The Village Blacksmith

1895

Progress is seldom picturesque. Science and sentiment disagree. It is, however, with, a certain, lingering regret that we stand by and watch all the old time ways and customs swept away one by one.

Even the blacksmith's forge, with its glowing embers and the comfortable roar of its huge bellows, will be missed. But it is doomed now — doomed by the success of the electric bath metal heating apparatus, which will bring a bar of iron to white heat almost instantaneously.

It is one of the peculiarities of the processes, and manifestly one of its advantages, that it is possible to heat a horseshoe or rod of iron without affecting any part of the tongs which hold it. It has been demonstrated in a most definite manner, that the work can be done not only more quickly but more economically than by the old fashioned process. This is sufficient.

The village blacksmith must follow the rest and become an electrician. — Family Magazine.