University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

Once more, gentle reader, must we make a brief pause
among the ever-green mountains of that rugged, yet fertile
and flourishing state, which, in so many respects, may
be termed the Switzerland of America. That fearless and
sturdy little sister of the Republic, who has ever stood the
unflinching sentinel of the out-post unrelieved, asking no
assistance for herself, and eager to meet the first foe that
would attempt to encroach on the bright domain of her
beautiful, though often unmindful sisterhood. That state,
in fine, whose sons are hardy, industrious, healthy, and
physically vigorous as the green, rock-grasping forests that
clothe their native mountains, patriotic to a proverb, and as
ignorant of the vices, as many of their contemptuous Atlantic
neighbors are of the virtues, and, at the same time,
more intelligent, perhaps, as a mass of people, than those
of any other spot on the face of the globe.

The anniversary of the birth-day of St. John happened
this memorable year, as it generally does in New-England,
I believe, on the 24th day of June, and not in one of the
autumnal months, as among the observant brotherhood of

the southern states, and some parts of Europe. It was a
lovely day, and of that season of the year when the scenery
of this part of the country, more especially appears in all
its glory. The zephyrs were gently ruffling the deep green
foliage that exuberantly covered the mountain sides, or
waving the vigorous growth of the rich fields of corn and
wheat, in the fertile valley beneath, within which our hero
was this day to make his public debut, as the young Boanerges
of Masonry.

In an old pasture or common adjoining the road about
one hundred rods from the tavern, the identical tavern
where Timothy first opened his eyes to the glorious light
of Masonry, a platform of new boards had been built up
and elevated six or eight feet from the ground, over which
was erected a booth of green boughs, and in front was placed
a row of small ever-green trees leaning their tops
against the stage in a slanting position for the double purpose
of ornament and of screening from the view of the
audience the unseemly chasm beneath. This was the rostrum
prepared for the orator of the day. At the distance
of some fifteen or twenty feet in front, and parallel with the
stage, were numerous rows of benches, composed by laying
boards on short logs or blocks, for the accommodation
of the audience. And at the right of these, through an
artificial grove of maple saplings, sharpened and set into
the ground, ran a long table, with seats on each side, fitted
up in a style in good keeping with what we have already
described. While baskets of cold baked meats, bread,
various kinds of pastry, fried cakes, cut into curious fantastical
shapes, but mostly typical of masonic emblems, such
as square, compasses, &c., the ingenious devices of the
landlord's and other masons' wives, called in to assist in the
mighty preparations,—honey, preserves, and nicknacks
without number, as well as bottles of beer, cider, and even
Malaga wine, with the usual accompaniment of glasses,
were already on the ground, and placed, at a short distance
from the table in the custody of Susan, the landlord's
daughter, and her brothers,—personages to whom the

reader was introduced in a former chapter—the former of
whom from the gayest and most frolicsome had now become
metamorphosed into the demurest of damsels, wearing a
checkered apron and beauless bonnet, modes which she
adopted at a camp-meeting, soon after receiving the visit
of his majesty of the black face and nine-foot tail, as described
in the chapter to which we have just alluded.
But leaving these, now actively employed in preparing the
dinner table for the brotherhood, and such others as might
choose to join them on this joyful occasion, let us return
to the inn where the company of the day were mostly already
assembled.

About eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the drum beat at
the door, and the long line of the brethren, issuing from
the lodge-room, formed procession in front of the house,
and, preceded by martial music, moved on to the place
we have described, the master of the lodge and orator first,
the subordinate officers next, then the masonic privates, or
brethren generally, and lastly, the citizens with their own
or mason's wives, sweet-hearts, or partners protempore;
for hundreds of both sexes, and all ages, had flocked in
from the neighboring country, coming on foot, in gigwaggons,
on horse back, like beavers, with their better
parts behind them, and even in ox-teams, to witness the
novelties of a masonic festival.

When the procession reached the place prepared for the
exercises of the day, the orator, master and chaplain for
the occasion, ascended the stage, while the audience were
seated on the benches prepared for them in front.

Now was a moment of intense and thrilling interest to
our hero. Never did he feel a more lively sense of the responsibility
which rested on him. He perceived himself
the focus of all eyes, and he knew that high expectations
were formed of the performance on which he was about to
enter; but he felt proud in the consciousness, that as
bright as these expectations might be, they were still more
brightly to be answered. And as he glanced at his own
fine coat, so favorably contrasted with the rustic habiliments

of those around him, his flowing ruffles, his snow-white
vest, and above all, the rich crimson sash and other
glittering badges of his proud exaltation in Masonry, now
displayed over his person in the most tasteful arrangement,
he felt a glow of self complacency at the thought of the
unparalelled sensation that his appearance was about to
make on the hungry expectants of the gaping and wonder-struck
multitude. And, in fancy, he already heard the low
whispered plaudits of the wise, the suppressless awe and
astonishment of the ignorant, and the tender and languishing
sighs of the heart smitten fair. But why delay the
anxious reader with the anticipated banquet of intellectual
luxuries when the bright reality is before him. As soon
as the brief clerical exercises were over, our hero gracefully
rose, advanced to the front of the stage, and, after
saluting the three masonic points of the compass, designating
the rising, meridian and setting sun, with as many
elegant bows, he looked slowly around on the audience, in
imitation of his reverend Albanian prototype in oratory,
and, drawing himself up with that dignity so peculiarly his
own, addressed the listening crowd as follows—

Illustrious Companions, Right Worshipful Masters and Beloved
Brethren, of our ancient, co-existent, honorable and refulgent
Institution of Free and accepted Masonry:

With the most profound ebulitions of diffident responsibility,
I rise to address you on this stupendous occasion.
Assembled as we are to ruminate on the transcendant and
ineffable principles of that glorious institution whose existence
is co-ordinate with the origin of antiquity, and whose
promulgated expansion extends from where the rising sun
elucidates the golden portals of the east, to where it sets in
the oriental extremities of the west, let us in the first
place, promenade back through the mysterious ages of ancestry
and exaggerate a short biography of its radient progress
from its suppedaneous commencement, down to its
present glorious state of splendid redundance. It is
agreed by all, that Freemasonry existed among the earliest

generations of our posteriors after the general deluge.
Learned men of our order, however, have discovered that
it begun its origin at a much more antiquated period of
the universe even before progenerated man had heard the
audible voice of the grand architect of the world, bidding
him enter and behold the light of the exhilerating heavens.
And I am conclusively of the opinion that it must
have commenced its created existence somewhere near the
beginning of eternity. From traditional knowledge,
known only to the craft, it has been long dogmatically
settled, that “masonry is of divine origin.” The expulsion
of the rambellious angels from Heaven, it may be
lucidly argufied, was for unmasonic conduct. Hence it is
implicitly proved that there was a grand lodge in that luminous
expansion. The first indefinite evidence of the
existence of masonry on this subterraneous hemisphere is in
the garden of Eden. It is the most conjectural probability
that after the Great Almighty Supreme, and Worshipful
Grand Master of the mundane Universe, had expelled
those unworthy masons from the Grand-lodge of the celestial
canopy, he sent forth his trusty wardens to ramify a
subordinate lodge among the puerile inhabitants of the
earth, that they might pass through a state of reprobation
before they were permitted to transmigrate to the great
and lofty encampment of Heaven. And it was problematically
these who initiated Adam into the secrets of masonry,
and clothed him with the apron, that universal expressment
of our order, which we read, he wore as he meandered
the orchards of Paradise. Eve, I comprehend
was not allowed to consolidate in the blessings of masonry,
because, as our Book of Constitutions, so clearly explanitates,
she turned cowan and attempted in an unlawful
way to get at the secrets by eating the forbidden fruit
of the tree of masonry which Satan, an expelled mason of
the most serpentine deviltry, told her would make her like
one of the initiated. Hence the orderous name of Eve's-droppers,
whom it has ever since been the original custom
of our order to place tylers at the door, with drawn
swords, to scarify and extrampate—and hence also the
reason why her daughters, those lovely but unfortunate
feminine emblements of creation, have never been allowed
to mingle in the lodge-room. The next certain
information which has been transplanted to us concerning
masonry, relates to the terrible apochraphy of the
flood, which furnishes the most devastating testimony of
the continued existence of our art in the personified
character of the thrice illustrious Grand Master Noah.
For a proof of this mysterious circumstantiality, we need
only concentrate to the ulterior fact, that masonry and geometry
are the same, or which is called by learned ventriloquists,
synonymous identities. Now as Noah planned and
constructified the ark, that expansive battlement of the
convoluted waters, and as this could never have been architecturized
and developed without, with a literary endowment
of geometry, hence it is an evident and obvious manifestation
to the most itinerant comprehension, that Noah
was a most superabundant mason. And here, beloved
brethren, who but must pause, in the most obstreperous
admiration, over the great and magnified benefits which our
blessed institution has protruded on the terrestial inhabitants
of the revolutionary world. There we behold the astonishing
veracity, that, but for Masonry, no ark could
have been made and digested for the predominant salvation
of those who were afterwards devised to multiply the
earth, and all mankind in consequential inference, must
have been forever extinguished, and found emaciated
graves in the watery billows of annihilated eternity!

Thus we see how emphatical and tantamount is the
proof that those two illustrious Israelites, Adam and Noah,
were free and accepted masons; and it is equally doubtless
that there were thousands of others, even in those unfathomable
ages, who belonged to the same institution;
and, although our records are not particularly translucent
on the subject, I have no doubt but Methusalem, Perswasalem
and Beelzebub, and all the rest of the old patriarchs,
were worthy and accepted brothers of our divine order.

But to proceed in mythological order, the next perspicuous
mason that we meet with in our accounts is Moses,
who was, as we all know that have been exalted to the
seventh degree, a Royal Arch Mason. It is a probable coincidence,
I think, that this August degree, as it is usually
called, (on account, I suppose, of its having been discovered
and first conferred in the month of August,) was for
the first time developed to this superlative brother and
companion from the burning bush amidst the tremendous
ambiguity and thunderiferous rockings of Mount Sinai.—
For it was here that the omnific word, “I am that I am,”
which none but the craft will presume to depreciate, was
delivered to Moses for the benefit of the order through all
exterior ages. From this time to the days of the great and
refulgent Solomon, little is irradiated in our historical inventions
concerning the state of our artificial institution:
But all traditional probabilities unite in concurring that all
the superfluous characters of that undiscovered period were
engaged in extending the art with the most propagating
velocity. Among the most predominant of these, I should
place Joshua and Sampson. We peruse, in scriptural dispensations,
that Joshua, the great General of the Jewish
militia, while monopolized in battle with his obnoxious invaders,
being hard run, and wanting more time to disembogue
his hostile enemies, commanded the sun and moon to
stand still, and they obeyed him. Now I have no questionable
doubt but this pathetic achievement, which has so long
discomfited the uninitiated to expounderate, was effectualized
by the art of masonry: Joshua, we know, was highly
identified, and, like Companion Royal Arch Moses, held
facial intercourse with the Illustrious Grand Puissant of the
World, and I think it the most probable preponderance
that he made the grand hailing sign of distress to the great
masonic deification enthroned on the circumjacent canopy
of heaven, who observed the sign and immediately stopped
those great geological luminaries to answer the distressing
emergencies of brother Joshua, and deliver him
from his extatic difficulty. Thus we again behold, in admirable
wonder, the powerful omnipotence of masonic
chicanery which can even control the revolving astronomies
of heaven! Equally suppositious likewise is the
evidence that Sampson, that almighty wrestler of antiquity,
was a bright and complicated mason. For proof of
this congenial fact we need only perambulate that part of
the Bible which treats of his multangular explosions among
the interpolling Philistines. There we find it implicitly
stated that Sampson had thirty companions with him at his
wedding feast. Now is it not highly presumptious that
these must have been Companion Royal Arch Masons?
I think the evidence most conclusive and testimonial:
Sampson therefore was a brother of that glorified degree,
and a mason whose prodigious muscular emotion must
have made him a most pelucid ornament to the institution
through the remotest bounds of posterity. It was not however
till that primeval period of triumphal magnificence,
the reign of King Solomon, the great Sovereign Commander,
and Prince of the Tabernacle, that masonry shone
forth in all its glory and concupisence. It was then that
the tremendous stupefaction of the temple, the wonder of
all cotemporary posterity, uprose to the belligerent heavens
in all the pride of monumental aggrandizement wholly
by the geometry of masonic instrumentality. From this
time, which is termed the Augustine period, in honor of
the August, or Royal Arch emblazonments of architecture,
that enhanced this emphatic epoch, our divine art soon
expanded, with the most epidemic enlargement, over the
circumambient territories of the congregated world. It
was then that our great patron, St. John, came out of the
wilderness, preaching the beauties of masonry, and wearing
the sash, or girdle, of a Royal Arch Mason, (thus preposterously
proving that he was one of the glorious fellowship,
and had arrived to that superlative exaltation,) and
established and secreted a day for masonic designment,
which he called the Anniversary, and which has always
since, from time immemorial, been caricatured by the
brotherhood as the glorious anniversary of St. John. The
same great and ostentatious day, beloved brethren, which we
are triumphantly permitted at this time to celebrate; and
a day which all the worthy and accepted will forever coagulate
in celebrating till the last hour of time shall evaporate,
and mankind be abolished in the deluge of eternity!
It was there too that Nebuchadnezzar and Pythagoras,
Tubal Cain and Homer, Alexander and Zerubbabel,
Hiram and Bachus, Zoraster, Zedekiah and Vulcan, Aristotle,
Juno, Plato, and Apollo, Frederick, Pluto and Voltaire—all,
all bright and luminous masons, shone along
the transcendant galaxy of futurity like the opake meteors
that irrigate the conflagrated arches of heaven!

Having now, my beloved and auspicious brethren, disseminated
before you a brief historical circumcision of the
origin and progressive intensity of our wonderful institution,
let us preponder awhile on its momentous beauties,
its ambiguous advantages, and its inevitable principles.

Of all the ties that bind and inveigle mankind together
in this sublunary vale of the universe the tie of masonry
is the most inveterate and powerful. By this, men of all
sexes and credentials—men of the most homotonous opinions
and incarnate malevolence, are bound together like
Sampson's foxes, in municipal consanguinuity and connubial
entrenchments. It is this that clothes the morally destitute,
and protects the indigent incendiary from prosecuting
enemies: It is this that dries the tears of unfathered
orphans, and dispenses with charity to the weeping widow.
It is masonry which mystifies the arts and sciences, and
opens the only true fountains of inanity to the world. It
pervades the halls of justice in sinuous counteraction, and
snatches the prosecuted from perilous enthralment. It
opens the prison to relieve the faithful delinquents, and
defies the world in arms to stop it. It also illaqueates the
domestic tenement, and populates society. It exhilarates
its members, rubifies their intellectual receptacles, and exalts
them above the vulgar mass of credulity. And finally,
it concentrates, refines and vitiates all who come within
the pale of its Sanctum Pandemonium, whether they be

found roaming the burning wastes of arctic sands, or inhabiting
the torrid regions of the frozen North.

Such, brethren, is Speculative Freemasonry! And such
will it continue till it countermarches all the terraqueous
altitudes of the world, when, as my most appropriate and
magniloquent friend, the Thrice Illustrious Salem Town
supposes, a masonic millenium will come, and usher the
whole earth in rapid pervasion. Then will all become one
great exasperated family of freemasons, except, perhaps,
a few of the most disinvited exclusives, such as idiots and
feminine excrescences.

But here let me offer my derogatory consolation to my
fair hearers whom I see listening around me in lovely admiration.
Let me have the assurance to tell them, that although
they may not be allowed to amalgamate in the
regular forcipations of the lodge-room, yet they are never
so safe as when in the circumventive arms of a free and accepted
mason. And we are bound by our obligations in
the most inoperative manner to refrain from our indulgent
latitudes towards these fair and necessary implements of
creation, and particularly so if we know them to enjoy the
equivocal honor of being the wives or daughters of our exalted
brotherhood. Then let them always seek the gloririous
disparagement of monopolizing their connubial paramours
from among our amorous fraternity. O! let them
come to us for aid and embracing protection; and we will
fly forward with our arms wide extended to meet and enrapture
them.”

At that fated instant, Heu miscrande puer! the luckless
orator, in suiting the action to the word by rushing eagerly
forward with protruded arms towards the fair and blushing
objects of his address, unfortunately pressed too hard
against the single board, which composed the only railing
in front, for its feeble powers of resistance to withstand.
When the faithless barrier suddenly gave way, and, alas!
alas! amidst a flourish of his long-studied and most elegant
gestures, and with his countenance wreathed with the most
inviting smiles, he was precipitated from his lofty stand

down headlong on to the bushes which stood bracing
against the front of the stage, and, these quickly yielding
near their tops to his rearward weight, and giving him a
new impulse by way of a counter somerset, he finally landed
in broken tumbles, feet downwards on the ground beneath—where,
by a most strange and still more luckless
concurrence, he struck directly astride an old ram, the
leader of a flock, which, unobserved, had taken shelter
from the burning rays of the sun, in this cool retreat in
which they were now quietly reposing when their strange
visitant descended among their affrighted ranks. The
horned old patriarch, little dreaming of such a visit from
above, and being less appeasable, or less mindful of the
honor thus unexpectedly paid him, than Alborak, the ennobled
ass of the Turkish prophet, was not slow in manifesting
a disposition to depart without waiting particularly
to consult his rider as to the course to be taken. And,
after one or two desperate and ineffectual lunges to free
himself of his load and retreat back under the stage, he
suddenly floundered around and made a prodigious bolt
through the partial breach, just made in the bushes, appearing
in the open space in front of the stage before the
astonished multitude with the terrified orator on his back,
riding stern foremost, with one hand thrown wildly aloft,
still firmly grasping the precious manuscript, and the other
despairingly extended for aid, believing in the fright and
confusion of the moment, that it could be no other than
the devil himself who was thus bearing him off in triumph.

After proceeding a few short, rapid bounds in this manner,
the no less frightened animal made a sudden turn, and,
tumbling his rider at full length on the ground among the
feet of a bevy of screaming damsels, leaped high over heads,
benches and every thing opposing his progress, leading
the way for his woolly tribe, now issuing in close column
from their covert with the speed of the wind, running over
the prostrate orator, regardless of his snow white unmentionables,
vest and flowing ruffles, and trampling down or
upsetting all in their way as they followed at the heels of

their determined leader. Forcing their passage in this
way through the crowd till they came against the end of
the long dinner table, now fully spread for the company,
and covered with all that had been prepared for the occasion,
the file leaders came to some insurmountable obstacle,
and the whole flock were brought to a stand; when,
as the very demons of mischief would have it, they suddenly
tacked about, mounted the table, which furnished a
clear road for escape, and the whole train of forty sheep,
enfilading off one after another swift as lightning, raced
over its whole length from one end to the other; and, unheeding
the scattering fragments of meats, pies, vegetables
and nutcakes which flew from beneath their trampling
feet in all directions, and the rattling din of knives, forks,
broken crockery and glasses which attended their desolating
progress, triumphantly escaped, shaking off the very
dust of their tails in seeming mockery at the company
whom they left behind, some fainting or shrieking, some
grappling up clubs and stones in their phrenzy to hurl after
the retreating fiends, or calling loudly for dogs to assail
them, some cursing and raving at the loss of their dinner,
some hallooing or breaking out into shouts of laughter,
and all in wild uproar and commotion.—But we drop the
curtain, leaving epicures to yearn with compassion, young
masonic orators to sympathize, and the brotherhood at
large to weep over the scene!