The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1900-07-07
FEMININE -BLACKSMITHS
Sisters of St Dominic Have
Learned to Shoe Horses

Williams Town, Cape Colony, South
Africa, have established a black
smiths shop and have adopted the role
OF the new woman in a brand-new char
acter. The sisters of St. Dominic
eager to COY the seeds of religion in
Africa, turned their backs on the time
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 a land where most of the
digging was for gold and diamonds, a
far more profitable use of the spade
than digging for potatoes, the nuns
quietly put their hands to the pillow.
But accidents will happen even in a
convent, and in time the plowshare was
broken
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 a 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
neighbors regard their work with sus-
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 wafer.
At close range the most striking effect
n 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 of the Do
minican convent are experts. The pre-
cision Of the Misunderstanding nuns
seems to exercise a sort of fascination
will 60 out of their way on their daily
tasks to gaze at their Woodworking sis
tiers of the smithy.
A recent visitor to the sisters of St
Dominic, who had the good fortune to
possess a letter of introduction from
a bishop to the mother superior, en-
tered the occasion in detail in his diary.
The abbess proved to be a oma en-
dowed with uncommonly good sense.
She was practical, and her personal
spirituality was so aided and tenn
pered with a knowledge of human ma
ture and a sense of humor that she
captivated the visitor. After a tour Of
inspection of vines. fruit trees and
growing crops the abbess drove him to
the blacksmith shop. The smithy was
a long, narrow building. with a strong
frame, the sides ~clapboarded and the
whole surmounted 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 votaries of Vulcan.
Tethered to a strong oaken 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. 4 nun bent
over the nigh hind foot, with a foot
resting in her lap, and with a pair of
tongs was fitting a red-hot shoe to the
searching hoof. With the assistance
Of a sister, the nun nailed the shoe,
and, patting the side of the horse, she
peat the performance with a second
shoe.
Once or twice the nun drove a nail in
a direction that did not satisfy her.
Such she withdrew, but at last the shoe
was firmly nailed, nails clinched and
sharp orner all neatly rasped down
and the big horse was shod as neatly
and as well as the average blacksmith
could have done it.
While the horseshoeing 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 ex-
perimental fashion. and frequently ex-
hibited her work to the nun who had
shod the horse. seeking her advice upon
points of the smiths art. An
other nun was repairing farm ma
chinery. and seemed to be an adept at
the work.-N. Y. Press.
The Sailors Apology.