supreme moment comes and the brother gathers his arrows into
his quiver and fades from sight into the grave, we know that he has
passed the portal into the land of the eternal, but the quiver and the
arrows will ever stand as the badge of friendship. The heart may cease
to beat, and the hand fall listless in death, yet the heart and hand
will ever be emblems of love, and denote that when the hand of an
Odd-Fellow is extended his heart goes with it.

The good Odd-Fellow has constantly before his mind the book of books.
His first sight into a lodge-room catches sight of that divine missive
to man. It is his solace in life, and its precepts his consolation in
death. It ever stands to him as an exhaustless fountain of truth. On
these three cardinal principles he lives and dies, and in the constancy
of that life we venerate his memory and do him kindly offices. It is
the nature of a man to be communistic. It is only the anchorite that
withdraws himself from the societies of man and communes with himself
and his God. All right-thinking men desire and enjoy the society of
their kind and kindred spirits. You had as well lock the sane man in
the felon's cell as to doom him to live without the society of his
fellows. The family is the first and best society. Perhaps the church
is next, which is only the human family on a larger scale, fitting and
preparing the members for a community in that house not made by hands.
Next to my church I prize the secret organization to which I belong,
where the cardinal principles of our holy Christianity are taught. The
deathless friendship of David and Jonathan teaches me that though I may
live in the king's palace, be clothed in purple and fine linen every
day, be in the line of regal succession, yet I do not live to myself.

I would herald broadcast that tenet of our order, "that we do for
others as we would have others do for us, and that if I find my brother
in distress, I must bind up his wounds, lift him from the quagmire of
despond and set him on his feet." If any lesson stands out boldly
before the mind of the Odd-Fellow it is truth. He finds it on his
banner wherever he goes. Friendship is ephemeral. It lasts only
through life. It may die, it will die. The grave ends it all. The
silent messenger that comes to king and peasant alike, and causes the
scepter of the monarch to be laid by the crook of the shepherd, ends
our friendship. Love comes from God. God is love. I