As every Mason should.”
Then we were played and sung out to the quaint tune of the “Entered Apprentices’ Song.” I noticed that the regular Brethren of the Lodge did not begin to take off their regalia till the lines:
“Great Kings, Dukes, and Lords
Have laid down their swords.”
They moved into the ante-room, now set for the Banquet, on the verse:
“Antiquity’s pride
We have on our side,
Which maketh men just in their station.”
The Brother (a big-boned clergyman) that I found myself next to at table told me the custom was “a fond thing vainly invented” on the strength of some old legend. He laid down that Masonry should be regarded as an “intellectual abstraction.” An Officer of Engineers disagreed with him, and told us how in Flanders, a year before, some ten or twelve Brethren held Lodge in what was left of a Church. Save for the Emblems of Mortality and plenty of rough ashlars, there was no furniture.
“I warrant you weren’t a bit the worse for that,” said the Clergyman. “The idea should be enough without trappings.”