Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
How I Was First Prepared To Be Made A Mason.
inelegance , and yet I know of no other term to describe the bourdonnement , the sound of which was—not wafted to but—banged into our ears . And yet " row " is a very expressive word , and the expletory adjective only suggests such a chamaillis as the spiritual creatures with whom we imaginatively people the place we , by a wholly incorrect euphemism , term Hades , may be supposed to be in the normal habit of making . I once read a very ghastly but expressive illustration of uproar , but then the clangour was
supposed to proceed from supernatural causes . '" They make a noise , ' said the old sexton , ' just as if they was ghostes a playing at skittles with their own dead bones . '" But here the concussions appeared to be produced by metallic rather than osseous machinery . Fancy the clanking that Jacob Marley ' s ghost ' s adornment of cash-boxes and iron safes made when BIr . Scrooge was so frightened ; only imagine it much more staccato , more strongly accentuated , emphasised , and multiply it , to bo moderate , say by twenty , and you will have some idea of the clangour that affrighted our juvenile souls as we stood outside those grim panels , tremblingly wondering what was to happen .
It wasn't my turn to go in first , I remember . One of the hierophants emerged with the mystery that seemed absolutely de rigueur , and seized upon the victim nearest the door as her prey . He was very long ancl very lanky—one of those stupid hoys who at seventeen seem to have left off growing intellectually at seven , and to have sought to compensate for that abstinence by running on into any amount of physical elongation . I believe in those days a gentleman by the name of Calcraft fulfilled an important office in the chief executive of the law . Of course I ought never to have read of such
things , but I am afraid the penny dreadfuls of the present day had their antitypes in the fourth decade of this century , and somehow I had acquired an idea of the delicate yet firm manner in which the deemster approached the law ' s forfeit at the supreme moment , and for the life of me I couldn't help connecting Polly Prattleton ' s appropriation of trembling and , I rather think , boo-hooing Tommy Twistler , with a certain grim ceremony then rather too frequently performed on a Monday morning in a gloomy apartment denominated the Press-room , and situate within a well known grim stone edifice , near the centre of the city of London .
The first operation performed upon Tommy , and which , I verily believe , produced the boo-hooing aforesaid , consisted in blindfolding that martyr with his own not overclean kerchief . Then the mysterious portal opened and closed upon the candidate and his conductress , and suddenly the turmoil ceased , and a sdence that might be felt reigned within and without—a silence broken after the lapse of a few seconds by shrieks and yells of—yes—demoniac laughter , proceeding from within , in the midst of which the door gapes again to receive another hood-winked aspirant—this time of the fair sex—and tho . same sequence follows of awesome silence ruptured by spasmodic explosions of mirth .
Ihe victims did not re-appear ! Each succeeding burst of hilarity was enhanced by another personal contribution to the cachinnation . Can you recall Lamartine's wonderful description of the death song of the Girondists ? Well , the effect here was inverse to that . If you remember , the twenty-two marched to the scaffold singing the " Marseillaise " as with one voice . Number one is strapped to the board , which is forthwith inverted , the moribund one still singing with the rest . There is a flash , and a chop , and a thudas a head rolls into the basketancl only twent- one voices are left chanting the
refrain-, , y , and the warbling throat of one of these is even then being embraced by the lunette , and then the flash , etc ., etc ., etc ., and there is a warbler the less , but the twenty are still " giving it mouth , " and so on , and so on , and so on , until only one set of vocal apparatus is left to incite to allonging and marchonging , as Dickens's unimaginative Briton phrases it . A second more and there is complete silence . There diminuendo—here crescendoas the still increasing roar resounds from withinAt last came turn
, . my .-With faltering voice I professed my willingness to undergo the ordeal . With beating heart I submitted to the tender but ready hands of my conductress as the fatal bandage excluded the light , and then—and then—ancl then ! Now I should have told you that it was adroitly but diabolically contrived that between the hood-winking process aforementioned and the actual reception into the
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
How I Was First Prepared To Be Made A Mason.
inelegance , and yet I know of no other term to describe the bourdonnement , the sound of which was—not wafted to but—banged into our ears . And yet " row " is a very expressive word , and the expletory adjective only suggests such a chamaillis as the spiritual creatures with whom we imaginatively people the place we , by a wholly incorrect euphemism , term Hades , may be supposed to be in the normal habit of making . I once read a very ghastly but expressive illustration of uproar , but then the clangour was
supposed to proceed from supernatural causes . '" They make a noise , ' said the old sexton , ' just as if they was ghostes a playing at skittles with their own dead bones . '" But here the concussions appeared to be produced by metallic rather than osseous machinery . Fancy the clanking that Jacob Marley ' s ghost ' s adornment of cash-boxes and iron safes made when BIr . Scrooge was so frightened ; only imagine it much more staccato , more strongly accentuated , emphasised , and multiply it , to bo moderate , say by twenty , and you will have some idea of the clangour that affrighted our juvenile souls as we stood outside those grim panels , tremblingly wondering what was to happen .
It wasn't my turn to go in first , I remember . One of the hierophants emerged with the mystery that seemed absolutely de rigueur , and seized upon the victim nearest the door as her prey . He was very long ancl very lanky—one of those stupid hoys who at seventeen seem to have left off growing intellectually at seven , and to have sought to compensate for that abstinence by running on into any amount of physical elongation . I believe in those days a gentleman by the name of Calcraft fulfilled an important office in the chief executive of the law . Of course I ought never to have read of such
things , but I am afraid the penny dreadfuls of the present day had their antitypes in the fourth decade of this century , and somehow I had acquired an idea of the delicate yet firm manner in which the deemster approached the law ' s forfeit at the supreme moment , and for the life of me I couldn't help connecting Polly Prattleton ' s appropriation of trembling and , I rather think , boo-hooing Tommy Twistler , with a certain grim ceremony then rather too frequently performed on a Monday morning in a gloomy apartment denominated the Press-room , and situate within a well known grim stone edifice , near the centre of the city of London .
The first operation performed upon Tommy , and which , I verily believe , produced the boo-hooing aforesaid , consisted in blindfolding that martyr with his own not overclean kerchief . Then the mysterious portal opened and closed upon the candidate and his conductress , and suddenly the turmoil ceased , and a sdence that might be felt reigned within and without—a silence broken after the lapse of a few seconds by shrieks and yells of—yes—demoniac laughter , proceeding from within , in the midst of which the door gapes again to receive another hood-winked aspirant—this time of the fair sex—and tho . same sequence follows of awesome silence ruptured by spasmodic explosions of mirth .
Ihe victims did not re-appear ! Each succeeding burst of hilarity was enhanced by another personal contribution to the cachinnation . Can you recall Lamartine's wonderful description of the death song of the Girondists ? Well , the effect here was inverse to that . If you remember , the twenty-two marched to the scaffold singing the " Marseillaise " as with one voice . Number one is strapped to the board , which is forthwith inverted , the moribund one still singing with the rest . There is a flash , and a chop , and a thudas a head rolls into the basketancl only twent- one voices are left chanting the
refrain-, , y , and the warbling throat of one of these is even then being embraced by the lunette , and then the flash , etc ., etc ., etc ., and there is a warbler the less , but the twenty are still " giving it mouth , " and so on , and so on , and so on , until only one set of vocal apparatus is left to incite to allonging and marchonging , as Dickens's unimaginative Briton phrases it . A second more and there is complete silence . There diminuendo—here crescendoas the still increasing roar resounds from withinAt last came turn
, . my .-With faltering voice I professed my willingness to undergo the ordeal . With beating heart I submitted to the tender but ready hands of my conductress as the fatal bandage excluded the light , and then—and then—ancl then ! Now I should have told you that it was adroitly but diabolically contrived that between the hood-winking process aforementioned and the actual reception into the