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I seemed to see everything Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge.
There is a sad want of thoughtful mercy among us all. Every step we take on the ladder upwards helps to a higher. If we are true Odd-Fellows we will put away all bitterness and malice. Brothers, remember the moral harvest comes to all perfection; not one grain is lost. As Odd-Fellows there are loads we can help others to carry, and thus learn sympathy.
As the eye discerns the beautiful, and the ear discerns sweet sounds, so the heart of man discerns the divineness of the Bible teachings and sets its seal to their truth. As Odd-Fellows, we believe in the scriptures, because the experiences of all true believers, of whatever name, or age, or country, prove it to be the "bread of life" and the "water of life" to a needy and suffering world.
The very collision of interests, the rivalries of trade, the thousand-and-one social relations, all neutralize each other, are checks and counterchecks, which, like the particles in a vessel of water, always tend toward the level of an equilibrium. Two men meet in their lodge as Odd-Fellows, but they are opponents on "town-meeting day."
The thing is managed in this way: Whatever is peculiar to Judaism is excluded from the ritual and worship of Odd-fellows; whatever is peculiar to Hindooism is excluded; whatever is peculiar to Mohammedanism is excluded; whatever is peculiar to Christianity is excluded; whatever is peculiar to any form of religion is excluded.
In Boylston's address which we have already quoted from several times, "the well-earned glory of Odd-fellows" is declared to consist in this: that "no worthy Odd-fellow has ever sought aid and been refused."
No sooner had they broken one tune into fragments than they took up another, and the car roared and rattled and jarred all the way to the lonely station where the band debarked, and was last seen convoying a straggling Odd-Fellows' picnic down a country road. The incident, trivial in itself, gave rise to serious reflections touching the capacity and use of the red man in modern life.
So, also, "the aid of the mysterious" is resorted to by Odd-fellows to render their "meetings attractive," and to "stimulate applications for membership." It is thus shown that secrecy is the result of an unwillingness to rely upon real merit and the sober judgment of mankind for success, and of a desire, on the part of associations practicing it, to pass for what they are not.
I leave to each of my children, poverty, ignorance, a low character, and the remembrance that their father filled a drunkard's grave." It behooves us as Odd-Fellows to ponder well the lessons taught by our order. Unless the principles that are laid down are fully carried out, we can never be Odd-Fellows in spirit and in truth. Today is our opportunity; act now.
At about ten o'clock I mounted the gangway and waited behind a deserted bungalow built for Fenella Stanley till I should hear the Odd-Fellows returning. In a few minutes I heard them approaching. They were singing snatches of songs they had been entertained with at Graylingham, and chatting and laughing as they went down Wilderness Road towards Raxton.
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