Chapter V: Part 5

A number of years have passed since last we observed the lover. He is husband and father now, but what a change these few years have wrought in him! Forgotten are the lover's vows. She that once his goddess was, is now his slave. The fulsome flatterer of former times has degenerated into a chronic fault-finder. With the change of her name has begun his change of treatment of her. Cast aside are the many courtesies and expressions of endearment that marked his conduct to her prior to marriage, and which were the thousand golden threads that day by day throughout their courtship wove their hearts closely into one. No bouquets and no costly gifts any more. The anniversary of her birth and of their wedding day passes by unnoticed by him. His former efforts to entertain her, to make himself agreeable to her, have altogether ceased. Rarer, and ever rarer, become his parting and his coming kiss, his "good-bye, dear," and his "good evening, darling." Fewer and fewer become his words of praise. Irksome becomes the task of staying at home. He, who once upon a time found life dreary where she was not, who vowed that in her company alone he found happiness, who could not await the evening that would bring him to her, who declared that his affection would never cool, and their whole wedded life would be one continuous honeymoon, now finds her company tedious, her home unattractive. He looks upon his home as his boarding and lodging-house, upon his wife as the kitchen scullion, or as the nurse of his children, for which services he generally allows her so many dollars a week. At the breakfast table his face is buried in the morning paper. He rises without interchanging a word with wife and child. Absent from home all day long, he is absent still, even when home in the evening. No sooner has he swallowed his meal, when he buries himself in the newspaper for the rest of the evening, or dozes on the sofa till bedtime, or he has an important business engagement down town, or some meeting to attend, or an important engagement brings other husbands to his house, where they transact any amount of business in the exchange of diamonds for hearts, and clubs for spades.

All day long she has been toiling hard in her home, toiling with hand and brain. She has been preacher and teacher, physician and druggist, provider and manager, cook and laundress. The children had to be attended to, purchases had to be made, the meals had to be provided, the servants to be looked after, the house to be gotten in order; there was mending and sewing and baking and cleaning and scrubbing and scouring, which had to be done; there were the children's lessons, and practicings that had to be looked after; there were the children's ailments that had to be cured, and there were the hundred other things the husband never dreams of, and which tax a woman's nerves and strength as much, and often more, than his occupation taxes him. But not a word of appreciation, not a look of sympathy and encouragement from him, who never tired to sing her praises before they were married, who vowed that never a harsh word should remotely break on her ear, never a trouble should mar her happiness. On the contrary, he has no end of faults to find, and she is doomed to listen to the same old harangue on economy and saving. She has been saving and stinting until she can save and stint no more. She has patched and mended and turned and altered until she could patch and mend and alter no more, and still the same complaints; the table costs too much, the dry goods store bills are too long, the seamstress comes into the house too often, the physician is consulted too much, and of such as these many more. Not a word does he say about the expensive cigars he smokes, the wines he drinks; about his frequent visits to the sample-room, and about the liberality with which he treats his friends there; about the sumptuous dinners he takes at noon in the down-town restaurant, while wife and children content themselves at home with a frugal lunch; about the money he loses at the card table, or in his bets on the games and races and politics. And of the children he takes but little notice. He has not seen them all day long, and he is too tired to be bothered with them in the evening. He must have his rest and quiet. The mother worried with them all day long, she may worry with them in the evening, too. It is enough for him to supply her with the means wherewith to care for their wants, further obligations he has none; these are a mother's duties, but not a father's.

They tell a story of a learned preacher who had isolated himself from his children on account of his dislike to their noise. One day, while taking a walk, he was attracted by the beauty and wonderful intelligence of a little boy. Inquiring of the nurse whose child it was, she answered, much astonished: "Your own, reverend sir, your own." Judging from the attention that some fathers bestow on their children, I am inclined to believe that this learned preacher has many an imitator among his sex, for whom not even the inexcusable excuse of absorption in studies can be set up. I have read of a business man, who one day thanked God that a commercial crisis had thrown him into bankruptcy. He said it afforded him an opportunity to stay at home for awhile, and get acquainted with his own family, and that for the first time he learned to know the true worth of his wife, and that he found his children the sweetest and dearest creatures that ever lived, and not for all the business of the world would he again deprive himself of their sweet association. Prior to his misfortune, or rather good fortune, his business had so absorbed him that he had altogether forgotten that there were sacred claims at home that demanded his interest and his service.

Not all our orphaned children are in our orphan asylums, or under the supervision of "The Orphans' Guardians." There are more of them at home with their fathers and mothers, and especially among our well-to-do families. There are children growing up who scarcely know anything else of their father except that he is referred to during the day by their mother when they are bad, as that dread personage who would inflict a severe chastisement on them when he returns, or whose presence silences their fun and makes their own absence agreeable. He makes no effort to entertain them, takes no interest in their pleasures, in their progress at school. He is simply their punisher, but not their friend, and it is not at all surprising to see children growing up with a conception of their father such as that little boy had, who, when told by a minister of heaven, and of the meeting of the departed there, asked: "And will father be there?" On being told that "of course he would be there," he at once replied, "Then I don't want to go." Occasionally wife and husband spend an evening out, or they entertain company at home, and oh, what a transformation she observes in him. In other people's homes, or when other people are present, his stock of material for conversation is unlimited. Then and there he is full of fun, bright and cheerful; when alone with his wife he has scarcely a word to say; he moves about the house with the lofty indifference of a lord, and with a heartless disregard of every member of the household. At home he is cold and cross and boorish, in other women's parlors he is polite and considerate and engaging. He has a smile and a compliment for other women, none for his wife. If they attend an evening reception, he brings his wife there, and he takes her home; during the interval she has little, if any, of his company. She may be shy, she may be a stranger, she may not be much accustomed to society life, she may feel herself out of place in the gay assemblage, she may be unentertained or bored or annoyed, it matters not to him as long as he is having a good time with the boys, or is encircled by the ladies fair, who unanimously think him the most gallant of men, unrivaled in his wit and wisdom and conversational powers, and who secretly sigh if but their husbands were like him.

To such an extent is this wife-neglect carried on that a lady not long ago made a wager that, in nine cases out of ten, she would distinguish between married and unmarried couples. She won the wager. When asked to explain her method of discrimination, she said: "When you see a gentleman and a lady walking in silence side by side, it is a married couple; when their conversation is continuous and animated, and smile-and-laugh-provoking, they are single. When a gentleman sits next to a lady in the theatre, and never keeps his opera glass away from the boxes and galleries and stage, he is her husband; when his eyes rest more on her than on the stage, it is her lover. When a lady, who sits at the side of a gentleman, drops her glove, and she stoops to hunt it, it is a married couple; if he stoops quickly to pick it up it is an unmarried couple. When a lady plays, and a gentleman stands near her, and does not turn for her the pages of the music book, it is her husband; when you see his fingers in eager readiness to turn the leaf, it is not her husband."

There is in every true woman a spark of divinity, which glows in her heart, and blazes into a most luminous light when a husband's love and respect and sympathy and appreciation and encouragement fan that spark into activity. But woe to the home where cruel hands quench that flame. The sun is the heater and illuminator of our whole solar system. The vast supplies which it sends forth daily must be compensated, or else it would soon expend itself, and our world would go to ruin. Nature, therefore, hurls millions of meteors every second into the sun's fiery furnace to keep up the supply of heat and light. The wife is the sun of the household. Her womanly attributes give the light and warmth and happiness of the home to all who cluster around her. But a wife's love and self-sacrifice for her home are not infinite. They soon exhaust themselves, where love is unreturned, where a husband is a tyrant, where self-sacrifice is unappreciated, where faithful and prudent industry is accepted as a labor of duty, and not as a labor of love, where she is simply regarded as his housekeeper, and not as his devoted helpmate, where his presence alone is sufficient to cast gloom and fear over the entire household. Woman was made to bless mankind, but also to be blessed in return; to make society better for forming a part thereof, but also to receive some recognition for her work.

Endurance is woman's prerogative. Suffering is her heirloom. Disasters, which would crush the spirit of man, often turn her heart to steel, and she performs deeds grand and heroic. Disheartened by continuous neglect, she will make heroic efforts to throw her influence all the more affectionately over her home. Wounded deeper and ever deeper, she will toil on, hiding from the world the pangs of wounded affection, "as the wounded dove will clasp its wings to its side and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals." But the shafts of continuous neglect will pierce her heart at last--a husband's continuous neglect extinguish, at last, the sacred flame upon the domestic hearth. She, too, finds home irksome. She, too, learns to find more pleasure abroad than in her home. She, too, thinks light of liberties and indiscretions. The grown children learn to emulate their parents' example, and seek their pleasures also abroad. The little children are left to servants to finish the corruption begun by parents. And so the home, the very spot designed by God to become the chief school of human virtue, the seminary of social affections, the keystone of the whole fabric of society, the germ-cell of civilization, becomes a hotbed of corruption, and almost as often on account of a husband's neglect and sins, as on account of a wife's ignorance or frailties or failings. Our stock of advice to wives and mothers seems inexhaustible. Almost every one of the stronger sex has his fling at woman, and his remedy to offer, which, if immediately followed, will at once eradicate unhappiness in marriage, decrease the number of divorces, and lessen vice and crime in society.

Might not a little advice be also profitable to man? Is there not room for improvement in the stronger sex as well as in the weaker? Reform in the one sex will be of little benefit unless there is reform in the other sex as well. Our husbands and our fathers, too, need reforming, and that reform must begin very early in their lives, before yet they enter into marriage, before yet they enter upon the days of their courtship. Our young men need curbing. Youthful precocity must be checked. "_Cito maturum cito putridum_" says the Latin, "soon ripe, soon rotten." We allow our young men, some of them exceedingly young, too many liberties. We allow them to sow too many wild oats. If their intention is some day to take unto their care and keeping a woman's life and happiness, to pluck from out a comfortable and contented home, and from the embrace of devoted parents, a pure and happy and trusting young woman, who has never felt the wrench and shock of life's storms, nor the cold shoulder of neglect, nor the gnawing tooth of want, then let them see to it in time that they may bring to her a heart as pure and mind as uncorrupted, and character as unpolluted as they expect from her.

The law of heredity, of transmission of ancestral poison, is as operative in the male sex as in the female. A pure and healthy offspring must be preceded by a pure and healthy parentage. A rottening tree never produces luscious fruit. "Like begets like." An enfeebled father means not only feebleness in the next generation, but also perpetuated misery and vice and crime. Marriage is sacred and necessary and obligatory, but not all marriages are so. There are some marriages from which woman should recoil as much as she would from death itself. Rather that death would woo her than a man--if I may be permitted to honor him with that name--whose constitution is undermined, whose strength is sapped, and whose marrow and blood are poisoned. Rather an old maid than a profligate's nurse. Rather a life of single blessedness than the housekeeper of a wreck of a husband. Rather single and happy and stainless and conscience-free than a mother of an unfortunate offspring, that have the sins of their father visited upon them, and that shall one day curse their parents for having given existence to them. Another remedy for unhappy marriages will be found in the cessation, of the anxiety on the part of so many parents _to get their daughters married off_. It is but natural that this constant anxiety should make the daughter feel that she would like to lessen her parents' dread, and cease being a trouble to them, especially when there are younger sisters crowding fast upon her, and so she says "Yes," even when the word almost chokes in her throat, even though she knows in her heart that he is not her ideal, nor the man that will make her happy. It is not true that any husband, who can support a wife, is better than no husband. Marriage means more to a sensible woman than an alliance with a husband for the sake of being clothed and fed and housed. She has a heart and soul and mind that have their wants, and if they be starved, unhappy marriage, if nothing worse, is the result.

Mothers and fathers! Have you watched over your daughter from the day of her birth; have you guarded her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood; have you suffered for her sake; have you surrendered comforts and sacrificed pleasures for her sake; have you toiled and stinted and saved for her sake; have you afforded her the best education and all the pleasures and opportunities that your means will allow, and all to wish yourselves rid of her; to think that any husband, who can support your daughter--sometimes not even so much is expected from him--no matter how old, how uncultured, how unsuitable to her tastes and wants, is better than no husband? A father's personal attention to the training of his children will in time reduce materially unhappy marriages, and greatly lessen the miseries and vices of society. He owes his children more than support and chastisement. Society holds him responsible for their character. The duties of training devolve upon the father as much as on the mother. A father's wider experience and worldly wisdom prove valuable contributions to the mother's simpler knowledge in the raising of their children. A father's continuous absence, or neglects, or severity, or unkindness, or heartlessness, has made more reprobates and scamps and criminals in this world than all the failings of women combined. Think less of your dignity and more of your duty. Rather that your child should love you than fear you. You can maintain your authority and dignity by love and gentleness as well as by frowns and threats and chastisements. You may walk and talk and study and play with them, and yet have their full respect. The great and warlike Agesilaus did not think it beneath him to entertain his children during his leisure hours, to join them in all their merry sports, and permit himself to crawl on his fours with his little child upon his back. If you would raise good children let your example at home be accordingly. As you will teach them so they will act. If you are a devil they will scarcely be angels. Children are keen observers. An old proverb says that a father is a looking-glass by which children dress themselves. See to it, fathers, that the glass be clean, so that your children's morals may be pure.

A little more memory on the part of the husband will prove a powerful remedy for the eradication of unhappy marriages and for the lessening of divorces. She is the same woman after marriage that she was during the days of your courtship, and a good deal better. Why so forgetful of all the sacred vows and solemn pledges which you plighted then? Why so constant then and so inconstant now? Why so affable and faithful and loving and attentive then, and why so inattentive and bitter and sullen and neglectful now? Why such a profuseness then in your courtesies and smiles and flowers and gifts and kisses, and why such a lack of them now? Is it because of wrinkles? Is it because of her faded beauty? She has lost it in your service. She has come honestly by her wrinkles. She got them in the sick-bed, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the bed of your sick children, by the grave of your child, by painful night-watches and overtaxing day toils, by your harsh words, and by your heartless treatment. This is all she has in return for her beauty and youth and cheerful mind and happy disposition, which she laid at your feet when you asked her to join her destiny with yours. A little courtesy, a kind attention, a bouquet of flowers, a small token, a word of appreciation and of encouragement is not much to you, but it is a world to your wife. Your smile is all the reward she craves. Her heart thirsts for it, and when given, its effect upon her soul is as the refreshing dew upon the withered grass. It is a mistake to believe that she can draw in her married life on your love-deposits during courtship. If love is to prosper, the supply must be ever fresh. The love of the past will never satisfy the need of the present. Love constantly and carefully cultivated will increase its blessings as fruit trees double their bearing under the hand of the gardener. It will be killed, as will the fruit tree, if the gardener's hand grows neglectful and noxious influences are permitted to impede its growth. Let your wife be your helpmate and not your housekeeper. She shares your sorrows, your defeats, let her also share your thoughts and plans. Unbosom your thoughts to her. Lay open to her your heart and soul. Trust her with your confidence, she trusts you with hers. The men who succeed are those who make confidants of their wives. The marriages that are happy are those where husbands and wives have no thoughts apart. The children that are well raised are those that have had the example of loving and confiding parents before them. Proud of your confidence, she will labor to deserve it. She will study to please you. In your prosperity she will be your delight; your stay and comfort in your adversity. She will return your confidence and affection in full measure. Gloom will vanish from the hearth, and happiness will hold dominion within the home. "Her children will rise up before her and call her happy; and her husband will sing aloud her praises."

Marriage is, perhaps, the only game of chance ever invented at which it is possible for both players to lose. Too often, after many sugar-coated words, and several premeditated misdeals on both sides, one draws a blank and the other a booby. After patiently angling in the matrimonial pool, one draws a sunfish and the other a minnow. One expects to capture a demigod, who hits the earth only in high places, but when she has thoroughly analyzed him, she finds nothing genuine, only a wilted chrysanthemum and a pair of patent leather shoes, while he in return expected to wed a wingless angel who would make his Edenic bower one long drawn out sigh of aesthetic bliss. The result is very often that he is tied to a slattern, who slouches around the house with her hair in tins, a dime novel in her hand, with a temper like aqua fortis and a voice like a cat fight--a voice that would make a cub wolf climb a tree; a fashionable butterfly, whose heart is in her finery and her feathers; who neglects her home to train with a lot of intellectual birds; whose glory is small talk; who saves her sweetest smiles for society and her ill temper for her family altar. If I were tied to such a female as that, do you know what I would do? You don't, eh? Well, neither do I. There was a time, we are told, when to be a Roman was to be greater than to be a king; yet there came a time when to be a Roman was to be a vassal or a slave. Change is the order of the universe, and nothing stands. We must go forward, or we must go backward. We must press on to grander heights, to greater glory, or see the laurels already won turned to ashes upon our brow. We may sometimes slip; shadows may obscure our paths; the boulders may bruise our feet; there may be months of mourning and days of agony; but however dark the night, hope, a poising eagle, will ever burn above the unrisen tomorrow. Trials we may have, and tribulations sore, but I say unto you, O, brothers mine, that while God reigns and the human family endures, this nation, born of our father's blood, and sanctified by our mother's tears, shall not pass away, and under heaven, for this great boon, this great blessing, we'll be indebted to the women of America--God bless them. Finally, brethren, be serious while I impart this concluding lesson: "She--was--a--good--wife--to--me. A good wife, God bless her!" The words were spoken in trembling accents over a coffin-lid. The woman asleep there had borne the heat and burden of life's long day, and no one had ever heard her murmur; her hand was quick to reach out in helping grasp to those who fell by the wayside, and her feet were swift on errands of mercy; the heart of her husband had trusted in her; he had left her to long hours of solitude, while he amused himself in scenes in which she had no part. When boon companions deserted him, when fickle affection selfishly departed, when pleasure palled, he went home and found her waiting for him.

"Come from your long, long roving,
On life's sea so bleak and rough;
Come to me tender and loving,
And I shall be blest enough."

That hath been her long song, always on her lips or in her heart. Children had been born to them. She had reared them almost alone--they were gone! Her hand had led them to the uttermost edge of the morning that has no noon. Then she had comforted him, and sent him out strong and whole-hearted while she stayed at home and--cried. What can a woman do but cry and trust? Well, she is at rest now. But she could not die until he had promised to "bear up," not fret, but to remember how happy they had been. They? Yes, it was even so.

It was an equal partnership, after all. "She--was--a--good--wife--to--me." Oh, man! man! Why not have told her so when her ears were not dulled by death? Why wait to say these words over a coffin wherein lies a wasted, weary, gray-haired woman, whose eyes have so long held that pathetic story of loss and suffering and patient yearning, which so many women's eyes reveal to those who weep? Why not have made the wilderness in her heart blossom like the rose with the prodigality of your love? Now you would give worlds, were they yours to give, to see the tears of joy your words would have once caused, bejeweling the closed windows of her soul. It is too late.

"We have careful thoughts for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But oft for own,
The bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best."

ODD-FELLOWSHIP AND THE FUTURE

There is infinite and perennial fascination in the contemplation of the future. The past is a fixed province, the finished result of an ever-moving present. The future is the province of the poet, the prophet and the seer. The past is adamant, the future is plastic clay. The past is with God alone; the future is with God and man. We toil for it; dream of it; look to it; and all seek so to

* * * "Forecast the years,
As find in loss a gain to match,
Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears."

Let us consider the future as a field and Odd-Fellowship as a force. The future is a field, billowing with the ripening harvest of golden possibilities. It is as wide as the world, for the world is the field. It comprises every zone and clime; every nation and tribe; every island of the seas. Wherever we find one of our fellow-men in darkness and in chains, there is our field. It is as long as from now to the coming of Christ. A moment's survey of the field will convince us that the greatest conquests are yet to be made. There is battle ahead, great interests to be gained, great incentives to heroic effort. The times call for men--broad-browed, clear-eyed, strong-hearted, swift-footed men. Odd-Fellows, not behind you but before you, not in the past but in the future, lies the widest and richest field of Odd-Fellowship's possibility. Turn your faces, not toward the waning light of yesterday, but toward the growing radiance of a better morning. The force is commensurate with the field. The cry of every true Odd-Fellow ought to be the cry that leaped from the heart of Isaiah when his lips were touched with the coal from off the altar: "Here am I, Lord, send me." Our order is no longer a puny and helpless infant, but a lusty giant, panoplied in the armor of truth and clad in the strength of perpetual youth. We have riches untold. We have institutions for the care of the old, and the orphan, the equal of any of which the world can boast. We have a grasp on the sympathy and confidence of the masses which is immeasurable. We stand for principles that are the incarnation of God's infinite thought and throbbing love. We are equipped for conquest. What answer shall the force make to the cry from the field? As loyal Odd-Fellows, let us take our answer from the Great Commander. What answer did He make to a dying world? What did he come to do? He came to lift fallen humanity. He came to bind up the wounds of those who were bruised and bleeding. He came to speak words of cheer and sympathy to hearts bowed in sorrow. He came to break the chains of bondage and restore mankind to its former beauty and greatness. Our mission is identical with His. Our work is identical with His work. We are His representatives. Our highest destiny is the working out of His purposes. The world with all its boasted progress has not advanced beyond the need of a Savior. It is the same at heart now as it was when the blessed feet of Christ trod its hills and valleys. Men change, but man changes not. The same problems are confronting us as confronted them. It may be trite, but it is tremendously true, that our primary and ever-present duty is to seek and save the lost. We are to win them to faith in high and noble ends, and having won them to faith in our mission is not enough. They are to be instructed, cultured, enlarged, inspired, ennobled, until man looking in the face of man shall see the face of Christ shining through. He is to be the accepted Lord and law-giver in every realm of human thought and activity. He is to rule in the family. He is to rule in business. He is to rule until the demon of hate, malice and injustice has been throttled. He must rule in the affairs of state. He must rule in society, until the watchers at the gate shall announce to Him who sitteth upon the throne: "Thy kingdom has come and thy will is done in earth as it is in heaven." Christ is the solution of man's most difficult problems. He came to save men. How did He go about the task? He gave himself. We can accomplish our task only as in burning earnestness we give ourselves. What depth of humiliation, what self-devotion, what unmeasured sacrifices, what unspeakable suffering, what unfathomable anguish, what toil and anxiety, what love and pity, what loneliness and sorrow, are crowded into those three words, "He gave himself."

If we as an order would give ourselves to the principles taught by our institution, we could win the world in the next half century. If we are to be truest to the future, we must stand by the side of the Great Teacher and proclaim a complete and perfect truth. Our platform should be neither broader nor narrower than His. If there is one truth in revelation that we can not give its proper setting and due emphasis, then we are not the keepers of God's truth. To my thinking, there are no organizations formed by man that can appeal more confidently to the Word of God for confirmation than the Odd-Fellows. We appeal to sane reason and common sense. No organization can hold up a higher ideal of individual freedom and worth. But there is a danger that we become narrow, that we violate the maxims of sane reason and common sense, that we lose the balance between individual prerogative and the claims of a united brotherhood. We can not accomplish the aims of our order by onesidedness. We are to become "all things to all men." We are not to be prisms breaking up the rays of light and declaring that this or that color is the most important. We as Odd-Fellows are to be lenses, converging the rays and bringing them to a focus upon the hearts of men as the white light of God's eternal truth.

This is a practical age, and if we are to win we must demonstrate the superiority of our faith and practice over that of other claimants, not only in terms of the Written Word, but also in terms of manhood. Odd-Fellowship is standing upon the golden dawn of a new morning. It is to be a day of battle and conquest. It is truth blazoned upon the page of history, that if we as Odd-Fellows are true to our standard, to our possibilities and to our Maker, he will lay the suffering of a throbbing world in our arms that we may lay it at the feet of Him who died to redeem it. Let us cherish high hopes, noble aims, and lofty ideals. Never since the world was peopled has mankind stood in such anxious expectancy, awaiting the outcome of the immediate future, as in these closing years of the nineteenth century. Men are wistfully trying to peer through the portals of the year nineteen hundred--marveling, as the effects and forces of applied science is unfolded to our comprehension, and discovery moves on, each invention leading in another, in stately procession; we, all the while rapt in wonder, are straining in hope and fear to catch the coming word, and to comprehend its import. Never was speculation so rife, never was the field of human observation so unobstructed and expanded, nor the ascertainment and sifting of facts so facile. Never were opinions more diverse, nor was it ever so obviously important to detect and assert the philosophical principle, in recognition and obedience to which the laws of human government may be preserved and kept in view, and the retrocession of mankind prevented. At no stage of history was it more important to call to mind the great principle that government is a means, and not an end, and is instituted to maintain those general liberties which are essential for human happiness and progress. At this time, Odd-Fellowship looks toward the future with longing eyes, and its followers lift high their banner, on which is inscribed that beautiful motto, "Friendship, Love and Truth."

After all, what lives in this world? Is it thought pulsations alone or deeds done? If thought alone, then the lowest thought coordinated in the brain of man would live. Something must be combined with thought in order to have a lasting effect. There must be thought and deeds and sentiment. Sentiment must go to the very existence of the race. On these forces may be built up structures that live and breathe a benediction on all mankind. I ask you to cast your eye over the world and note the permanency of such institutions as have come down to us, and are alive, and such as we say will live. I venture your first question will be: "What is the foundation on which they rest? Why, through the slow, revolving years have these institutions lived and thrived and grown? Have they lived on greed, or a desire for pelf or power, or out of human desire for adulation and praise? Or have they lived because of man's needs, and out of human wants?" If we probe to the bottom we will find this the corner-stone of all laudable ambitions, because man needs man, and needs help into a higher plane of usefulness and activities.

We find institutions coming down to us from a date which the memory of man runs not to the contrary; indeed, some so old that the musty volumes of the long ago reveal not their origin. But simply the need of man for man would not entirely account for the duration of society in its ancient form. There must be still other underlying principles. There must be love and the acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man all along the way of life, or the family would go to ruin, society would dissolve, citizenship would not exist, states and principalities, kingdoms and powers would exist only as an idea in the brain. There would be no command to be our brother's keeper, no plighted vow that "The Lord be between thee and me, and between my seed and thy seed forever." Man would, as an individual, stand absolutely alone, like an atom dropped from the abyssmal depths onto this earth of ours. The little wild flower struggles through leafy mold, endures the tempestuous blast of winter, that when spring comes it may bloom to gladden the earth and scatter sweet incense all around. But without the cementing influence that runs like a thread all through society, man would not, could not, cast a sweet odor even on his own life, and dying would leave no benediction on the lives of others. And here the command comes, "Gather into thy quiver the lives and aspirations of others, that fitted to thy bow they may go forth scattering blessings by your help and by your kindly influence." So all great achievements have been based on great fundamental principles, and each principle has for its object the betterment of the conditions of mankind.

Truth is said to be eternal. It was just as true at the dawn of creation that the square described on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the square described on the other two sides, as it was when Pythagoras enunciated the theorem. "Thou shall not kill," is a law written by the Divine hand amid tempest and fire, but it stands. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," rings from the portals of heaven through the gates of humanity and its command will not go unheeded. They are all great fundamental truths. Do you observe that they live? Give heed also to the fact that they stand for a better condition among men, for more helpfulness and higher elevations. Truths enunciated, whether old or new, that live, only have one tendency, viz., to raise man to better conditions. Since the dawn of creation there has been a constant tendency to arise from a lower to a higher estate. Self-preservation, self-helps, self-culture have been the trend of thought and action. And this has not been altogether an effort in the individual for his own personal advancement, but for the advancement of the race. Men have undergone sacrifices, humbled and almost debased themselves, that the succeeding generation might live on a higher plane, physically, morally and spiritually, than they themselves enjoyed. I do not know of any act of humanity that calls forth louder praise than to so act and speak and do as that humanity shall not only catch the inspiration, but shall make material progress on a better understanding of surrounding conditions. Odd-Fellowship, in its essence, is no new institution. Its principles, practices and precepts have existed from the beginning of the race.

When Abraham stood with the churlish Lot on the line dividing the plains and highlands and said, "I pray thee let there be no contention between thee and me, if thou goest to the right hand I will go to the left, or, if thou goest to the left hand I will go to the right," he breathed the pure essence of unselfish devotion to the founder of a race. The acts of kindness shown by the traveler as the caravan plods its tortuous way across the sands of the desert; the mission of the wise men from the east in search of a Redeemer, all show forth that trait that you and I, my brother, try to emphasize while vowing devotion to the triple links. I said a moment ago that Odd-Fellowship, in its essence, was no new institution, and so it is not. As we know it in reality we have simply crystalized its workings. Instead of humanity, by its individual exertion, seeking to perform the task, we, as an organized band, have taken up the subject. What was paramount with individuals has become a living force with the multitude. What was before an invitation to duty has now become a command.

In seeking after friendship we do not court the beasts of the fields and the fowls of the air as the hermit does, but we seek man; not man, but men; not this little society or faction, but embrace all mankind in the issue. If we seek for love it is not love for pelf or power, but love for man and God. In truth we do not depend on the right conduct of individuals, but accept truth as it is written in nature's open book, emblazoned on the sky of hope that bends over us, and speaks in all the higher attributes of life. Time was when the inclination of men was to withdraw into clans. Ishmael stood in the desert by himself with his hand against every man. His true descendant, the Arabian sheik, draws his mantle about him, and surrounded by his little band withdraws within his own circle, and woe betide him who attempts to break through. But in this came no advancement, no progress. The Ishmaelite of old is the same today. Wherever progress and advancement has shown itself it is found that true regard for all mankind has been the cardinal doctrine. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Soon a broad catholicity of ideas seizes the multitude and man no more lives for himself than he lives for others. He who lives closest to the true heart of humanity lives nearest to God. Show me a man who lives for himself alone, and you will present almost a social outcast. Society tolerates him no more. In all the plans and calculations of life he is not numbered.

For two thousand years the command has come stronger and stronger for a closer unity on social lines and fraternal regard. Not to segregate but to crystalize and raise the status. The conditions of our social life are such that we can not live entirely to ourselves. The monk may withdraw himself from the gaze of the world, the anchorite may seek a hiding place in caves and dens, but they ignore entirely the demands of society upon them. If I were the only person in the world there would be no social problem. I would commune with myself and God and nature about me, without reference to my surroundings. There would be no social environment; no one to please, no one to whom I am indebted by nature or acquired obligation, and so I would remain. But we do not find the conditions to so exist. We must look squarely in the face the facts as they are. On all sides we are surrounded by a multitude who rightly make demands of us and which we can not ignore. If I were alone, I would do as the patriarchs of old did, erect a little altar of stone, rude and unsightly, and bow myself down before it and commune with Deity. But here we find that different types of men have different religious views, and different spiritual aspirations, and so churches must be erected; and while all tend to the same end, each hopes to reach it by a different route. I must respect all these views. Only one can be my view, but my social surroundings are such that all have rights which I am bound to yield some obedience to.

Again, if I were alone there would be no need of law, because both good and bad would be represented in my personality. There could be no murder, no crime, no punishment; but with all the manifold people with different tendencies, there must be law, or the social fabric would go to pieces by the strong trampling on the weak. Hence I must stand with reference to the law on the right side or the wrong side, and all humanity regardful of each other's rights must line up on one side or the other. In addition to our churchly ties and duties, we have family duties, and there begins the first of duty, first of government, first of obligations as citizens. And so I say we live in relation to those who surround us, and we can not live unmindful of them. We are touched by humanity everywhere, and walk elbow to elbow down the vale of life, supporting or destroying, and whether our pilgrimage be long or short we can not destroy the facts as they exist.

It must be seen with only a hasty glance that with the varying conditions of men, with their different mental dispositions, moral ideas and social status, that a crying demand comes all the time for some organization where men can unite on a common level--some place where a divergence of political or moral views do not bar an entrance, where the family ties remain sacred, and more sacred because of the organization. It seems that men groped about for just such an organization, and men's wants are necessities, and social and civil status might be brought to a common level with all who might be brought into the assembly. It is believed by Odd-Fellows that our organization furnishes just this want. All the life that a man wants outside of his spiritual life has its food here, and society and family and man's relations to man have been helped by it. I state it without fear of contradiction, that no order has been more potent for good than ours. It has been the hand-maiden of civilization wherever it has established itself; it has smoothed out the asperities of life for many, many individuals; it has defended character, protected life and limb, and stood as champion of all good between man and man and between God and man.

Every agency by which men are advanced, socially and morally, is an agency that guides government and state and individual up to a higher plane of development. Odd-Fellowship and Christianity go hand in hand. There is not a tenet of the order in any department that is repugnant to the highest development of Christianity. Indeed, it could not be so, for any lesson that is drawn from the three pillars of our order, Faith Hope and Charity, is a lesson pointing to the better life here and hereafter.

In the eighty years, last past, who can estimate the benign influence of the lives and actions of men, yea, on their eternal destinies, of the oft-repeated utterances pointing to the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man--a sermon that has been painted on the bow of God's eternal promise since Paul stood on the Mars Hill and preached this everlasting, unchangeable doctrine to the heathen world. When I think that since 1830 there has been expended for the relief of the members of this order and their families millions of dollars, in all right undertakings, and know that many hearts have ceased to ache, many cold feet covered, many a tear dried up, many a naked person clothed and many a hungry mouth fed, it rejoices my heart. I know also that such love could not spring from the hearts that were kindled by no spark of the Divine, but the lesson comes to you and to me, my brother and my sister, that he who opens not only the granary of earthly substance, but opens also the portals of the heart, and lets the Divine spark kindle into a blaze, will be thrice blessed in that day when the jewels of the eternity are made up. I do not desire to convey the impression that all our civilization is the outgrowth of Odd-Fellowship. We are too much inclined on such occasions as these to become mutual admiration societies and think that all the good things that we enjoy could not have been possible if our particular order had not existed. I do not wish to convey that impression. I only desire it to be understood that this order has been helpful in all right undertakings, and constantly endeavors to espouse the right and discard the wrong. It does not take the place of the church or the Sunday school or the prayer-meeting. It does not invade the pulpit, but only stands as an auxiliary to all these institutions that touch the better side of our natures. It inveighs against no religion or creed, and has no religious belief other than that we are brothers; nor does it encroach upon the domain of the politician. If Odd-Fellowship had more in it than the social and restraining influence one meets and is subjected to in the lodge-room, it would be sufficient inducement to organize and perpetuate lodges. No true Odd-Fellow crosses the threshold of his lodge-room but he feels he is treading on more sacred ground than the busy marts of trade, or in the office or counting house; he feels that he is coming home where dwells the purest principles of humanity--friendship, love and truth.

But there is more in the workings of this order than the social. Its object is to touch humanity in all its phases. To rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep. It sustains the living with friendship; causes man to stand firm in his integrity by the truth it teaches, and embrace the whole world with charity. The three links of friendship, love and truth mark the fuller and better development of this life, reaches beyond the grave, reaches beyond the vision, extends into the portals of the other and the better life. We may profess friendship, but that is an empty profession; our membership in a lodge is fruitless and our meetings produce no good results unless we have charity. It is but a small part that we should perform our mystic rights, typifying friendship, love and truth, but that we should so live them and act them that the touch of a member is the touch of a brother whose words sweeten the asperities of life and whose last offering is a tribute at the grave. We may be rudely brought back to the world with its pomp and show, its pageantry and vanity, by an emblem of mortality presented to us, but should we not ever have the spectre of mortality before our eyes? In the mad rush through life we forget the kinship of man to man. We are too often forgetful that the hand of a brother is reaching upward for succor. We forget that we are mortal, and the heart grows cold; our sympathies extend only to those around and nearest to us, forgetful that all mankind is our brother, and that he is especially our brother and friend who has mercy. But in this mad rush in life we are suddenly and almost rudely brought back to a full realization of our mortality, our helplessness, our emptiness, our nothingness, when we stand at the grave of our departed brother and reflect that here lies one who was born and had ambitions and died as we must die. His ambitions and hopes all went in the grave with him. The little grassy mound and the little marble slab is all that remains visible to tell us that he was our brother. Life would hardly be worth living; its struggles would be disastrous, its triumphs vain, empty bubbles, if the clods that fall upon the coffin and the sprig of evergreen tell the whole story of an Odd-Fellow. No, the very fact that we bury our departed brother teaches us that the grave is not the end of all. Though our brother dies he shall live in our hearts, in the flowers that we cast, in the precious memories that forever cluster around the links, the heart and the hand, the altar and the hour glass. When the supreme moment comes and the brother gathers his arrows into his quiver and fades from sight into the grave, we know that he has passed the portal into the land of the eternal, but the quiver and the arrows will ever stand as the badge of friendship. The heart may cease to beat, and the hand fall listless in death, yet the heart and hand will ever be emblems of love, and denote that when the hand of an Odd-Fellow is extended his heart goes with it.