The primitive air-blast being still in commission, it may itself say
that the South, in spite of the war upheaval and the far more seismic
convulsion of the reconstruction period, was still the Old South when
Caleb married Martha Crafts.

It was as much a love match as middle-age marriages are wont to be, and
following it there was Paradise gossip to assert that Caleb's wife
brought gracious womanly reforms to the cheerless bachelor house at the
furnace. Be this as it may, she certainly brought one innovation--an
atmosphere of wholesome, if somewhat austere, piety hitherto unbreathed
by the master or any of his dusky vassals.

Such moderate prosperity as the steadily pulsating iron-furnace could
bring was Martha Gordon's portion from the beginning. Yet there was a
fly in her pot of precious ointment; an obstacle to her complete
happiness which Caleb Gordon never understood, nor could be made to
understand. Like other zealous members of her communion, she took the
Bible in its entirety for her creed, striving, as frail humanity may, to
live up to it. But among the many admonitions which, for her, were no
less than divine commands, was one which she had wilfully disregarded:
_Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers._

Caleb respected her religion; stood a little in awe of it, if the truth
were known, and was careful to put no straw of hindrance in the thorny
upward way. But there are times when neutrality bites deeper than open
antagonism. In the slippery middle ground of tolerance there is no
foothold for one who would push or pull another into the kingdom of
Heaven.

Under such conditions Thomas Jefferson was sure to be the child of many