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Article V ANCIENT WR1TEES AND MODEEN PRACTICES. ← Page 2 of 5 →
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V Ancient Wr1tees And Modeen Practices.
time as yet for any profaneness ; and fancies , therefore , that somebody must have been slandering him . Then the Grand Master , or his deputy , cites him to the bar , saying , ' What ' s that you have in your pocket ?' To which the novice replies ,.. ' A guinea . ' ' Any thing more ? ' ' Another guinea . ' Then / replies the official person , in a voice of thunder , ' Fork
out . Of course to a man coming sword in hand , few people refuse to do that . This forms the first half of the mysteries ; the second half , which is by much the more interesting , consists entirely of brandy . In fact , this latter mystery forms the reason , or final cause , for the elder mystery of the forhimg out . But how did I learn all this so accurately ? Isn't a man liable to be assassinated if lie betrays that ineffable mystery or a-Kopp ^ rov ( aporretoti , or not to be spoken ) of Masonry , which no wretch but one
since King Solomon ' s day is reputed ever to have blabbed ? And perhaps , reader , the wretch didn't blab the whole ; he only got as far as the forking out ; and being a churl who grudged . his money , ran away before reaching the bmndy . So that this fellow , if lie seems to you but half as guilty as myself , on the other hand is but half as learned . It's better for you to stick by the guiltier man . And yet , on consideration , I am not so guilty as we have been thinking . Perhaps it was a mistake . Dreaming on days
far back , when I was scheming for an introduction to the honourable society of Masons , and of course to their honourable secret , with the singleminded intention of instantly betraying that secret to a dear female friend ( and , you see , inhonour it was not possible for me to do otherwise , because she had made me promise that 1 would )—all this time I was soothing my remorse with a belief , that woman , as usual , was answerable for my treachery 3 she having positively compelled me to undertake it . When
suddenly I woke into a bright conviction that it was all a dream ; that I had never been near the Free-Masons ; that I had treacherously evaded the treachery which I ought to have committed , by perfidiously forging a secret quite as good , very likely better , than the true one , but still not that particular secret which I had pledged my honour to betray ; and that , if any body had ground of complaint against myself , it was not the Grand
Master , sword in hand , but my poor ill-used female friend , so confiding , so amiably credulous in my treachery , but so cruelly deceived , who had swallowed a mendacious account of Free-Masonry forged by myself , the very same which I fear that , on looking back , I shall find myself to have been palming , in this very page , upon the much respected reader . As regards my own criminality , however , long ago it was consummated : for the whole bubble of Freemasonry was shattered in a paper which I myself
threw into a London journal about the year 1823 or 1824 . " Up to a certain point our author had only been good-imniouredly " chaffy , " but here he has become grand . " Shattered" and " bubble " are indeed the words—we have not made a mistake ; hut somehow hVee-Masonry , though our lively friend De Quincey did " shatter" it in the year 1823 or 1824 , does continue to exist in the year 1858 , in a somewhat more substantial form than that of a "bubble , " and we
hope with results more beneficial to society in general . The paper , lie says , was his in so far as it received from him form and arrangement ^ but that the materials belonged to a learned German , viz :., Buhle—the same that edited the " Jiipont Aristotle " and wrote a history of philosophy . As no German , however , has any idea of stylo , Do Quincey did him the favour , in his own words , to " wash his dirty face , and make him presentable . " The " whole hoax" of
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
V Ancient Wr1tees And Modeen Practices.
time as yet for any profaneness ; and fancies , therefore , that somebody must have been slandering him . Then the Grand Master , or his deputy , cites him to the bar , saying , ' What ' s that you have in your pocket ?' To which the novice replies ,.. ' A guinea . ' ' Any thing more ? ' ' Another guinea . ' Then / replies the official person , in a voice of thunder , ' Fork
out . Of course to a man coming sword in hand , few people refuse to do that . This forms the first half of the mysteries ; the second half , which is by much the more interesting , consists entirely of brandy . In fact , this latter mystery forms the reason , or final cause , for the elder mystery of the forhimg out . But how did I learn all this so accurately ? Isn't a man liable to be assassinated if lie betrays that ineffable mystery or a-Kopp ^ rov ( aporretoti , or not to be spoken ) of Masonry , which no wretch but one
since King Solomon ' s day is reputed ever to have blabbed ? And perhaps , reader , the wretch didn't blab the whole ; he only got as far as the forking out ; and being a churl who grudged . his money , ran away before reaching the bmndy . So that this fellow , if lie seems to you but half as guilty as myself , on the other hand is but half as learned . It's better for you to stick by the guiltier man . And yet , on consideration , I am not so guilty as we have been thinking . Perhaps it was a mistake . Dreaming on days
far back , when I was scheming for an introduction to the honourable society of Masons , and of course to their honourable secret , with the singleminded intention of instantly betraying that secret to a dear female friend ( and , you see , inhonour it was not possible for me to do otherwise , because she had made me promise that 1 would )—all this time I was soothing my remorse with a belief , that woman , as usual , was answerable for my treachery 3 she having positively compelled me to undertake it . When
suddenly I woke into a bright conviction that it was all a dream ; that I had never been near the Free-Masons ; that I had treacherously evaded the treachery which I ought to have committed , by perfidiously forging a secret quite as good , very likely better , than the true one , but still not that particular secret which I had pledged my honour to betray ; and that , if any body had ground of complaint against myself , it was not the Grand
Master , sword in hand , but my poor ill-used female friend , so confiding , so amiably credulous in my treachery , but so cruelly deceived , who had swallowed a mendacious account of Free-Masonry forged by myself , the very same which I fear that , on looking back , I shall find myself to have been palming , in this very page , upon the much respected reader . As regards my own criminality , however , long ago it was consummated : for the whole bubble of Freemasonry was shattered in a paper which I myself
threw into a London journal about the year 1823 or 1824 . " Up to a certain point our author had only been good-imniouredly " chaffy , " but here he has become grand . " Shattered" and " bubble " are indeed the words—we have not made a mistake ; hut somehow hVee-Masonry , though our lively friend De Quincey did " shatter" it in the year 1823 or 1824 , does continue to exist in the year 1858 , in a somewhat more substantial form than that of a "bubble , " and we
hope with results more beneficial to society in general . The paper , lie says , was his in so far as it received from him form and arrangement ^ but that the materials belonged to a learned German , viz :., Buhle—the same that edited the " Jiipont Aristotle " and wrote a history of philosophy . As no German , however , has any idea of stylo , Do Quincey did him the favour , in his own words , to " wash his dirty face , and make him presentable . " The " whole hoax" of