     AN ACCOUNT of a CITY MASON'S VISIT
                  to a
            COUNTRY LODGE

  An old-time story relating the challenging experiences of a big-city
lodge member as he discovers a new meaning of Masonic brotherhood in a
small country lodge

"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

   Fraternally and Cordially,

      George S. Robinson, Jr., PM

Truthfulness--Ethics--Morality.  They're important at my house;=20
they should be important at the White House, too.




> I like the thread suggested by Br. Pete Martinez:  How do we get our
> present members to become active once again, or more active, in the
> affairs of the Lodge?

A couple of years ago in Hiram No. 7, the newly elected WM made a vow
that all stated meetings would be no longer than 59 minutes.  It
required more work from the officers and committies to complete their
work before the stated meeting, but attendance rose 30 % all year long
and the turnout for degree work doubled.

Just my 2 cents worth.....

Grady Lee Honeycutt USA



According to these standards some members never will become true Masons.

WHEN IS A MAN A MASON?

The first stanza of the following poem by Rev. Joseph Fort Newton is
incised into the marble of the Iowa Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids,
Iowa.

"When he can look over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon with a
profound sense of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and
yet have faith, hope and courage which is the root of every virtue.

When he knows that down in his heart every man is as noble, as vile, as
divine, as diabolic, and as lonely as himself, and seeks to know, to
forgive, and to love his fellow man.

When he knows how to sympathize with men in their sorrows, yea, even in
their sins, knowing that each man fights a hard fight against many odds.

When he has learned how to make friends and to keep them, and above all
how to keep friends with himself. When he loves flowers, can hunt birds
without a gun, and feels the thrill of an old forgotten joy when he
hears the laughter of a little child.

When he can be happy and high-minded amid the meaner drudgeries of life.
When Star-crowned trees and the glint of sunlight on flowing waters
subdue him like the thought of one much loved and long dead. When no
voice of distress reaches his ears in vain, and no hand seeks his aid
without response.

When he finds good in every faith that helps any man to lay hold of
divine things and sees majestic meanings in life, whatever the name of
that faith may be.

When he can look into a wayside puddle and see something beyond mud, and
into the face of the most forlorn and see something beyond sin.

When he knows how to pray, how to love, and how to hope.

When he has kept faith with himself, with his fellow man, and with his
GOD; in his hand, a sword for evil, in his heart a bit of a song -- glad
to live, but not afraid to die!

Such a man has found the only real Secret of Masonry, and the one which
it is trying to give to the world."



                                  CEMENT

" The trowel is an instrument used by Operative Masons to spread the
cement which unites a building into one common mass or whole."

So says our ritual.  From months of use spreading and smoothing the
cement, the trowel becomes worn and is replaced.  After many years of
labor, the Master workman wearies and lays down his tools either in
retirement or to answer the last roll call.  However, though both the
trowel and the workman have served their purpose and been discarded, the
great cathedral erected to the Supreme Architect of the Universe, the
warehouse dedicated to business, the modest cottage sheltering the
workman and his family, or even the house of confinement established for
the safety of the citizenry continue on down through the years as a
"solid Mass" of architecture due to the strong and stable bond of cement
with which the building material was united.

The cement to which our ritual refers is a mortar consisting of a
combination of several materials.

One of these is a fine, gray powder which from long usage is known by the
trade name cement.  This cement is in reality rock of a certain type,
heated to an extreme temperature or actually burned in a fire until it
loses all its impurities and crumbles into the fine powder we know as
cement.

The second ingredient is sand.  Sand is also rock that has been dislodged
by glaciers or other forces, perhaps as far in the past as the ice age,
tumbled down mountain streams, through falls and rapids and on into
rivers which sweep it to the bays and gulfs and so down to the sea,
tumbling it and washing it until it is ground into the fine particles we
know as sand.

One other material is added to bind together the cement and sand.  This
third material is water, pure unadulterated water, which has long been
the symbol of life, for without it nothing living can exist.

These articles are mixed in the proper proportions forming the mortar
used by the Operative Mason and referred to in our ritual as cement.  The
ingredients must be pure, the cement fresh and dry, and the sand clean
and sharp and the water free from impurities if the structure in which it
is used is to stand through the years as a monument to the workmanship of
the builder.

"But it is used symbolically for the far more noble and glorious
"purpose" of spreading the cement of Brotherly Love and Affection."

Here the educated Brother associates the mortar used in a building with
those truly Masonic virtues, Brotherly Love and Affection.  It seems
quite certain that our Brother realizes that these Masonic attributes
must not merely be word pictures, pleasing to our senses, but that if our
Masonic structure is to endure, the Brotherly Love and Affection which
cements it together must be as solid, sturdy and durable as rock.  As the
rock of which the Operative Mason's cement mortar is composed, it must be
devoid of all impurities as if tested by fire, clean as by the continuous
washing by the waters of life, and joined into one binding and abiding
cement by the life we so willing share with our Brother.

The trowel may be worn and discarded, the Master Mason may have joined
the Celestial Lodge above, but the cement they together have spread lives
on forever and is the cement to which the ritualist refers when he says:

"(the cement) which unites us into one sacred band or society of friends
and brothers--a Temple of living stones, among whom no contention should
ever exist, save that noble contention, or rather emulation, of who can
best work and best agree."



Brethren,

	Last night at church, I heard a story that I trust warrants
recalling for other ears to judge, for the account rendered a riveting
portrayal of a profound conviction and an unyielding faith, enduring and
implacable.  It also might characteristically serve as a purposeful
parable to the vigilant, attentive student.

	It concerned a visit by a clergyman who had been called to the
home of one of his parish members.  A devoted, determined lady of the
congregation, of measured means but always at the forefront of the
faithful had received news that a terminal illness had overtaken her and
that her sojourn on earth was near its conclusion.   Few days remained
to place all of her final wishes in due form.

	It was a business like meeting.  The usual preferences for the
last services to be performed; selection of a favorite hymn, a
particular blue dress she wished to wear, her favorite bible by her
side, and certain other final arrangements.  The good minister assured
the dutiful gentlewoman that those solemnities that she had requested
would be meticulously obeyed and observed.  When she was satisfied with
his considerate willingness to abide by her desires, she asked for yet
another accommodation.  He was ill prepared and bewildered at the
ensuing, final request made by the affable and genteel supplicant who
appeared to have cheerfully embraced and resigned herself to her
ultimate destiny.

	She requested, as a final thought, that she have placed in her
right hand, and it positioned prominently upon her chest, a fork!

        The minister, in disbelief, asked the question in cynicism of
his hearing. It was repeated verbatim, with the following explanation.
She recounted that when the suppers were eaten at church gatherings,
those that she had enjoyed attending so much, that the servers would
come by and simply whisper to the diners to, "keep your fork."  It
admonished them that something really good was yet in store for them.
Further benefits were going to be forthcoming in addition to that which
they had already received.  Something of luscious worth was also to be
enjoyed by them, after the feast.  The meaning became immediately
comprehensible.  She was looking forward with anticipation to a better
life than that she had heretofore experienced.

	On his short, but now melancholy walk to his home, the minister
pondered the unusual request and in a most searching manner.  The sermon
of the rudimentary utensil, the fork, was of unprecedented
enlightenment.  Truth descended with awkward, unwieldy portions.  The
reverend gentleman concluded that this simple lady had exhibited a much
more determined faith than he and other more sophisticated individuals
had manifested.  She knew more about heaven than did he.

	Keep a fork with you wherever you go.  Something good WILL be
found for you to appreciate!


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