Magic Locker Sectory 17
Page 03

The fireplace, around which the family gathered, was one of the most important features in the Jamestown home. Its fire offered warmth in winter, afforded light at night, and cooked the family meals during the day. An oven, usually found at the back or at one side of the fireplace, baked the family bread and other foods. About the fireplace, many home chores were carried out, including spinning and sewing; and not far from the glow of the burning logs the children learned their daily lessons and received their early religious training. Social activities were enjoyed about the hearth, especially during the long winter evenings; and when a member of the family was ill, the fireplace and its accessories were in constant use. The fireplace was the first place visited by the housewife in the early morning, and was usually the last place where she performed her household duties late at night.

The idea of Evolution has influenced all the sciences, forcing us to think of _everything_ as with a history behind it, for we have travelled far since Darwin's day. The solar system, the earth, the mountain ranges, and the great deeps, the rocks and crystals, the plants and animals, man himself and his social institutions--all must be seen as the outcome of a long process of Becoming. There are some eighty-odd chemical elements on the earth to-day, and it is now much more than a suggestion that these are the outcome of an inorganic evolution, element giving rise to element, going back and back to some primeval stuff, from which they were all originally derived, infinitely long ago. No idea has been so powerful a tool in the fashioning of New Knowledge as this simple but profound idea of Evolution, that the present is the child of the past and the parent of the future. And with the picture of a continuity of evolution from nebula to social systems comes a promise of an increasing control--a promise that Man will become not only a more accurate student, but a more complete master of his world.

"If you will freely admit that this may not be great," I said, "I am on your side. I do not mind your saying, 'This touches me with interest and delight; but it is not to be reckoned among the lords of the garden.' What I object to is your saying, 'This is great and eternal.' I feel that I should be able to respond to the great poet, if he flashed out among us; but he must be great, and especially in a time when there really is a quantity of very beautiful verse. I suspect that perhaps this time is one that will furnish a very beautiful anthology. There are many people alive who have written perhaps half a dozen exquisite lyrics, when the spring and the soaring thought and the vision and the beautiful word all suddenly conspired together. But there is no great, wide, large, tender heart at work. No, I won't even say that; but is there any great spirit who has all that and a supreme word-power as well? I believe that there is more poetry, more love of beauty, more emotion in the world than ever; and a great many men and women are living their poetry who just can't write it or sing it."

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