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Show FASHIONS ROSEBUDS OF IRON New Jersey Blacksmith Probably the Most Skillful Metal Worker in the World. Louis Van Boeckel, the blacksmith of a small Belgian hamlet, has wou j more than local fame by his skill in j ( Cushioning flowers from metal by i means of the tools of his trade. He haB an American rival, however, in the person of James Cran, a blacksmith whose smithy Is in Plainfleld. N. J. "It is Interesting to watch this smith make a rose," save a writer in the New York Sun. "He first fashions the core, and then forges the smaller petals, hammering the ends out flat. Next, he takes a contrivance shaped like a screw-driver and opens the outer out-er petals first. . . . After hollowing hollow-ing out the petals, he grasps the Iron rosebud in a p: i r of lons. thrusts it into the lire, and '.leats the stems of the petals. He takes it out of the Are. and hammers the stems into a solid mass. "He forms the larger petals In the Bame manner, and having thus made the complete rose, he grasps it with larger tongs, heats and hammers it igain, and Anally puts the red-hot. glowing mass In a vise, i "All the different parts of the flower j he forges separately. He makes the veins, or radical ribs of the leaves, with the peen of the hammer. The same tool, when it is slightly tilted, j and Its blows directed to the outside of the leaf, makes the serrated edges of the leaves. He first holds the piece from which the leaf is made in the tongs and heats and flattens it on the anvil. He forms the center rib in the leaf by letting that part lap over the edge of the anvil while he flattens the rest of the leaf. "Mr. Cran works entirely from memory, mem-ory, and uses no model. His k i 1 1 in metal working is said to be greater than that of Van P.oeckel himself." Many Old People in Berlin. According to statistics just published pub-lished Berlin appears to be an extraordinarily extraor-dinarily healthful place for the aged, who live there in remarkably large numbers. A feature of the figures is the much greater number of old worn- ; en in proportion to old men, and with i every decade above seventy the pro-' pro-' portion increases astonishingly. In Berlin the number of men between seventy and eighty is 12.898. while the number of women Is 25,204. For Greater Berlin the figures are 20.040 and 37.520 respectively Of persons between eighty snd ninety women are In an enormous majority. For Berlin the tigtves are 2,0:'. men and 5. .171 womc. ;nl for Greater Berlin 3,169 nun ud 7.810 women. Berlin has a large number of nonagenarians, and of these three out of every tour are women. wom-en. In Greater Berlin there are 364 women w ho have passed their ninetieth nineti-eth birthday, but only 111 men. Lost Her Temper. "An old woman came over here to my window the other day."' said a young man in an information bureau, "and asked me what was good for an aching tooth." "Some wag must have put her up to it." "Yes, and when I snapped: 'Have It out, madam,' she proceeded to have It out with me." |