The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1899-09-01
FEMININE BLACKSLIITHS.
Sisters of st. Dominic Have
Learned to Shoe Horses.

Williams Town, Cape Colony, South
Africa, have established black
smiths shop and have adopted the role
Of the new woman in brand-new char
actcr. The sisters of St. Dominic
eager to SOW the seeds of religion in
Africa, turned their backs on the tire
honored converts of Europe and estab-
lished a settlement in Cape Colony,
where they purchased an extensive
farm. Finding that farm laborers were
scarce in n land where most of the
digging was for gold and diamonds,
far more profitable use of the spade
than digging for potatoes, the nuns
quietly put their hands to the plow.
But accidents will happen even in
convent, and in time the plowshare was
brG,:cn.
There being no blacksmiths in that
region, the nuns sent to Capt Town and
got the materials to build and the tools
and implements to supply a smithy. A
blacksmith as tutor was secured, and
now the nuns have learned how to do
their own smith work. They have thus
far proved not only their equality with
man, but their superiority to him, for
when the blacksmith, disregarding his
religious environments and the respect
due to the noble women who hired him,
went on a prolonged spree, they
bounced him out of the settlement.
In the new country where the nuns
have set up their habitation the Boer
iplh np thoi,.
picion and resentment, the English
stand and wonder and the natives look
on with awe and reverence. The visitor
who rides to the convent from King
Williams Town comes upon the nuns,
brown clad and busy hoeing. blowing,
pruning and grating, or perhaps driv-
ing strong-limbed oxen to the water.
AT close range the most striking effect
in the appearance of a sister of st.
Dominic as seen in South Africa is her
rosy, tanned face, so different from the
bloodless, white complexion of the nun
under ordinary conditions. This nat
ural bronze is we'll earned. Day after
day, week after week. month after
month. the nuns toll at the forge and
in the field, exposed to the rays of the
African sun and the fierce heat of the
forge.
The feminine blacksmiths CT the Do
minican convent are experts. The pro
cision of the Misunderstanding nuns
seems to exercise sort of fascination
over the rest of the sistcrhood, for they
will go out of their way on their daily
tasks to gaze at their Woodworking sis
tiers of the smithy.
recent visitor to the sisters of st.
Dominic, who had the good fortune to
possess letter of introduction from
a bishop to the mother superior, en-
tered the occasion in detail in his diary.
The abbess proved to be woman en-
dowcd with uncommonly good sense.
She was practical, and her pHr@3nai
spirituality was so aided and tenn
pcred with a knowledge of human ma
turc and sense of humor that she
captivated the visitor. After tour of
inspection of vines, fruit trees and
growing crops the abbcss drove him to
the blacksmith shop. The smithy was
a long, narrow building, with a strong
frame, the sides clapboGrded and the
whole surmountcd with a red cupola,
with slated sides through which the
smoke of the forge drifted. Within
were a well-built brick forge, a strong,
capacious bellows of OK hide and all
the customary paraphernalia incident
al to the vocation of votarics of Vul-
can.
Tethered to a strong oalen rack in
the center of the shop was a draught
horse, whose big bones and shaggy fet-
locks proclaimed the Flemish animal.
With nail box beside her, a nun bent
over the nigh hind foot, with a foot
resting in her lap, and with pair of
tongs was fitting rcd-hot shoe to the
scorching hoof. With the assistance
of a sister, the nun nailed the shoe,
and, patting the side of the horse, she
proceeded to lift another hoof and re-
peat the performance with a second
shoe.
Once or twice the nun drove n nail in
direction that did not satisfy her.
Such she withdrew, but at last the shoe
was firmly nailed, nails clinched and
sharp corners all neatly rasped down,
and the hig horse was shod as neatly
and as well as the average blacksmith
could have done it.
While the horseshocing was in prog
ress another nun was busy making
hinges, hooks and staples, ringbolts
and other articles of builders hard
ware out of small rod and bar iron.
She hammered away in rather an en-
perimental fashion, and frequently cx-
hibited her work to the nun who had
shod the horse, seeking her advice upon
knotty points of the smiths art. An
other nun was repairing farm ma
chincry, and seemed to be an adept at
the work.-N. y. Press.
Dead LnnEunEcs.
There are certain languages which,
although they are still spoken and
written in, are to all intents and pur-