The Argosy — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

The Village Blacksmith. 3 was spotless; his clothes were free from every speck of dust, and fitted his little body faultlessly ; his hands, small and white as a lady’s, were about half the size of the blacksmith’s grimy paws. ‘‘T shall be returning about five,” smiled the Rector as he left the forge. “Very good, sir,” said Reuben, returning to his anvil after tying up the pony to wait his pleasure, whilst its little master skipped lightly up the village street to his meeting. There are little men and little men in the world. Some of the best wares are packed in the smallest parcels ; some of the largest hearts beat in little bodies, and some of the world’s greatest men have been, and are, and no doubt will be, little men. Even when this is the case there is something almost pathetic about a very small man. One feels sorry for him and inclined to think that St. Paul’s assurance that he was “small” was sufficient to account for that ‘‘thorn in the flesh ” about which theologians have made so many vain speculations. But when a little man is swollen out with a sense of his own dignity and importance, the pathetic element in his composition be- comes grotesque, our pity is touched with sarcasm, if not with scorn. And unfortunately for Mr. Ryot Tempest, he was so puffed up with the family pride of the Tempests, so inflated with the blue blood of the Ryots, that he was an object of amusement even to his friends ; to his enemies a favourite butt for witticisms which, however weak, invariably hit the mark his little body offered. Soon after Mr. Ryot Tempest’s departure a boy brought a donkey, used to carry bread up the hills in panniers, for a new shoe, and Reuben attended to him at once, for he knew the boy’s time was precious. He further improved the occasion by inquiring into the spiritual state of his visitor; emphasising his remarks, and frightening the boy half out of his wits by pointing to his glowing furnace, which always served him as a faint illustration of a certain place to which, according to Reuben’s creed, all the wicked must go, unless they repent and see the error of their ways. A most essential part of Reuben’s stock-in-trade was that furnace. Without it his occupation as a blacksmith would have failed ; without it his sermons would have been tame, his exhortations probably fruitless. His style as a preacher and teacher of men was realistic, and the furnace was more eloquent than words. He had but to point to the roaring bellows, the flaming forge, the glowing furnace, and to the dull imaginations of the local yokels, the stereotyped, colourless minds of the mill-hands, a vivid picture of the place of endless torment was conjured up. Had Reuben been a grocer instead of a blacksmith, he would no doubt have weighed the good and the bad with his sugar and tea had he been an undertaker, the same tape would have served him GOnnGaoOo SS CO