24 
House & Garden 
THE ACCOMMODATING NIGHT CLERK 
T HESE incidents may not be set down in the Book, but they are 
doubtless the way the thing happened. 
When Joseph and Mary came to the inn at Bethlehem that night, 
the clerk in charge said he was very sorry, but that they were all 
full up, there wasn’t a room left. However, something must be done 
about it; and he offered them a shake-down in the stable. So they 
went to the stable quite content. 
That sort of thing happens to scores of people in New York and 
countless other cities every night. People troop in from belated trains, 
walk up to the desk expectantly and are told that all the rooms are 
taken. They are disappointed. Fagged out, nervous, hungry, all 
they want is to crawl into the little ol’ bed and sleep. Before them 
stretches the unpleasant vista of wandering about from hotel to hotel 
until, finally, when they can’t drag another foot farther, they discover 
one that can give them a room. But at this point the accommodating 
night clerk suggests that, if they don’t mind the informality of it and 
the lack of facilities, he can set up some cots over in the servants’ 
quarters above the garage. And with thankful hearts these weary 
folk make the best of the inconvenient circumstances. 
Precisely that sort of thing happened that night at Bethlehem. An 
old man and a maid, a full inn, an accommodating night clerk—and 
then soft straw on a stable floor. 
S UCCESSIVE generations of religious folk have been wont to 
sentimentalize over this. They have pictured the inn at Bethlehem 
as a sort of miniature Ritz-Carlton, with a marble lobby and bell¬ 
hops and rooms en suite with a modern bath and soft carpets on the 
floor and a French spring, box-couch bed piled high with lingerie 
pillows and comfortables. As a contrast to this they visualize the 
stable as a filthy hole such as one 
encounters now and then today on 
some backward farm. 
Neither of these pictures can be 
true. The Ritz-Carlton sort of hostel 
wouldn’t possess such a stable, on one 
hand and, on the other, Ritz-Carltons 
didn’t exist in those days. Accom¬ 
modations for travelers were primi¬ 
tive. The inns were simple. Even to¬ 
day they are simple in that part of the 
world. One carries his own mattress 
and pillow with him, and pays for a 
space on the floor. As all the floor 
space in the inn at Bethlehem was 
ru it u 
occupied that night, the accommodat¬ 
ing night clerk offered the stable where 
there was ample room, where the air 
was warmed by the bodies of the 
cattle, where it was quiet, where there 
was plenty of straw for the maiden to 
lie down upon. 
One of these days some poet will 
sing the glories of that accommodat¬ 
ing night clerk. He seems to have been 
overlooked. 
N IGHT clerks are perhaps the 
most hardened set of men in the 
world. They constantly have to stand 
the rebuffs of irate travelers. 
Night after night in any hotel in 
New York you can see enacted the 
unpleasant little scene. Up struts a 
stout, self-possessed—albeit weary— 
citizen with his entourage. He asks for 
rooms. The clerk replies that all the 
rooms are taken. “But I am Mr. 
So-and-So!” And he is indignant that 
the clerk never heard of him before, 
enraged because the clerk refuses to 
rout people out of their beds to furnish 
accommodations for the small-town 
magnate. He demands to see the 
manager. He storms. He talks about 
his “rights.” 
Somehow that sort of thing doesn't 
fit in with the picture of Joseph and 
Mary coming up to the Bethlehem inn that night. You can’t picture 
Joseph storming about or Mary whining. You can’t imagine them 
blustering about their “rights.” But we do know—for the Book tells 
it—that they accepted the shake-down in the stable. 
From that night on men have thought tenderly when they passed a 
stable, with its gentle-faced kine gazing out, and successive generations 
of them have knelt in reverence at Christmastime before a manger. 
Perhaps, had Joseph demanded his “rights,” made a scene such as 
you can see any night in any crowded modern city, we would think 
tenderly of hotels. But it isn’t conceivable that we should think 
tenderly of hotels because it isn’t conceivable that the holy pair 
spluttered about their “rights.” 
D URING the past five years there has been a lot of spluttering 
about “rights.” Workmen in every nation under the sun have 
howled and struck for them. Capitalists have demanded them in high 
dudgeon. The bourgeoisie have yelped about them in the public 
press. Big nations and small have issued floods of propaganda on their 
“rights.” Every conceivable tribe has presented its “bill of rights.” 
We are getting tired of the word “rights.” Doubtless the Big Night 
Clerk is, too. 
It is high time we stopped talking about “rights” and got down to 
the cold simple facts of working and living. We may have to begin 
by accepting some makeshift that the world offers us, some economic 
cot set up in a servants’ quarters, some fragile bundle of straw spread 
out on a stable floor. But for Heaven’s sake, let’s get down to it! 
Accept! Accept! The world has been conquered and Heaven stormed 
not by men who demanded their “rights” but by those who accepted 
the opportunities circumstance gave them. That’s the trick Fate 
invariably plays on those self-impor¬ 
tant souls who demand as inalienable 
the things they think ought to come to 
them—they never inherit the earth 
they so loudly clamor for. 
For there is a great difference be¬ 
tween the things we think ought to 
come .to us and the things that are 
good for us to have. A night on a cot 
in a servants’ hall probably does the 
spluttering small-town magnate more 
good than a suite of rooms. It may, 
conceivably, awake a sense of humility 
in his heart. 
iimuiimimumnKnmt 
TO LOUISE 
(A Christmas Baby, Now One Year Old) 
Undaunted by a world of grief, 
You came upon perplexing days, 
And cynics doubt their disbelief 
To see the sky-stains in your gaze. 
Your sudden and inclusive smile 
And your emphatic tears, admit 
That you must find this life worth while, 
So eagerly you clutch at it! 
Your face of triumph says, brave mite, 
That life is full of love and luck — 
Of blankets to kick off at night, 
And two soft rose-pink thumbs to suck. 
O loveliest of pioneers 
Upon this trail of long surprise, 
May all the stages of the years 
Show such enchantment in your eyes! 
By parents’ patient buttonings, 
And endless safety pins, you’ll grow 
To ribbons, garters, hooks and things, 
Up to the ultimate Trousseau — 
But never, in your dainty prime, 
Will you be more adored by me 
Than when you see, this Great First Time, 
Lit candles on a Christmas Tree. 
-■ —Christopher Morley 
T HERE is nothing ennobling 
about a local magnate in a suite 
of rooms, but there was something 
very ennobling about the holy pair in 
the stable. In fact, one of the world’s 
pitiful pictures is a small, self-impor¬ 
tant man wandering about, utterly 
lost, in a palatial suite. Lots of people’s 
homes are like that. They build enor¬ 
mous houses and furnish them at a 
fabulous price—and then find them¬ 
selves unhappy there. Their walls and 
chairs dwarf them! Pigmy-souled, 
they are made even smaller by the 
splendor and magnificence that sur¬ 
round them. 
But a very fine sight it is, indeed, to 
see a man who is master of the rooms 
in which he lives, who commands his 
surroundings as he commands his life. 
And a very fine sight it must have 
been that night in the stable when One 
came who filled it with a glory! 
These are strange things to say, but 
they are the veriest truth. They are 
applicable to the making of a life, they 
are necessary to the making of a home. 
You must first accept the stable. Then 
you must fill the stable with a glory. 
And having done that, you make a 
palace where men come to seek com¬ 
fort and refreshment and the warm 
cheer of friendship. 
