The shelter and food given one for the love of God are “sanctified creatures.”  Sleeping in a home for the love of God is more refreshing than sleeping at an inn for a price.  One has been blessed and one has also blessed in return; for again, hospitality, like mercy, blesses both those who give and those who take.  Throughout a night one has helped to constitute a home, and the angels of the home have guarded one.  One has lain not merely in a house but in a Christian home, not only in a home but in the temple of the heart.

It is sweet in a far-away land to be treated like a son or a brother, to be taken for granted, to be embraced by strange men and blessed by strange women.  Sweet also is it for the far-away man to recognise a new son or a new brother in the wanderer whom he has received.  I remember one night at the remote village of Seraphimo in Archangel Government, how a peasant put both hands on my shoulders and, looking into my eyes, exclaimed, “How like he is to us!”

II

Tramping across the Crimean moors I lost my way in the mist near the monastery of St. George, and was conducted by a peasant to the Greek village of Kalon, well known to old campaigners—­it is between Sebastopol and Balaklava.  The village remains the same to-day as it was in the days of the Crimean War, and the same families as lived there then, or their descendants, live there now.  I visited the starosta, and he indicated a home where I might sleep the night.  I was taken in by an aged Greek woman and entertained among her family.  They brought me bread and wine, and spread out the best couch for me.  The sons told me of hunting exploits with the bear and the wild boar; they told me how at Christmas time the wild turkeys fly overhead in such numbers that it is the easiest thing in the world to shoot one’s Christmas dinner—­and I thought that very convenient.  When the sons were silent, or talking among themselves, the old dame told me about her youth:  how she was only seventeen years old at the time of the war; how the English were the most handsome of all the soldiers, how the Turks were the most lazy and the most brutal, how the French and the Italians simpered; how the English soldiers were loved by the Greek girls, how they were also more generous than the other troops and gave freely clothes and tea and sugar and whatever was needed in the cottages and asked no money for it whatever; how in these days the little children played with the cannon-balls, rolling them over the moors and up the village street—­all manner of gossip the good old lady told me, beguiling the hours and my ears till it was bedtime.  Next day I offered to pay at least for my food, but the old lady, though poor, waved her hand and said, “Oh no, it is for the love of God!” How often have I had that said to me day after day in Russia, especially in the North!