for the stable of the public inn--and words can hardly
describe any place more unsuited--was shelterless, unprotected, in that
hour of travail pain.

I love to let my imagination dwell upon that scene. Sometimes I think
wayfarers may have gathered in the tavern hard by and with music and
play sought to while away the hours as travellers have from time
immemorial. Perhaps in some pause in their merriment, a strange cry of
anguish, borne by the night wind from the rude shelter without, may have
stopped their revelry for a moment and one may have asked of another:

"What is that?"

The servant of the house who stood obsequious to promote their pleasure
may have answered apologetically:

"It is the cry of a woman of the people in travail in the inn yard."

I can fancy their indifference to the answer, or I can hear perhaps the
rude jest, or the vulgar quip, with which such an announcement may have
been received, as the play or the music went on again.

Oh, yes, the world in solemn stillness lay, doubtless, that winter
night, but not the people in it. They pursued their several vocations as
usual. They loved or they hated, they worked or they played, they hoped
or they despaired, they dreamed or they achieved, just as they had done
throughout the centuries, just as they have done since that day, just as
they will do far into the future; although their little God came to
them, as never He came before, in the stable in the Bethlehem hills that
night.

And yet, had they but cast their eyes upward like the wise men--it is
always your wise man who casts his eyes upward--they, too, might have
seen the star that blazed overhead. It was placed so high above the
earth that all men everywhere could see to which spot on the surface it
pointed. Or, had they been devout men, they would have listened for
heavenly voices--it is always your devout man who tries to hear other
things than the babble of the Babel in which he lives--they, too, could
have heard the angelic chorus like the shepherds in the fields and on
the hillsides that frosty night.

For the heavens did blaze forth the birth of the Child. Not with the
thunder of guns, not with the blare of trumpets, not with the beating of
drums, not with the lighting of castle, village, and town, the kindling
of beacons upon the far-flung hills, the cry of fast-riding messengers
through the night, and the loud acclaim of thousands which greet the
coming of an earthly king, was He wel