attachment to Masonry, one of the most zealous and enlightened members of the Institution (there was but one secret society in the United States at that time, so that the adjective Masonic was seldom used and never necessary) died suddenly, and under circumstances that awakened the profoundest sensations of the Brethren, his co-members. They built a costly monument to his memory, and selected the highest knoll in the burial-ground as its site. It was the broken column upon a platform of three steps; in fact, the same figure that is given in the Monitor in the third degree.

There the beautiful monument stood, undisturbed, for several years, and glittered in the sunlight, or glowed under moonbeams, to the eye of every traveler, early or late, who journeyed from the southwest toward the county-seat of county. It became the center of various other Masonic graves. Death is ever at work; and as his work thinned out the ranks of the lodge to which the deceased had belonged, processions were seen to wind slowly thitherward with melancholy loads, and around "the weeping Virgin" stout-hearted men were seen to weep, and by the side of the broken column they laid other columns, broken in like manner, until a group, silent but suggestive, was formed of the Fraternal dead.

This elegant monument became the scene of the incident we are describing. During the crisis of the fever so often referred to, it was a standing eyesore, a stench in the pure nostrils of Antimasonry. To tower so high, to glare so brightly, to cry out its

lessons so loudly, that every beholder was in a manner compelled to hear them, and all this, too, in a time when their honest, disinterested efforts had almost rendered Freemasonry a broken column-the thought was insupportable. An order of court was petitioned for to remove it, but the presiding judicial was too conscientious to grant that, though he had been elected as an Antimason. Then the parties consulted a lawyer, to know the damage of openly tearing it down; but that proving several figures too high for their pecuniary ability, they decided at last upon convening under the shadow of night for the purpose. The plot came to the ears of a Brother Mason through the instrumentality of an old lady, who, though she had been in the chimney corner too deaf for twenty years to hear much, had her auditory nerves wonderfully keen when anything was stirring in regard to a society to which all three of her deceased husbands had belonged. The Brother Mason, of course, communicated it to the rest, and a counter-plot was devised, as ingenious as anything in the strategy of Brother N. Bonaparte, of Corsica.

The malignant Antimasons met, to the number of three, one wet, dark, cold night, and, with Masons' tools, went together to the graveyard. The very nature of their errand demanded silence, and a silent party in a dark night is necessarily a superstitious one. By the time they got half-way from the graveyard gate to the doomed monument, every grave had its ghost perched upon it, and every puff of wind emitted its sigh. If the reader will try the plan of

entering a well-peopled graveyard, after midnight, upon an unholy errand, he will exactly realize the pleasant feelings of these three ruffians. They soon found themselves walking so close together as actually to impede one another's steps, whereupon one of them fell headlong, and screamed as his hand came in contact with something cold as a dead man's forehead. It was no fancy, as the result proved, that made the other two hear a subdued chuckle, in response, from behind a gallows-looking oak hard by.

The party had barely arrived at the broken monument, and settled their hats upon their heads, which had been pushed off by their electrified hair, when blankets were thrown over them; and, in spite of their agonizing attempts to scream, they were silenced, thrown down, gagged, and bound, in a space of time quite miraculous in its brevity.

Who committed the act was not known for ten years afterward; but those three night-walkers were found by their anxious friends, next morning, in the court-house, with corncobs arranged horizontally in their open jaws; their hands and feet tied with their own suspenders; and their bodies completely tattooed with all the emblems of seven degrees of Masonry, done in monochromatic-that is, in lunar caustic. The color came out by a few weeks' vigorous rubbing, but no second attempt was ever made upon the integrity of the monument, and the BROKEN COLUMN stands UNBROKEN yet.

The Five Orders of Architecture in

Brentford Lodge.

A TALE OF SPECULATIVE ARCHITECTURE.

Inscribed to R. W. Bro. William Q. Ferris,

OF DOVER, MISSISSIPPI.

ORDER FIRST.

BROTHER LEMUEL FAIRFAX OF THE TUSCAN ORDER.

N those handy little compends of Masonic doctrine, styled Masonic Manuals, Monitors, Charts, Trestleboards, etc., there is an admirable spirit of stevedoring* displayed, by means of which a great mass of themes is compressed within the smallest possible amount of space. The use of such books is invaluable if applied in the way of suggestion. There are texts in them for a thousand Masonic lectures. Every paragraph, indeed, is a text from which an intelligent Master may draw to feed and enlighten a willing membership. The only use of them that we feel called upon to deprecate, in this connection, is as lectures. The Manuals, be it recollected, do not and were not designed to

* The business of a stevedore is to pack the various articles that make up a ship's cargo into the confined space of the hold—. multum in parvo.- Vide WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY.

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supply lectures, but to suggest them. If used in the former sense, they are the laziest and least useful works in the world, and will as certainly bring about a low state of Masonic intelligence in the lodge, as would the mere occasional reading of a few proof texts in the pulpit, without commentary or preaching, lead to a speedy dullness of spiritual matters in the church.

Among the subjects so briefly but comprehensively conveyed in the Manuals, is that of "Orders in Architecture." This theme is expounded to Fellowcraft Masons on their way to the Middle Chamber of King Solomon's Temple; and, when properly worked up by the Senior Deacon, forms an elegant lecture, and one well calculated to impress the hearer with a sense of the scientific character of the Masonic Institution. To assist Senior Deacons, and afford to the general reader some idea of what this subject is capable, we present a series of tales, to include respectively the Five Orders in Architecture, the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. And our first shall be "Brother Lemuel Fairfax of the Tuscan Order."

But, to start fairly with our subject, let us inquire, What do the Manuals suggest upon this head? From Webb's Freemasons' Monitor, the original of them all, we quote: "By Order in Architecture is meant a system of all the members, proportions, and ornaments of columns and pilasters; or it is a regular arrangement of the projecting parts of a building, which, united with those of a column, form a beau