By G. N. Shears, P.G..

From the Norman Transcript, Saturday, December 13, 1890.

The principles which lie at the basis of the organization of Odd Fellowship I am prepared to avow and maintain, not only here, but before a listening world. You ask “What are these principles?” Here they are, indissolubility linked together, Friendship, Love and Truth, that every glorious motto of unity. To the families of Odd Fellows I would say: Induce your friends to become Odd Fellows in deed and variety and be a guide to direct them toward their duties as members, as officers of our friendly order, and may our Heavenly Father who is the father of the fatherless bless our institution that we may thus promote the welfare of our order, the elevation of our race and the glory of our God.

The earliest records of human history furnish proof of the existence of secret organizations among nearly all the nations of the earth but we will not attempt to trace section associations from the early ages since that would require too much time, we will, therefore, take Odd Fellowship from the period of its commencement in Great Brittan, but we will take one step back as we have been told that error, vice and diplomatic despotism also had their secret organizations. True, they have also had their public meetings and national congresses. Shall we also reject the former because bold bad men have used openness and publicity for evil purposes?

Among the so-called secret societies of modern times, we know of none that have excelled the beneficent influence of Odd Fellowship within its own province of relieving the sick and distressed and especially, in preventing suffering and poverty in the families of its members, nor is there one whose measures of relief and benevolence have been more generally occupied than those of this friendly order, and seldom if ever, astonishing as it is in this age of improvement, with any important additional enhancing the efficiency, an institution manifesting so much influence, performing so much good, preventing so much evil and increasing so rapidly and widely its members and its power, may will attract public attention and excite a laudable desire to know it’s origin, progress, principles, resources and measures, its aims and objects.

The origin of Odd Fellowship as an institution is involved in obscurity. When this small stream first issued into the light of history, and when society first opened out in London, bearing the motto of our order and presumed to be a lodge of Ancient and Honorable Loyal Odd Fellows, beyond these, dates are more conjectures as we only know that when Odd Fellowship comes into the domain of certainty the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man are its foundations of precept and of practice, nor can we trace the precise steps by which our peculiar measures of mutual relief in sickness and distress, with provisions for the burial of the dead and care for the widow and orphans, grew up among our predecessors, but knowing it was an institution originated by common circumstances of want and providence, cemented by social feelings frequently indulged until they warmed into a fraternal glow,we can readily imagine how great principles would be suggested and measures for carrying them out by successfully improved. They were toiling laborers in a land and under a government where hard-handed industry is less esteemed than here, whose distinctions of rank and wealth are greater than we have ever known. Their daily labor barely sufficed to procure them their bread and when sickness came gaunt and terrible want was nor far off and when the wealthy refused them the privilege of toiling for bread, and they lacked means for seeking employment elsewhere for the support of their families, when on a bed of disease and death none could spare time to smooth their pillow or moisten the fever parched lips or speak calmness to the delirious mind, when the looked forward to the close of this fitful life, beyond was only a pauper’s coffin to be pressed into a pauper’s grave, to be hurried out of sign without a breathed prayer or a whispered text of hope and consolation for the living, and for the surviving partner and bereaved children, no future was presented but trundling them from parish to parish until they were thrust into the vice and infamy of the alms-house or perhaps thrusting them into the streets to grow up beggars or criminals if they did not earlier perish in the gutter.