Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

94 THE RUFFIANS.
and, afterwards, the flesh, and then the lion's paw (I speak
to the initiated,) brings about a most singular embrace of
the corrupted corpse fourteen or fifteen days buried, " breast
to breast, hand to back, and mouth to ear," with him giving
the raising grip; when these circumstances, so abhorrent
to truth, ai%d to each other, are represented to have
actually occurred in the case of the Grand Master Solomon,
credulity revolts, our indignation rises at the mock
gravity of the idle tale; a tale which, if true, were worthless,
and deserves no comment here, except as a thing selfexposed,
to the credit of Free Masonry.
The circumstances of finding the ruffians, or fellow
crafts, are artificial. The pursuers, only twelve in number,
depart in triplets, east, west, north, and south, and return
without success; threatened with death if they fail, they alone
depart in triplets as before. The ruffians in a cavern are
overheard with horrid imprecations, " Oh! that my throat
had been cut across!" " Oh! that my heart had been
torn from my naked left breast!" " Oh! that my body
had been severed in two!" And " the wise, the matchless
Solomon," awarded to each his own imprecated destructipn,
with horrible circumstances known to the fraternity !
It is cruel, unnatural, and, I may add, false. No men,
hardened in crime, were ever found together in a gloomy
cavern repenting aloud over their transgressions, and reproaching
themselves in set terms for their folly. " Grief
seeks to be alone, and to vent its feelings in secret." They
would separate, repenting; or, if together, they would be
found reproaching, not each himself, as masonic tradition
says they were, but each the other, of the guilt. But if they
were together in a gloomy cavern, repenting, as represented,
it is wholly incredible that they should have been so
particular in their imprecations, and yet so various; that
each should have preferred a claim to death under circumstances
much more horrid and minute than I have repeated,
without having the manner of one, similar to that of the
other, in any one material point!