If you wish to ascertain if a Brother be present, you can easily do so by sounding. Sounding signifies feeling, or ascertaining; and if you wish so to do, use the word Culley, which signifies Brother, Friend, Partner.
As Nature, in every feature, dislikes a traitor, no provision has been made for dissembling. This society is ruled by Nature, as our God!—and it is the duty of each and every member to do all in his power to promote the welfare of his Brethren, as, by so doing, he must in time convince all observers that the Secret Brothers are the only true Christian sect on earth; and this we, ourselves, individually and collectively, believe; and we make this manifest, by placing our names to this scroll, and thereby pledging our fortunes and our lives to maintain and carry out these principles in all sincerity and truth; and should we ever offer to take up another faith, and renounce this, may our prayer-oath be fulfilled to the extent of all its agonies; aye, and more: we now again doubly pray, that if we ever offer to secede from this, our religion, that we may thereby seal our immortal state with an undying existence in a world of torment, prepared for all priestcraft and treacherous mortals.
The singular circumstances connected with my obtaining these papers, and the awful obligations contained in the constitution, will prepare the reader for some strange developments. The constitution, although not elegantly worded, proves its author to have been a man of uncommon shrewdness, and knowledge of human nature, and forethought. We may therefore expect that the plan of operations should be so laid as to baffle detection by ordinary means. I will try to give some idea of it.
It was necessary that letters should be transmitted from one member to another, in a distant location, yet the person to whom the letter was addressed might be miles from a government post-office, and it might not be safe for him to present himself for a letter, lest he should be recognised as a desperate man, and letters were liable to be opened and their desperate projects exposed. To avoid this danger, they established a line of communication, extending from Toronto, Canada, to New Orleans. Not precisely direct, but lying through large towns.
On this route were post-offices; consisting of hollow trees, caves, cavities in rocks, &c. Those who wished to send letters deposited them here; with full directions. All the "brothers" knew these post-offices; and when, in their travels, they came near one, were bound to stop, and examine the letters. If they found letters directed to persons on their route, they must carry them along. If the letter was directed to a person beyond the extent of his journey, he must at least carry it to the next post-office, if he was going so far; and from that, some other Brother would pass it along. It was death, in all cases, for a member to open a letter not directed to him.
As Brothers are constantly passing along the line, in both directions, considerable despatch was secured. If a letter should chance to be lost, it was written in such a manner that one not knowing the secret would suppose it to be an ordinary business letter, and the persons alluded to were so mentioned as that only the individual to whom the letter was addressed, or some person interested in the same transaction, could understand the allusion.
The person to whom the letter was addressed must return the letter, if requested, but might keep a copy. Along this mail line lived many of the Brotherhood, and as they knew each other by signs, and were able to converse in a flash language, unintelligible to the community generally; when we recollect that they were bound by solemn oaths to aid and defend each other in every emergency, right or wrong—that both men and women belonged to the order—the reader will see what security a villain could enjoy when hunted by the police; how easily the respectable citizen, the country merchant, the lawyer, the captain of a steamboat, could conceal the fugitive, and put the officer upon the wrong scent.
In addition to this caution, any thing which must be so explicit that a stranger to the order might understand, if he should see it, was written with sympathetic ink, which would appear only when heated, and would disappear again when cold; and even this was written in a perfectly unintelligible cipher, to which, however, I very fortunately found the key among the letters. I insert it for the benefit of the curious.