It was a few days before Christmas in the city of Bombay. I had just returned from a tour in the Northern part of the Presidency, and for a week had not spoken to a single Englishman. With a Parsee friend I was sitting on the veranda of an Indian house looking out over a star lit sea. On the promenade below, Indian men and women, picturesquely garbed, were passing and repassing.

"Strange isn’t it," I said to my companion, "that since landing I have not so far conversed with any Britisher." Hardly were the words spoken when I heard quite nearby a small choir singing Christmas hymns in English. Old familiar tunes and words reviving memories of carol singing at home came to us on the still night air. It was a dramatic intrusion into a scene so Oriental.

Looking over the balcony rail I saw a small group in the uniform of the Salvation Army. My friend and I decided to go down and talk to them, so we made our way to the garden below. After the customary greetings had passed, I turned to one young fellow with the remark, "And what part of the Old Country do you come from?" "The County of Durham," he remarked to my surprise. "Indeed," I said, "and what part of the County?" "Bishop Auckland, or to be more correct from a small village nearby, of the name of Witton Park," was his retort. "Well, that is strange," I said. "Do you know the place?" he questioned. "I should, seeing that I was born there," was my reply. Then I revealed my identity, and we had a long talk about home.

How curious that meeting seemed. There we were, six thousand miles from dear old Bishop. Nothing about us was like home. The warm sultry air, the almost silent sea, the tropical palms, the dusky crowds that chattered in unknown tongues. But a word and a handgrip transported us in an instant from Bombay to the Black Road, from the babel speech we couldn’t understand to Newgate Street on a Saturday night, where was spoken a language we could.

After we parted I sat and thought, as I’d often done, about strange meetings in many lands. Of the day when pushing through a crowd of jostling Arabs and Greeks in Salonika, I was hailed with a loud "What fettle?’’ by a miner from Coundon. Of the night, in Southern Italy when in a tiny cafe, I heard the broadest Durham accent asking for some adjectival "Koniak," and found the owner of the voice belonged to a village quite near home. Of the men in Malta and the Aegean Islands, of engineers on ships, and of military police in frontier towns, all of whom came from the Bishop Auckland area. Then across the Atlantic - the welcome of Auckland men in Canada and in the States. Jim Cousins, of Detroit, who was a Barrington boy forty years ago. Chris Pallister, of Toronto, who worked in Auckland for years. There are hosts of others.

How wonderful these meetings were; how everything else was forgotten as we talked of the old town and its ways. We have the reputation of being insular and parochial in Bishop Auckland. It is said we cannot see beyond our little local interests and concerns. Of some the statement may be true, it is not true of the most of us about here. There are few families that have not got sons beyond the seas or friends who link them with the big world outside. So when Aucklanders abroad meet each other they talk lovingly of home. Old scenes are recalled, old inns are revisited in memory, especially in "dry" America.

The world is not so big really. In those days of steam and electricity the vast distances that separated countries are being annihilated. Science has spanned the oceans, and places once far off are coming nearer. And that wider Auckland, that Auckland in the cold northern latitudes, that Auckland in the steamy heat of the tropics, these are closer to us than they were to past generations.

So amid our activities here, we do not forget those who work out yonder. They are of us. New places claim their labour and perhaps in a measure, their affection. But deep in their hearts is love of old associations and even though many may not be able to come back to us in person, their thoughts ever travel this way. We are glad at all events to believe this, for it redeems from selfish littleness the strivings we call life.