Robinson of Edinburgh, who was a Protestant and at on time a Mason himself, says: "I believe no ordinary brother will say that the occupations of the lodges are anything better than frivolous, very frivolous indeed. The distribution of charity needs to be no secret, and it is but a small part of the employment of the meeting. Mere frivolity can never occupy men come to age, and accordingly we see in every part of Europe where Freemasonry has been established the lodges have become seed-beds of public mischief."
This was particularly true of the lodges of the central cities of Europe in the latter part of the seventeenth century. They were not only politically obnoxious to governments, but they became the agents and supporters of all the heretical theories of the day, and their evil effects were felt in the domestic circle. Like animals that hate the light and crawl out from their hiding-places when the world is abandoned by man, the members of those impious gatherings passed their nights in mysterious conclave. Fancy can paint the scene: weak-minded men of every shade of unbelief, men of dishonest and immoral sentiments, men who, if justice had her due, should have swung on the gallows or eked out a miserable existence in some criminal's cell, joined in league to trample on the laws and constitution of order, and, in the awful callousness of intoxication, uttering every blasphemous and improper thought the evil one could suggest. What must have been the character of the homes that received such men after their midnight revels? Many a happy household has been turned into grief through their demoralizing influence; mothers, wives, and daughters have often, in the lonely hours of midnight, sat up with a scanty light and a dying fire awaiting the late return of a son, a husband, or a brother; with many a sigh they would trace the ruin of their domestic felicity and the wreck of their family to some lodge of the secret societies.
Before appealing to facts and bringing the reader to a scene of domestic misery caused by those societies, we will conclude these remarks by quoting one or two verses from a parody on a very popular American song. We believe the lines representing the poor little child calling in the middle of the night, in the cold and wet, at the Masonic lodge for its father, to be as truthful in the realities of domestic suffering as they are beautiful and touching in poetic sentiment:
"Father, dear father, stop home with us pray
You never stop home with us now;
'Tis always the 'lodge' or 'lodge business,' you say,
That will not home pleasures allow.
Poor mother says benevolence is all very well,
And your efforts would yield her delight,
If they did not take up so much of your time,
And keep you from home every night.
"Father, dear father, stop home with us pray!
Poor mother's deserted, she said,
And she wept o'er your absence one night, till away
From our home to your lodge-room I sped.
A man with a red collar came out and smiled,
And patted my cheeks, cold and blue,
And I told him I was a good Templar's child,
And was waiting, dear father, for you.
"Father, dear father, come home with me now;
You left us before half-past seven.
Don't say you'll come soon, with a frown on your brow;
'Twill soon, father dear, be eleven.
Your supper is cold, for the fire is quite dead,
And mother to bed has gone, too;
And these were the very last words that she said;
'I hate those Freemasons, I do!'"
Chapter XIV.
The Freemason's Home.
Late on a dark night in the commencement of November, wind and rain blowing with violence from the mountains, and the streets of Geneva abandoned, we find our young heroines sitting in a comfortable room. They are lounging on easy-chairs before a warm fire; the eldest is reading, and the youngest, although dressed in the pretty uniform of a naval cadet, is working at embroidery with colored wools.