A Centennial Curiosity.

and Doctors of Divinity in America are active Masons . The Anti-Masons condescendingly admit that they are good ( for that cannot be denied ) , but then they have boon decoyed , and are now actually worse than drunkards , smokers or perjurers !

That is an indictment , indeed—and one that by its self-evident absurdity convicts its authors , the Anti-Masons , as stupendous falsifiers , out of their own mouths . But Freemasonry also threatens the

State ! This was once tho cry of the Anti-Masonic party in this State and nation , but after playing antics before high Heaven that it will never play again , it gave up the ghost , and the Anti-Masons of to day are the shadows of that ghost . AVe quote

again : " Freemasonry is Satan ' s masterpiece—a terrible snare to men . It sits this moment as a nightmare on all the moral energies of our Government and utterly paralyzes tho arm of justice . It was the mysterious snare of President Johnson and

shield for the vilest murderers of tho South . " AA hat a piece of Quixotic imagination is this !—How the nightmare must have brooded over its author ! AVe could

not desire a more defenceless windmill to tilt against ! Johnson , the Freemason President of the United States , ensnared by our Craft ! The arm of national justice paralyzed ! Southern murderers protected under the ajgis of Masonry ! The bare statement of these absurd charges is their

sufficient refutation . But there is one discovery made by the author of these tracts that overtops all ire have previously noticed , viz ., that Freemasonry is "the parent of the Ku Klux Klan . " Tho system of ratiocination by ivhich this statement is

arrived at is this : Freemasonry was the earliest of all secret societies , and therefore responsible for all that have followed it ! If there had been no Freemasons , there Avould have been no midnight masked murderers ! This reasoning may be clear

to some orders of minds—such as are found inside of asylums , and to those feebleminded Anti-Masons who , for a time , are outside , but to all men of even only ordinary intellect , the conclusion will be considered to be a prodigious non sequitur . ' ¦ "We have noticed but a few of the absurdities of these Anti-Masonic tracts , foi t ° do more would be to physic the reticle *

A Centennial Curiosity.

ad nauseam . They certainly arc a Centennial curiosity . They remind us of thc play that was intended by its author to be a tragedy , but was taken by thc audience for a comedy . AVo cannot but laugh at their statementsfroni beginning to end , for they are all the purest fiction , not one of them being even tne most remotely based upon fact .

A Londoner's Visit To A North York Dale.

A LONDONER'S VISIT TO A NORTH YORK DALE .

BY OLIVER LOUIS TWEDDELL , Author of " Old Gregory ' s Ghost , " etc . TOMLINSON was a Cockney , a fussy , dancing , smiling , dandy little Cockney . Now ivhen one says a Cockney , people

generally imagine a swell with big eyeglass , small brain , tight boots and kid gloves , who martyrs the Queen ' s English , drawls and chops his words in talking , in a manner that sets Nuttall at defiance , and would almost have made Dr . Johnson

taken fits at the degeneration of the age . Now Tomlinson , be it understood , was not a Cockney of this sort . No , no . No man spoke better English than Mr . Tomlinson , and , though by no means a vain man , if there was one thing more than another that he prided himself upon , it

was on his superior intimacy with Lindlay Murray . But I am not going to descant on the merits and demerits of Mr . Tomlinson , though he had , of course , his share of both . I am merely going to relate a small adventure which occurred to him , and it

came about as follows . Mr . Tomlinson had just come into the possession of a nice sum of money , by the death of a distant relation , whose sole heir he proved to be , and he naturall y wished to turn his newly acquired capital

to good account . It struck him that land would be the safest investment , and seeing by the newspapers that a small estate , with good fishing and shooting , was advertised for sale , p leasantly situated in one of those