then usual style-were claimed as fugitives from service under and by virtue of the Fugitive Slave Act. General Butler looked at the case as coming within the provisions of military law, and decided that, under the peculiar circumstances, he considered the fugitives contraband of war. This was the first time that term had been applied to escaped slaves. It was then inscribed on the charter of their freedom. It was, too, the first gleam of good sense and military judgment on this subject which had flashed through the war. From that hour the Revolution began to move. The Rebellion began to grow weak; the Union, to grow strong.

The Rebellion was assailed in its weak point: we had to undermine the castle which could not be carried by storm.

XIII.

The Mission of the Masonic Fraternity in this War.

THE beneficent influence of this great and humane institution, which has constituted a body-guard for humanity as it has travelled down to us from the ancient ages, has never been so widely or so deeply felt at any period as during the ragings of this unfraternal, and consequently unmasonic, war. Masonry has never had a motto dearer to the hearts of its brothers than "PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN." It loves justice and country, and can draw the sword for both. It has done it in this war and in other wars. But it put forth herculean efforts to avert this trouble. Correspondence, appeals, counsel, invocation,—ALL were tried before the rupture came. Conventions met, North and South, East and West; everywhere the patriotic, the true, the brave, and the unselfish communed together; and at one time we believed that our great fraternity of more than a quarter of a million men could arrest the tide of Disunion and quell the storm of political madness and sectional hate. But the storm was too loud, the night too dark. We were on the breakers!—we struck! among the saddest hearts in the country, the very saddest beat in our bosoms.

But we were not alone. The gloom that clouded our spirits cast its shadow over every nation. The Old World sent back its cheering messages and hailed us in our sufferings. Wherever the news of our national disasters was heard in foreign countries, it called forth expressions of sympathy from uncounted thousands of our brothers, whom we never saw, and never shall see till the Grand Architect finally calls us

all to sit together in his own Temple, each to receive the reward of his work.

Masonic incidents of the war could be multiplied without number. I shall give but few.

Let me say to those who know this brotherhood only by popular report or external signs and emblems, that its great object is the elevation and happiness of our fellow-men,—all brothers, because all children of the same beneficent and almighty Father who bids us walk together in unity and love on the earth till we meet again in another life, higher, purer, and better than this.

It should not seem strange that the members of such a commonwealth, on whose encampments no sun ever goes down and in whose canopy the stars shine forever,—a commonwealth that is limited to no clime and hemmed in by no mountains or oceans,—whose citizens, without regard to language or sect, always meet on common ground and greet each other as kindred, ready to put one's life in the other's stead, all aspiring to the noblest life we can live,--it should not seem strange that a different tie should bind us together than binds other men.

Many and many a time, in scenes of carnage which have marked the prosecution of this war, has the widow's son found help.

In one of the frequent collisions which occurred between Stuart's cavalry and our own near the Blue Ridge, freemasonry shone out in all the glory of humanity with which it was delivered to us by the ancient founders of our institutions. Then American character came out, in its oriflamme of heroism, to prove that we have a country, and that the old banner must be kept floating. Floating! Yes! The next man that hauls down that flag, "shoot him on the spot!" General Dix never uttered better words than these.

But that the true, earnest-hearted love of our brothers should die in the depth of all our home-troubles,-that hu

manity should for once grow pale before the skeleton form of terror,—we never thought of that. But you know, brothers mine, that we love humanity no less-that our fellow-men are no less dear to us-even if they have not come within the charmed circle of our common love. Many of them are our brothers who will be; for our great fraternity must, sooner or later, embrace all the true and faithful who dwell in all climes, who speak all languages, who love humanity as the nearest approach to God.

Yes! one day, my brothers, we shall all come together. In our common home we shall all meet. No good being can interrupt our calm contemplations We shall, as true men and real brothers, come together at last!

And what a meeting will that be! No wanderer lost,— a family complete in heaven!

Oh, what a gathering! From our first grand master to our present honored one,—an unbroken chain of nobly-descended successors, who have ever given us "light from the East," and consolation in all the sufferings and trials of our humble but sanctified brotherhood, as it has done its good and heroic work, down through the dim and doubtful ages.

That will be the day of our triumph! We can expect to see what we believe in now,-one brotherhood that God loves and pardons, and one brotherhood which tried on earth to make a brotherhood in heaven. We live in the eternal sunshine of hope. To us all the present belongs, and that "present is all flashing with the purple light of love." We have faith in our truth to each other,—in our national love; we believe in the life that now is, and a still stronger faith we hold in the better life to come. Yes! this faith holds us up when we are sinking. It sustains us in desponding hours, when we begin to doubt even if the earth goes round the sun,-when the last fragment of Galileo's world is crumbling at our very feet. Yes! then we say, "Thy will be done!"

XIV.

The Real Dignity of Citizenship-Robert J. Walker.

AFTER Paul had been carried into the castle of Jerusalem, from whose steps he had addressed a blood-thirsty mob of his countrymen, the chief captain of the castle ordered him to be examined by scourging. As they were binding him with thongs, he "said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned? When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest, for this man is a Roman. Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born."

Citizenship meant something in those best days of the Roman Empire. Valor, justice, and loyalty to the constitution of Rome had for centuries imparted a dignity to citizenship which commanded the admiration and respect of the world. In a distant province and on another continent, far from the capital of the Cæsars, Paul had only to announce those magic words, "I am a Roman citizen: I appeal unto Cæsar;" and his person at once became sacred.

"Thou appealest unto Cæsar, unto Cæsar shalt thou go." Men made Rome,-not the gods.

In no nation has citizenship been surrounded with greater security and glory than in the republic of Washington. He has been to the commonwealth of the Potomac more than Romulus was to the republic of the Tiber. That commonwealth must be preserved, as was its great prototype. Rome