Masonic Stories.

MASONIC STORIES .

BY AN OLD MASON . No . II . THAT Freemasonry exists in civilized ancl uncivilized countries , remote and semi-barbarous , as well as among the sedater nations of the West , and the more polished peoples of the East , is a proposition which I need

not seek to establish in Bro . Kenning ' s magazine . I should lose my time and labour in an effort of supererogation , and my readers would probably laugh at me for my pains . Freemasonry in some form or- other , pure or perverted , is to be found , when carefully sought for , to-day in Africa and amid the Arabs of the desert , in Egypt , and in China , in Japan , and even amid the Esquimaux . How it got therewhence its originwhether indigenous or

, , grafted in , is a mystery which , like the flies in amber , we must leave to some acute " Scholiast" to explain and to unfold . These things are beyond our ordinary comprehension . For my part , I only take the fact as I find it , without professing to be able to explain what is in itself a very pretty little enigma , puzzling the sagacious and startling the sceptic . I have a pet theory of' my own it is true On the subject , which some clay , perhaps , if the fates are

propitious , I may endeavour to transfer to the pages of the Masonic Magazine . But , like a good many other theories , it may be , after all , only an explanation in which nothing is explained ; and alas , besides , every now and then there comes over me old Horace ' s words , " jam satis est , " inasmuch as it may be a great-matter of doubt whether our golden age of Masonic literature has set in , whether , in fact , our good brethren will either patronize , or buy , or read , or think over what is written . Still , as I am bidden send in a " few pages , old fellow , " I hastily jot down the main incidents of a little Masonic story I once heard in pleasant days of old .

Some years ago a yacht was slowly drifting on the still surface of the waters by the low creatonic shore in the Red Sea . The cheery party went to bed at night confident and exulting . A bright moon shed its soft splendour over the large expanse of water , and lightened up with its " transparent rays , " as somebody says , the low-lying level of a thinl y inhabited country . At six in the morning a bumping and a scraping announced that something unusual

had occurred , and when the owner went hastily on deck , he found that , owing to carelessness or miscalculation , his fine yacht " Zoe " was hard and fast on a projecting reef . What was to be done ? He had ladies on board—as they call them in Egypt " sitteen "—and he was naturall y , though bred a sailor himself , anxious and alarmed for the "weaker sex , " and he felt still , more uncomfortable , for just over the low line of rocks , behind some flattened sand

hills , appeared a body of natives armed , and the sailing master , who called his attention to the subject , added that they were both "treacherous , fanatic , and very hostile to Europeans . " As it became clear during the early morning that it would be necessary to lighten the yacht to get her off , and as that proceeding would entail disembarking and camping out , the owner became both neTVO-us and irritable , dubious and desponding all at the same time .

And when he was pacing up and down his deck and chewing what a French translator of Shakespeare once termed the " seekly code of tought , " a bright idea came over him , which he no sooner full y realized than he sought to test as to its truth on the spot . The owner was a Freemason . Yes , kind reader , he belonged to that mystic order , whose head quarters are in England , our Freemasons' Hall , Great Queen Street , whose Grand Master is His Royal Highness the Prince