The Argosy — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ARGOS Y. FANUARY, 16889. eee oe THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. foe CHAPTER I. THE FORGE, [? was a May-day and the wind was not in the east. The little wind there was blew softly and gently from the south, and down in the valley the weather was warm and genial. Some people might have found it too warm inside the smithy, at three o’clock in the afternoon, to be pleasant. Nevertheless, Reuben Foreman, as he stood at his anvil wielding mightily his heavy sledge with movement slow and rhythmical, was subject to several interrup- tions before the hooter of a neighbouring cloth mill announced that it was six o’clock and the day’s work at an end. And as not everyone in Woodford was either so busy or so industrious as the blacksmith, several of his visitors lingered to gossip as long as he bore with them, in spite of the heat. But Reuben took such contingencies into consideration, and in ar- ranging his programme of work for the day, left a margin wide enough to cover all the horses he would be called upon to shoe, and the fools he would be in duty bound to converse with. For the horses had hoofs to be shod, and the fools had souls to be saved ; and Reuben, in his own opinion and in that of his neighbours, was clever in both these occupations, widely different as they were, though occasionally both were performed at the same moment. As for instance, when Farmer Jobson’s black mare had the shoe she had cast replaced on her near-fore, whilst the oaf that brought her “got religion” and went out from the forge a changed man, according to the blacksmith, though outwardly as great a dolt as ever. Reuben’s work, on this as on many occasions, was consummated on the following Sunday, when the dolt was baptised by immersion in the Baptist chapel of which the blacksmith was one of the pillars. VOL. XLVIL. B GOnnGaoOo SS CO