child--not hers--came toward us looking for a lost mother. I am willing to tell you that I did not well know what to do with all these stricken souls. Where _could_ I take them for rest or comfort? The whole astral region around the earth is full of sadness and crying. Only the strongest and most resolute souls can get far enough away to escape the gloom and the horror. And these newly arrived ones have not the strength; for you must know that in this world we go where our desires and our thoughts go, and we go with our fears and our griefs. I led the mother and child to another part of the world, and left them with others in the care of two ministering older souls who have given themselves to this sad work. But as one cannot teach a child the differential calculus, so we cannot take to the lofty regions of peace those beings in whose hearts there is no peace. I shall ask the advice of the Teacher as to how much I should tell the world of the awful conditions around us. Even the restoration of peace on earth will not immediately purge the astral world of the sores of war. You think that you suffer--and I know better than anyone else how much; but you can escape into the material world, you can walk on the green hills in the sunshine, you can rise occasionally to the place of spiritual calm above the conflict astral and material. These millions of grieving ones cannot go back to the physical, and few of them can yet rise to the spiritual. Their immediate future is a problem for the greatest of the Masters, a problem that taxes the wisdom of the Masters of wisdom.