The ex-sailor told me the following: This is a small world. I'll tell you why. Once, while I was on shore leave in Spain, I met a man in a bar. He was an American living there. He asked me where I was from. I told him New York. He said where in N.Y. and I told him...a small town..He said, hey, we were neighbors, I lived in ...another smaller town..just a few miles away. For the rest of the night, the sailor had his drinks and a meal paid for.

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Then the ex-sailor told me: My grandfather was the doctor in that small town for a long time and once, he heard a knocking at his front door late at night. He wondered what it was, because there was a bad snow storm in progress. When he opened the door, he saw a little girl in a red winter jacket crying. The girl said that her momma needed help and to please follow her. When he arrived at the house (after walking a mile or two in the storm), he saw that without help, the woman would not last the night. Later, when the woman woke up, she asked the doctor how he knew that she needed help. He replied that her little girl came for him. She answered that it was impossible because her little girl died a couple of months ago. Her jacket, the one he saw, was hanging in the womans closet.