Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1911 — THE VIĹAGE SMITHY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE VIĹAGE SMITHY

APART from the poem of “the spreading chestnut tree,” there is quite a wealth of poetry associated with the village smithy. Would you hear the latest news of the country-side?—go to the smithy. Would you meet the retired farmer or the village nomads, go to the smithy. This is the meeting-place of all classes, the reading and debating room by day, which one finds adjourned to the fireside of the village inn by night. The village blacksmith is a busy man and, as if to upbraid the idler and the phlegmatic, he makes his anvil ring from early morning and, except the subject be very Interesting, waits till occasion calls him to the bellows handle ere he gives his views on momentous questions, local and national, which are discussed near the fofge. His workshop is the center of attraction, the center of business, the gathering-place of all and sundry, and when its doors are closed the village wears a depressed, unnatural appear-' ance, which strikes one immediately if one is familiar with local idiosyncrasies, _

Foregathering at the doors, the habitues prod holes in the ground with their sticks and discuss the forthcoming sales, notices of which ares inseparable from the smithy door. The smith Is away and they proceed to the village inn, which does not seem to have quite recovered its energy from last night. It is lethargic, it has not yet cast off all the fumes of strong pipes and twist tobacco, its floors are still damp and clammy from the cleansing pall, its spittoons have not yet been adjusted in their wonted corners; but the smith is away and so the inn is the alternative. It is a poor substitutte, for there is no visitor here to quiz, the ring of the anvil is missing, the parson has-shut himself up in his study, the landlord of the morning is not the landlord of last night, and so conversation drifts to turnips, and the company, who know each other’s views on both turnips and pigs inside out, go home to dinner early, passing the smith’s closed doors with the feeling of fegret a man has who has been used to his club and after years finds himself unable to pay Its fees. However, the sights and incidents of his excursion provide the smith with a fund of Information and his patrons with a plethora of questions on the following morning when they'draw up to the Corners and lean-ing-posts which they have come to took upon as their own personal property.

A variety of Incidents takes place before these open doors, surrounded by newly-painted cart-wheels, aged and dilapidated harrows, injured and rusty plows and a heap of “scrap” awaiting a buyer. Almost every one who is “a native” of the locality pulls up to pass the time of day and ask if "them there chains Is made” or “that there horse rake done.” Then belated motorists, broken-down cyclists and the more old-fashioned drivers of gigs whose horses have cast shoes, all call In turn for the smith to set them fair and square to continue their journey. The blacksmith Is essentially something of a mechanic, and knows, as he puts It, "the innards of them motors” better than he understands the “Innards” of his own cow or the horses he shoes. He prefers the two latter, however, having little sympathy with the motor, which has already robbed him of many horses at the big houses in the locality. The smithy frequenters stand leaning on their sticks as he crawls under the motor or bends over tfae cycle, filled with indignant curiosity at these latter-day innovations. The company feel a sort of proprietary interest in the smithy, and so look upon the motor as an invention specially directed against blacksmiths generally and their own village blacksmith in particular. There are occasionally red-letter days at the forge when a young horse is being shod for the first Great is the criticism during the operation, much resented by the horse.

At one time there was associated with the smithy a great deal of lore and legend; it was at the anvil that lovers decided whether their affections ware returned, and here, too, by stratge rites and ceremonies, mysteries of murders and thefts were

solved. Most old-world superstition is now obsolete, though the jsmith and his older patrons still have a lingering belief in the ghost at the hall and the enortnities of the greatgrandmother of a certain villager, who used to milk cows at midnight, gallop horses by the light of the moon and generally practice the- arts of witchcraft. t 5 F

So day by day the same little coterie gather at the same place in the village, the only difference between onehalf of the year and the other being that in winter the big double doors are closed and the company draw close to what Is ever an unsatisfactory fire for personal warmth, and in summer the thick stifling smoke from burnt hoofs floats through those said doors down the village, together with that which is drawn from small clay pipes into the toothless mouths which hold them. Weird and ghostly look the figures of the company, who, cheered up by tea, have “cumm’d ageean,” to await the closing of the shop and the adjournment to the village inn. The bellows creak and groan, the little fire (which ever seems willing to burst into flames and ruddy redness at any moment of the day) snorts out in response, and one-then sees the figures of those one expected to find,' stick in hand and pipe in mouth. Each of them is a character, each a study, each in his way, to us who know It, a sort of flx- N ture at the smith’s, a part and parcel of the ringing anvil, the making of

shoes and the placing of them on the feet of such horses as demand their being altered the least. They watch all this with approving eyes and seem almost essential to It. It will thus be seen that our smithy Is quite an important Institution and one in which Dickens would have revelled.

Very different Is the German smith depicted in the second Illustration. The photographer says; “He toils very early hut not so late nor so strenuously—your Teuton Is always more leisurely—but unlike Longfellow’s hero he has a couple of hours’ siesta In the heat of the day, during which period I was fortunate enough to catch him smoking his long pipe filled with coarse, dry tobacco which looked like broken cigars. J. FAIRFAX BLAKEBOROUGH.

SHRINKING ON A TIRE

A German Smith.