Chapter 13

facts.

[154] For the full story, see "Reminiscences of the Green Dragon Tavern," in _Centennial Memorial of St. Andrew's Lodge, 1870_.

[155] _Washington, the Man and the Mason_, by C.H. Callahan. Jackson, Polk, Fillmore, Buchanan, Johnson, Garfield, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, all were Masons. A long list may be found in _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens, article on "Freemasonry: Distinguished Americans."

[156] _Washington and his Masonic Compeers_, by Randolph Hayden.

[157] Thomas Paine, whose words these are, though not a Mason, has left us an essay on _The Origin of Freemasonry_. Few men have ever been more unjustly and cruelly maligned than this great patriot, who was the first to utter the name "United States," and who, instead of being a sceptic, believed in "the religion in which all men agree"--that is, in God, Duty, and the immortality of the soul.

[158] William Morgan was a dissolute, nondescript printer in Batavia, New York, who, having failed in everything else, thought to make money by betraying the secrets of an order which his presence polluted. Foolishly misled, a few Masons had him arrested on a petty charge, got him out of the country, and apparently paid him to stay out. Had no attention been paid to his alleged exposure it would have fallen still-born from the press, like many another before it. Rumors of abduction started, then Morgan was said to have been thrown into Niagara River, whereas there is no proof that he was ever killed, much less murdered by Masons. Thurlow Weed and a pack of unscrupulous politicians took it up, and the rest was easy. One year later a body was found on the shore of Lake Ontario which Weed and the wife of Morgan identified--a _year afterward!_--she, no doubt, having been paid to do so; albeit the wife of a fisherman named Munroe identified the same body as that of her husband drowned a week or so before. No matter; as Weed said, "_It's good enough Morgan until after the election_"--a characteristic remark, if we may judge by his own portrait as drawn in his _Autobiography_. Politically, he was capable of anything, if he could make it win, and here he saw a chance of stirring up every vile and slimy thing in human nature for sake of office. (See a splendid review of the whole matter in _History of Masonry_, by Hughan and Stillson, also by Gould in vol. iv of his _History_.)

[159] _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens, article, "Anti-Masonry," gives detailed account with many interesting facts.

[160] Following the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, there was a Lodge meeting in town, and "Yanks" and "Johnny Rebs" met and mingled as friends, under the Square and Compass. Where else could they have done so? (_Tennessee Mason_). When the Union army attacked Little Rock, Ark., the commanding officer, Thomas H. Benton--Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Iowa--threw a guard about the home of General Albert Pike, _to protect his Masonic library_. Marching through burning Richmond, a Union officer saw the familiar emblems over a hall. He put a guard about the Lodge room, and that night, together with a number of Confederate Masons, organized a society for the relief of widows and orphans left destitute by the war (_Washington, the Man and the Mason_, Callahan). But for the kindness of a brother Mason, who saved the life of a young soldier of the South, who was a prisoner of war at Rock Island, Ill., the present writer would never have been born, much less have written this book. That young soldier was my father! Volumes of such facts might be gathered in proof of the gracious ministry of Masonry in those awful years.

[161] _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens (last edition), article, "Free Masonry," pictures the extent of the order, with maps and diagrams showing its world-wide influence.

[162] Space does not permit a survey of the literature of Masonry, still less of Masonry in literature. (Findel has two fine chapters on the literature of the order, but he wrote, in 1865, _History of Masonry_.) For traces of Masonry in literature, there is the famous chapter in _War and Peace_, by Tolstoi; _Mon Oncle Sosthenes_, by Maupassant; _Nathan the Wise_, and _Ernest and Falk_, by Lessing; the Masonic poems of Goethe, and many hints in _Wilhelm Meister_; the writings of Herder (_Classic Period of German Letters_, Findel), _The Lost Word_, by Henry Van Dyke; and, of course, the poetry of Burns.

Masonic phrases and allusions--often almost too revealing--are found all through the poems and stories of Kipling. Besides the poem _The Mother Lodge_, so much admired, there is _The Widow of Windsor_, such stories as _With the Main Guard_, _The Winged Hats_, _Hal o' the Draft_, _The City Walls_, _On the Great Wall_, many examples in _Kim_, also in _Traffics and Discoveries_, _Puck of Pook's Hill_, and, by no means least, _The Man Who Would be King_, one of the great short stories of the world.