ere the next was attempted; and thus, in due time, being permitted the survey of the inner mysteries, his prepared and enlarged mind could comprehend what his delighted ears received.

No further intelligence was ever received concerning the pirate chief; but in his ferocious and demoniacal career, unmasonic and inhuman as it was, there nevertheless existed one green spot, which must, in his gloomy pauses, have yielded him a ray of comfort the preservation of the schooner Brilliant and her crew on account of his attachment to Freemasonry!

The Tongue too Silent.

A TALE OF MASONIC ADOPTION.

Inscribed to R. W. Bro. S. Blanchard,

OF TECUMSEH, MICHIGAN.

E are about to relate another scene from our personal experience. The man who will open his eyes and ears as he journeys with the great caravan of humanity, needs nor book nor mouth to tell him how exceedingly

wondrous is truth. We see far less of it in the more serious, than in the more romantic works of the shelf, for they who deal in it in pureness must needs write with a ghostly pen. What authors give us such flights of fancy as the scriptural ones? Yet scriptural truths are pure. Who so far from the cutand-dried logic of the schools as the writers of divine laws?-yet they write for the mass and for all time. We will continue to deal in truths as they enter our knowledge, in as nearly the same garb, that is to say, as they reach us, and the finical may turn away with scholastic horror if he choose, and ask for statuary clothed in more fashionable array.

Come with me, to-day, to the river bank, kind reader, and let us gather some plain truths as they occur before our eyes. It is a chilly morning, forsooth,

and in spite of our winter coats and wind-proof gloves, the blood stagnates and the muscles stiffen in the January blast-hardens the water wherever it may chance to fall-reverberates the frozen clod under our heel as we walk. In frosty clouds the vapor gathers from our breath and settles around us, too heavy to mount upward. It is the coldest morning of the peculiarly inclement month of December, 1851, and we are in a spot at which the blasts from the great prairies gather and accomplish their boreal work.

Before us is a busy scene. A great steamer is landing a portion of her enormous load at the wharfboat, her steam bellowing loudly through her escapepipes the while, as if impatient at the necessary delay. Rapidly the debarkation of passengers and the transfer of packages is accomplished, for time is precious and it waits for no man.

Soon the signal is made for departure-anothera third; and with a parting groan from the pipes and a graceful bend with the current, the monarch passes from the shore and down the river, and is lost to view.

There is little time for greeting among these people thus cast so hastily ashore. Those who have become partially acquainted through an intercourse of three or four days, close their acquaintance with a parting nod, or, rarely, a shake of the hand and a kind word, and part never more to meet. Some are cheered at landing by a friend, whose waving hand was visible to their eager eye even before they reached the wharf. Such are seen to hasten, arm linked in arm, to a

place where, doubtless, the fire is burning cheerfully for them and kind welcomes await them, of which, even now, with bended head and absorbed attention, they gather a foretaste. But the most pass off the wharf-boat and up the bank without any external show of joy or sorrrow at the change from the river life of half a week to this in the growing town of with which they seem well familiar.

All this has transpired in less than the half hour we have been writing it. Interested as we were with a scene which, though familiar, can never lose its interest to an observing mind, we scarcely note the increasing pain beneath our gloves and boots until our companion, with an ejaculation of distress, more common by half than proper, calls our attention to his own sufferings, and, by a natural transition, to our We prefer the glowing stove of the wharf-boat, nigh at hand, to the more distant, though more tasty fire-place of our hotel.

own.

The usual group around such a center of heat presents but little to attract our eye. Certainly, in the language of a wharf-boat there is nothing to attract the ear of a Freemason who reveres God's name, for it is made up of such a skeleton of profanity that were that removed it could not stand alone. One object, however, does attract the eye, and as we gaze with wonder upon it, there does presently reach our ear a sentence that is interesting

to us.

For there, upon a trunk, marked Matilda Dewey, sits a young woman, already a mother, and, as the

most stupid of this wharf-boat crowd has already noticed with sneers, soon to become a mother yet again. As we entered, two of us, she looked anxiously to each in turn, as if to find in our faces some lineament with which she was familiar; but, with an expression of disappointment, turned her face away. Presently, remarking that we were watching her, and possibly reading our interest in our looks-for we were thinking as we gazed upon her, how hard is woman's lot in an hour of misfortune, yet how uncomplaining she can endure-she asked us in words so low that we were obliged to move closer and request her to repeat them, "Did I know Henry Dewey in this place?"

Unable to satisfy her inquiries, we inquired privately of the clerk concerning her. His reply was so far from being satisfactory that—we blush even now when we recall the circumstance-we turned disappointed away and with our companion left the boat.

A week passed and we were again in the town of when, in a cabin, a mere shanty, such as foreigners only can build around our better domiciles, we saw, as we rode to a distant part of the town, a face that we remembered, no other than the face of the young woman whom we had first seen on the wharf-boat. She recognized us as promptly, and, as we involuntarily drew in our reins with surprise, she repeated the question asked before, "Did I know Henry Dewey in this place? or would I aid a poor woman to seek for her brother there?" It is among the acts long since repented of, that, influenced by