The Freemason's Monthly Magazine has the following interesting item: "Hon. Samuel Thatcher, now living, was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason in Corinthian Lodge at Concord, Mass., July 2, 1798. A history of the Lodge shows that he was proposed by Bro. Thomas Heald, and was accepted. He was initiated June 18, 1798, crafted July 2, 1798, and raised at same meeting. Bro. Thatcher is, I believe, in his 95th year, and is quite feeble in body and mind, having been nearly helpless for several years."

The recent national thanksgiving service held at St. Paul's Cathedral, in gratitude for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, was one of the grandest pageants that has occurred in Britain within the present century. The Masonic Order took a conspicuous part, and the London Freemason handsomely records the proceedings.

The Grand Lodge of Texas has decided that a Lodge cannot try a member a second time for the same offence.

The corner-stone of the National Capitol at Washington city was laid by our Illustrious Brother George Washington, with Masonic ceremonies, in his double capacity of President of the United States and Master of his Lodge, and the gavel he then used has been preserved with great care, and used upon the corner-stones of buildings representing many millions of dollars in value. So says the Keystone.

The New York Courier of the 25th ult. has the following item: "C. DeLong, Minister to Japan, has presented the Masonic Fraternity of Sacramento with three brass vases or candlesticks. In the letter accompanying them, and directed to Colonel Whitesides, Minister DeLong explains how and when he obtained them. On the 27th of May last he assisted in organizing and installing the first Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons ever organized in that country. It was organized at Yeddo. These candlesticks were used on that occasion, and the Minister learning that they had once done service in a Buddhist temple, procured them and sent them to his Masonic Brethren, not as articles of value, but as a memento of the wondrous change now being wrought by the interchange of ideas and customs. Fancy those candlesticks, which once held the sacred candles before the Buddhist idol, now standing in the hall or lodge-room of the Order. Verily, the world moves. The articles are about two and a half feet high, with a corrugated stem, decreasing in size until it ends in a sort of board, which held the taper, or whatever was used in place of it. Such is the description given us of these articles, which are supposed to be very old relics of past centuries.

Brother John C. W. Bailey, of Chicago, is said to be again in the field with his excellent monthly, The Voice of Masonry. We are not in the receipt thereof. Will Bro. Bailey please remember us? We have before noted the great loss sustained by this worthy Brother in the great conflagration. We are rejoiced to be assured that he now has more subscribers to the Voice than ever before.

Bro. Matthew Greathead, of Richmond, Yorkshire, died there recently, in the 102d year of his age. He was born at High Cunniscliffe, near Darlington, on April 23, 1770, and was believed to be the oldest Freemason in England, having been a member of a Lodge for 75 years.

NEW EXCHANGES.

We are in receipt of several new exchanges, some of which we prize very highly. At the head of our list we will place the Waverly Magazine, by Moses A. Dow, Boston, Mass.; $5 per year, 15 cents per number. The Waverly is now in its forty-fourth volume, and as a high-toned literary publication it stands unrivaled. Its stories are all complete in each number, and are chaste in tone, and in style, well nigh faultless. To our readers who are able to afford the luxury, we would commend the Waverly as the very best literary family weekly publication extant. It is printed on clear new type, paper fine and clean as the pure thoughts printed thereon. It is worth a legion of the trashy publications which flood our country.

Second, The Scientific American; New York, Munn & Co.; $3 per year; devoted to the interests of inventors and scientific discoveries. This is the oldest and best journal of its kind, and richly worth. double its subscription price, especially to artists and those interested in the inventions and discoveries of the age.

Third, Religio-Philosophical Journal, Chicago, Ill.; $3 per an num. S. S. Jones, publisher and proprietor. This is a neatly printed weekly, ably conducted, published as we understand largely in the interests of modern spiritualism.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

The excellent story by Bro. Coffinberry, TRUE WEALTH, closes with our present issue. It has been read with great interest by our numerous patrons, both at home and abroad, and many have been the praises lavished upon it. Bro. C. will continue to enrich the pages of THE MICHIGAN FREEMASON with the productions of his gifted pen.

This department in our last issue was not much edited. absence it went to the devil!--and fared rather hard.

In our

The address from our worthy Brother Clapp, of Mendon, is received, and extracts will appear in our next number. It is both abie and timely.

A line from the Grand Master brings intelligence of his labors in the region of Grand Haven, Grand Rapids and other places along the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad. We regret that pressing duties prevent our being with him, as we are desirous of visiting that region. We hope to be more at leisure soon, and to be able to accompany the Grand Master at least a part of the time.

We call especial attention to the advertisement of E. A. ARMSTRONG & Co., found in this number, who make Masonic Regalia a specialty. Their establishment is a large one, and their stock equal to any found in the market, East or West. Everything being equal, our Brethren should support home institutions.

We are now prepared to supply Lodges, Chapters and Commanderies with blanks of all kinds, and also with ledgers and other blank books. Those in need of such furnishing will please remember us.

We shall soon issue our prospectus for volume four, and we hope our Brethren throughout the State will aid in raising clubs. In future we shall send our journal at $1.50 per annum to clubs of ten or more. As we print on 50lb. No. 1 book paper, and give 48 pp. to the number, at club rates THE MICHIGAN FREEMASON will be the cheapest Masonic journal in the country. If our Brethren will aid us to raise our list to six thousand, we will agree to enlarge to 64 pages per number. This is only about an average of twenty to the Lodge, and we certainly should have that number of reading Masons in each Lodge, except a few of the smaller ones.

We regret to note two or three blunders in the excellent article of our worthy correspondent, J. F., "Why Were They Ruined?" "One Dr. Alfred" should read "6 'Our Dr. Alfred,"; "One Western" should read "Our," &c. And "Scriptures" should have been "Sculptures."' Our compositor insists that our worthy Br. J. F. does not write a plain hand for strangers to read! But we hope to hear from him again, and so often that our compositor, will be familiar with his chirography. His compositions are of the first order.

THE MICHIGAN FREEMASON.

VOL. III-APRIL, A. L. 5872.—NO. X.

MASONIC OBEDIENCE.

HE is unfitted to command, who has not first learned to obey. Obedience is the true test of a Mason, as necessary to be cultivated as truth or charity. Without it no Lodge can exist, no Master 'conduct its business. No brother can presume to assert an independence of action, contrary to the voice of the Master and the Lodge. He has his remedy, if aggrieved, by an appeal to the Supreme Body; but the Master's word in Lodge assembled, must be held as law, otherwise the Lodge would degenerate into a beer-garden, and the harmony of the Order be marred. A brother who may find himself, or a body of brethren who may find themselves, outvoted on any point, should gracefully bow to the majority of the brethren, for any ebullition of wounded feeling, or attempt to revenge the defeat, is alike unmanly and inconsistent with Masonic oaths; and a brother who, however unjustly he may have been dealt with, shows more conspicuously his qualities, both as a man and a Mason, when he accepts without murmuring, the dictum of his brethren; but he who endeavors rudely, or by means at variance with the spirit of the Order, to regain a position which he has lost, or to reverse a decision come to after mature consideration, proves himself to be, however right he might have been originally, unworthy of attention, and unfit to be received into the fel

VOL. III.-NO. X.-28.

lowship of Masons. A brother who takes his case, decided in the Masonic courts, out of them, and parades them to the neutral world, displays an ignorance of the principles of Freemasonry, a pettiness of spirit, and a mental bias to the wrong. By obeying the sentence of his peers, he disarms the verdict of its sting, and lays the first stone towards re-erecting his Masonic character.

We have too often seen Lodges, where harmony and peace used to reign, broken up, or if the evil did not go that length, the comfort marred, by factious brethren. There are men with a twist in their character which will lead them to cavil at every remark, men who cannot agree with their very selves. It is a pity that no law exists by which such brethren could be ostracised, for it is very hard that other brethren should suffer for their vagaries. Every right-minded brother, and such I honor and esteem, finding that he cannot agree with one or more brethren in Lodge assembled, who tenders his resignation and seeks a more congenial society, acts up to the apron charge, and by his prudent conduct prevents seandal; but a brother who remains in a Lodge only to prove a nuisance, who attends meetings to raise, night after night, disturbance and disorder, should have the effectual remedy applied to him-expulsion. Among a certain class of young Masons, it is often painful to see the anxiety they display to bring themselves into notoriety, and when legitimate means fail, they do not scruple to adopt illegitimate. By them we would have the framework of Freemasonry taken down and altered to the style of modern stucco palaces; and they do not scruple to contradict the Master in the chair, and set up their juvenile ignorance against the experience of age. Many men mistake novelty for wisdom, as they confound insolence with wit.

In the good old days, when the Hospitallers of St. John held Cyprus, a fearful serpent ravaged the land. Many adventurous knights went out to attack the monster, but all fell victims to its fury. At last, the Grand Master forbade any knight thenceforward to attempt its destruction, and the island was given up as a prey to the reptile. Its ravages, in