Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/118

96 He asks you the human questions. He asks about father and mother and brothers and sisters, about your home and your calling and your goal. In return he tells you the intimate things of his life.

This is not only a matter of the road. How often the most utter stranger, met in a railway carriage or a post-station or at an inn, will after a remark about the weather or the crops begin to tell you the whole story of his life. He assumes the hospitality of your heart; a sure sign that in general people's hearts are hospitable, that in general there is a love towards destiny.

As a wanderer and a seeker I have myself experienced the ordinary material hospitality of hearth and home, and also this of the heart, having often been poor, strange-looking, and enigmatical enough. Russians have not looked askance; they have been brotherly. They have accepted a stranger naturally and simply as they would one near to themselves. More than that, knowing that I had a special quest, there have always been those who came forward and helped me in the spiritual things. Mysterious beings have, as it were, anticipated my coming, and have stepped out and recognised and said: "Read this; go to that one and talk to him; see this Russian picture." They love to preserve the mystery too. I have known people who had the aspect of having dreamed of my coming.

The first day I was in Vladikavkaz, an old tatterdemalion standing by the bridge over the