The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adventures In Friendship, by David Grayson

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Title: Adventures In Friendship

Author: David Grayson

Release Date: January 4, 2004 [EBook #10592]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ADVENTURES IN FRIENDSHIP

By David Grayson

I

AN ADVENTURE IN FRATERNITY

This, I am firmly convinced, is a strange world, as strange a one as I
was ever in. Looking about me I perceive that the simplest things are
the most difficult, the plainest things, the darkest, the commonest
things, the rarest.

I have had an amusing adventure--and made a friend.

This morning when I went to town for my marketing I met a man who was a
Mason, an Oddfellow and an Elk, and who wore the evidences of his
various memberships upon his coat. He asked me what lodge I belonged
to, and he slapped me on the back in the heartiest manner, as though he
had known me intimately for a long time. (I may say, in passing, that he
was trying to sell me a new kind of corn-planter.) I could not help
feeling complimented--both complimented and abashed. For I am not a
Mason, or an Oddfellow, or an Elk. When I told him so he seemed much
surprised and disappointed.

"You ought to belong to one of our lodges," he said. "You'd be sure of
having loyal friends wherever you go."

He told me all about his grips and passes and benefits; he told me how
much it would cost me to get in and how much more to stay in and how
much for a uniform (which was not compulsory). He told me about the fine
funeral the Masons would give me; he said that the Elks would care for
my widow and children.

"You're just the sort of a man," he said, "that we'd like to have in our
lodge. I'd enjoy giving you the grip of fellowship."

He was a rotund, good-humoured man with a shining red nose and a husky
voice. He grew so much interested in telling me about his lodges that I
think (I _think_) he forgot momentarily that he was selling
corn-planters, which was certainly to his credit.

As I drove homeward this afternoon I