COINCIDENCES, LUCK, CHANCE 



prise), I addressed him by name. I had not seen him since 

 saying good-bye in Montreal thirty years before when he 

 was removing to England, and it was in this isolated^ desolate 

 spot I met the only Canadian face I did meet in a pleasant 

 3,000 mile tramp. 



It is purely an accident of railway life that, what 

 many visitors have said is the most complete collection of 

 Shakesperiana in the Dominion, should be located at 

 Stratford-on-Avon ; that the personal notice scrapbook of 

 M. Barnett, playwright and actor, should fall into my 

 hands, and that at points, some hundred miles apart, on 

 this continent I should pick up two Black-letter English 

 books, each containing the delicate autograph of White 

 Kennett, historian and bishop, noted as one of the very 

 early and enthusiastic collectors of Americana. 



Do many of you recollect lyord Macaulay's favorite 

 coincidence story, as quoted by that genial soul, Wm. J. 

 Thoms, editor of "Notes and Queries," and librarian to 

 the House of Lords? Macaulay wished to verify a quota- 

 tion from a commonwealth pamphlet before sending a 

 volume of his own writing to press. Not finding his own 

 copy of the booklet he applied to the British Museum, the 

 Bodleian and at Paris, then to the book-dealers of London 

 and Paris, all fruitlessly. Walking one morning before 

 breakfast, as was his habit, he stopped to examine the 

 stock of a small dealer in second-hand books, who was 

 putting outside, baskets marked all at 2d, 4d, 6d each. 

 Finding a book in the 6d basket that pleased him, he 

 tendered a half-sovereign in payment. The dealer^ smiling, 

 said, "it is too early forme to change gold, if you have 

 nothing smaller, will you keep shop for me while I see if I 

 cannot get change?" The unknown would-be purchaser 

 said yes, and walked inside the deep, narrow, dark store, 

 and slowly continued his walk down to the brightest spot 

 in it at the far end, where a horizontal ray from the rising 

 sun, coming through a broken pane of a grimy end 



