To-day is Christmas Day. We are about forty-five guests gathered in this inn from different parts of the United States. It is a beautiful house, nestling in the heart of a wooded hill, with an invitation floating in the air of a brook broadening into a lake in the valley. It is a glorious morning, full of peace and sunlight, of the silence of the leafless forest untouched by bird songs or humming of bees.
But where is the spirit of Christmas in human hearts? The men and women are feeding themselves with extra dishes and laughing extra loud. But there is not the least touch of the eternal in the heart of their merriment, no luminous serenity of joy, no depth of devotion. How immensely different from the religious festivals of our country. These Western people have made their money, but killed their poetry of life. Here life is like a river, that has heaped up gravel and sand and choked the perennial current of water that flows from an eternal source on the snowy height of the ancient hill. I have learnt since I came here to prize more than ever the infinite worth of frugal life and simple faith. These western people believe in their wealth, which can only multiply itself and attain nothing.
How to convince them of the utter vanity of their pursuits! They do not have the time to realise that they are not happy. They try to smother their leisure with rubbish of dissipations lest they discover that they are the unhappiest of mortals. They are like drunkards who are afraid of their lucid intervals—whose drinking produces the misery which only further drinking can drown. They deceive their soul with counterfeits, and then, in order to hide that fact from themselves, they artificially keep up the prize of those false coins by an unceasing series of self-deceptions.
My heart feels like a wild duck from the Himalayan lake lost in the endless desert of Sahara, where sands glitter with a fatal brilliance, but the soul withers for want of the life-giving spring of water. This visit of mine to America has done me one great service; it has produced in my mind an intense feeling of contempt for money.
How do you propose to spend your summer vacation? Come to join us in Europe. My visit here will be over by the end of March, and we are eagerly looking forward to the delightful time we are to spend in France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and if possible, in Spain and Italy. It will be delightful for me to share my enjoyment with you and then go back together to Santiniketan.