18 
HO USE & GARDEN 
I T used to be that all TTT . x T , ^ r. of his gift—no more, no 
roads led to Rome. But THE WAY OF CON\ ERGING ROADS less; they crystallize the 
after a certain night they wild paradox of a man re¬ 
led to Bethlehem, and they have been leading there ever since. 
Down them came the three kings and the shepherds, the learned 
men and the loutish. Down them have come young and old, 
paupers and princes, gentlemen, saints and fools, knights at arms, 
ecclesiastics, demi-mondes, soldiers and pushcart men, and sailors, 
too. Their ways converged. For the Bethlehem way is the way 
of converging roads. 
The impulse that sends these motley peoples down that road is 
one thing; the impulse with which they come away is quite an¬ 
other. The three kings came with gifts to present, and went away 
empty handed but heart full. The shepherds came empty handed 
but went away rich as kings. The one may have been drawn there 
with a definite purpose, the other out of curiosity. But to both 
the magic worked the same. Both looked at the same Thing and 
both sazv the same Thing, which was quite impossible before that 
time. There they were—men ripe in wisdom and men to whom 
wisdom was stranger—side by side, gazing at It as It lay before 
them—and both seeing It alike. 
S INCE the roads converged that night in Bethlehem, it has 
been given to those who go that way to see this Thing alike. 
There may be an aristocracy of the road, but complete democracy 
reigns in the inn at the end of it. For to all the vision is the same, 
and to all is given the same measure of wisdom. Men find a 
common ground there, just as their hands are filled with a com¬ 
mon gift and their hearts with a common joy. They found a com¬ 
mon ground that night in a child. Ever since they have been 
finding common ground in the acts of a child. 
Consider it from any viewpoint one wishes, Christmas is a stu¬ 
pendously childish occasion. Exchanging gifts is a stupendously 
childish practice. Kneeling before a creche is a thoroughly childish 
act. Being utterly and inexpressibly happy is a childish state of 
mind. Yet no man, for all his learning and experience, has been 
able to create an occasion more suitable or a practice more perfect. 
No man, for all his skill, has been able to chart another such 
Infinity wherein all roads converge. 
R OADS of competition always run parallel; they never con¬ 
verge. The trenches that scar the Continent today are par¬ 
allel roads—ways of men without a common ground, of nations 
without a common factor, blood-soaked avenues of competition. 
Down one march those who believe that the roads will converge 
in Paris, by another go those who hold that they meet in Berlin. 
It never occurs to them that the roads can never converge unless 
they lead toward Bethlehem Town. . . . But can they ever 
meet there? 
Parallel roads are roads of give and take, of capture and sur¬ 
render. They give what is forced from them, they take what they 
can snatch. The converging roads are roads that give, yet the 
nearer one draws to Bethlehem Town, the more is he beggared. 
The parallel roads of war are roads of annihilation—of the other 
man. The way of converging roads demands annihilation of self. 
They present the stern justice of a man receiving to the measure 
ceiving that he may give, storming the world that he may sur¬ 
render it, gaining a crown that he may fling it away. 
Now these are quite old-fashioned ideas. They lack smartness 
and the modern touch. The approval of the transient hour is not 
stamped upon them. They casually disregard the up-to-date prin¬ 
ciples of individualism and their democracy scorns the law of 
ownership. They are mere beggarly truths, queer charms to carry 
with one down the converging roads, strange playthings of the 
gods such as a child would pick up and take along with him. But 
without them, Bethlehem Town can never be reached. 
S O it has come about that Home is the Inn of Christmas. There 
reigns the democracy of young and old. There men and 
women receive to give. There competition is flung aside like a 
broken toy. There the roads converge. 
The center of home is the heart of the world, and the center of 
home is the child. Men first built homes to preserve the child 
against the inclemency of the seasons. Ever since the house has 
been built around this tiny idea—the hearth to keep it warm, the 
windows through which it might look out on sunny fields, the 
doors by which it can pass out into the big world, the stairs that 
carry it at night up to chambers of safety and soft repose. 
This may seem a crude basis for living, but since it came about 
that the roads of the world converged where a Child was born that 
night, men have recognized the utter futility of seeking a better 
one. For there men can be as children; there, as children, they 
practice the gentle art of being in the world and yet not of it. 
Home come men empty handed, to go away rich as kings. Home 
come men proud as kings, to go away humble like little children. 
And like the three kings themselves, each returns thenceforth into 
his own country another way. 
I T’S the coming back from Christmas that makes the journey 
there worth while, it’s the starting afresh, it’s the new path to 
the feet, the new horizon to the eye, the new joy in the heart. It 
is the challenge to fear. 
Now it may be the magic of the Inn, it may be the magic of the 
Thing you gaze upon, it may be the magic of the season; believe 
what you will; Christmas is the touchstone of the world. For one 
short hour the cold granite of the world’s heart flames with gold. 
For one short hour competition is forgotten: soldiers banter greet¬ 
ing across No Man’s Land; the humble of kin come into their own; 
the beggar boasts the crown and the king boasts his rags; poor 
men fling pennies to the wind as though they were rich, and rich 
men scatter gold as though they would spill it in rainbows down 
the sky like a drunken god. Gleeful as children, everyone; mad, 
utterly mad with joy—because a star stood still one certain night 
where the roads converged. 
