ADDRESS OF GRAND MASTER



are still only imperfect craftsmen working under His inspection as our
Supreme Grand Master; and should therefore labor assiduously upon those
infallible designs, drawn upon His trestle-board, as revealed by our Great
Light, and trust implicitly to the guidance of His unerring wisdom in all
time to cotne. We will thus become in the highest sense first prepared in
our hearts, as Masons are taught to be, for the solemn engagements and
responsible duties which lie before us.
  Believing you to be thus prepared, brethren, permit me in the honored
name of Masonry to greet you with a hearty fraternal welcome on your
annual return to this Graud Hall. As the scattered members of one com-
mon household feel a rapturous delight in revisiting together the old paren-
tal home1 thus living over again the springtime of life in awakened reminis-
cences, so, as Craftsmen who for a season h ave been widely dispersed, it is
natural that we should feel jubilant and joyous in thus reassembling in our
old Masonic homestead, to revive the interesting associations of other days,
and to perpetuate those friendships which have been developed and purified
under the benign influences of our Royal Art. On such occasions a livelier
sense of fraternal obligation and attachment seems to pervade our mystic
band-a host of associated memories and treasured sympathies throng and
thrill the Masonic heart, and conspire to signalize and to hallow the time
and place of our reunion. In the vicissitudes of every-day life it is often
the case on returning to the old familv mansion front which we have wani-
dered,
                      "Pursuing fortunes slippery ba,"
that the heart is saddened by the melancholy changes which time has
wrought, the scenes of dilapidation and decay which meet the eye on every
hand. In the descriptive language of Irving, whilecontemrplating the deserted
home of Roscoe, it is often "like visiting Eome classic fountain which once
welled its pure waters in a sacred shade, but finding it dry and dusty, with
the lizard and the toad brooding over the shattered marble."
  On our return, however, to the old Masonic Temple to-day, our hearts
may well be filled with joy and rejoicing, for there are no such sad sur-
roundings to check our happy greetings; no such scenes of desolation to
deplore or to mar our fraternal congratulations. Changes, it is true, have
occurred in this old Masonic home, but they are such as we contemplate
with exulting pride.  They are changes that have been wrought by the
cunning hands of enterprise and art and not by the corroding tooth of time
or the defacing finger of decay.
  During our absence the skill of operative Masonry has been invoked, as
you perceive, to improve and embellish this sacred retreat, and the architect
and artist seem to have vied with each other in rendering it more beautiful
and attractive than ever before.



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