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They have a natural place in the Five Towns; their ambition does not stretch out beyond the finite limits of Bursley unless it be to the mild ecstasies of conventional religion or the generous aspiration which accompanies song. But the hero, Edwin Clayhanger, is something different. In the head of Edwin the boy "a flame burnt that was like an altar-fire."
It was a fascinating scene, and in keeping with the solemn grandeur of the place. There was the humble worshipper at the altar-fire, offering her devotions in a simple reverent manner. Jean smiled at this fancy, for she was certain that the idea of worship was not at all in the woman's mind. She was merely cooking the partridges her husband had brought in several hours before.
In contradistinction to this unsparing denunciation, I place Harriet Beecher Stowe's idea of this "system of shams." In "My Wife and I" she says: "You see we don't propose to warm our house with a wood fire, but only to adorn it. It is an altar-fire that we will kindle every evening, just to light up our room, and show it to advantage. And that is what I call woman's genius.
The routine duties of the maintenance of the sacred fire those two shared, for Causidiena, even stone blind, never required anyone's assistance to tell her the condition of the altar-fire and could care for it and feed it even alone, judging its needs by the sensations of her outstretched hands, never burning herself, never letting brands or ashes fall on the Temple floor.
Why had not these been saved for the sake of their wives and children, now widows and orphans, abandoned to the charities of a merciless world? Who and where is that awful Deity into whose altar-fire that conjuring Jew had spat, because He would not listen to his invocations? What dreadful Power is it which has pushed down that rock-colossus to destroy so many human lives?
That should, of itself, be a lesson to us mothers, to teach our children, not only by precept but by example, to keep alive the "altar-fire" of conventionality, and thus to make life warm, beautiful, poetic. After all, may not what the impulsive girl whom I quoted at the beginning of this talk termed the "sham" of life, be the real, though hidden side?
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