"Where were
you last evening, Teddy?"
"Went
down to the country."
"Well, you
missed the meeting of your life. The Grand Master was here. We had an orchestra, the lodge room was beautifully
decorated with palms and cut flowers and the banquet that followed was a peach.
You surely missed it, Teddy."
"I attended
a meeting of a country lodge that night."
"Wouldn't
some of those country Masons open their eyes if they could see a blow-out like
we had last night?"
"Yes, I
guess they would, but they made me open my eyes at their meeting all right. I
guess I will have to tell you about that country lodge meeting:
"In the
first place, it was held in the village school house, a two story brick
building erected by this Masonic Lodge and given rent-free to the county for
school purposes all except for the large hall on the second floor.
"I was told
about the meeting the day before and expressed my desire to attend, and the
Master took me down to the butcher shop and told Chris Johnson, the butcher,
what I wanted and requested him to get two more of the boys and examine me.
Chris told me to come back after supper, and when I did there were exactly nine
of the local lodge members present, and they made a function of the examination
and used up three hours asking me everything from how many wives King Solomon
had to where the Master hung his hat.
"They
enjoyed themselves fine and I had a time that still seems like a bad dream to
me. But from the time that examination was over my standing in that village
changed. I was the guest of the town and treated like a prince.
"Next day
the farmers commenced coming in at daylight and at 11
o'clock the back fence of the court house was hitched full of gray mares, each
with a colt at her heels, and the school house steps and fence were full of
farmers in their Sunday clothes, each one whittling a stick and talking
Masonry.
"At noon the
real function of the day came in the shape of a dinner served by the wives of
the Masons in the lodge room. I expected a luncheon, but I found a feast
instead! Whole hams, whole turkeys with the stuffing sticking out and running
over the plate, armfuls of celery, and right in front of me was a whole roasted
pig with an apple in it's mouth, and do you know, that pig really looked like
he was glad he had died to grace so noble a feast.
"Honestly,
the tables had to stand cross-legged to keep from falling down with their load,
and when we got up a little child gathered up over a pint of buttons from under
the table. Every night when I go to sleep I see that pig on the table and a
nice old lady that kept handing me glasses of boiled custard at that feed.
"Well, I won't
make you hungry telling you about it. Enough to say that we ate and talked
until 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I never had such a time in my life. They
made me make a speech and I told all the stories I had heard in the theatres
this winter until the Master said I ought to travel with a show.
"Then the
women cleared up the place while we men went out and sat on the fence and
smoked like furnaces.
"At 6 o'clock
the lodge was opened and although the Master wore a slouch hat, and although
there was not a dress suit in the room and although the Senior Warden (who was
a farmer) had his favorite fox hound sitting solemnly beside his chair, I have
never seen a more beautiful opening ceremony or a better rendered degree. It
was the third and when the one candidate had finished the degree and listened
to the lecture I thought the work was over. But I was mistaken. The Master
finished all the work in the ritual and then added something like this:
"'Jim, you
are now a Mason. I fear that it will be many years before you know what that
means. There is not a man in this room, Jim, that hasn't watched you grow from
a little shaver in a calico dress to manhood. There is not a man in this room
who did not watch you all through school, and although you have thought all
through life that you had no father, I want to tell you now that you had a
hundred.
"'Your
father belonged to this lodge, Jim was Master of it and although you can hardly
remember him, every man in this room followed him to his grave and every one of
us knows that his life was as spotless and square as a man's life can be, Jim,
and while we don't know much about heaven, our innermost souls cry out the
truthfulness of the life to come, and we know that somewhere in the great
beyond your father is looking down on you and me this minute and is glad, and
will watch your career as a man and a Mason with renewed confidence and hope.
He and we will watch you from now on, Jim.
"'He knew it
when you got into the habit of playing ten-cent limit with the gang down at the
hotel and it hurt him and it hurt us.
"'All your
future life, Jim, try to remember that he is looking down at you, and when
there comes up to you a question of right and wrong to decide, try to think
what he would like to have you do, and remember you now have the honor of this
old lodge to sustain now the lodge that your father loved and was Master
of. Of course you are a man now,
Jim, but when you were a boy, a very little boy, your daddy used to take you in
his arms and pray God that He would guide you in the path that you have started
in tonight and partly for daddy's sake, partly for God's sake, partly for the
honor of this old lodge, but mostly for your own sake, Jim, I beg of you never
to take a step that will make us regret what we have done tonight'
"Jim was in
tears and I will admit that I was sniffling some
myself when the old man got through. Somehow I had forgotten that he did not
have on a Tuxedo suit, somehow the fact that he had on a slouch hat instead of
a plug, slipped out of my mind, and all I remember and
realize was that he was a true Mason."
Reprinted from
the Illinois Masonic News