On Sitting With the Sick
By Carl H Claudy

"You know I never did see much point in this joke about 'sitting up with the sick lodge members,' " said the Very New Brother to the Old Tiler, "but since I joined the lodge I begin to see light. I used to think people were making fun of what always seemed to me a very pretty idea; that a lodge member should go and sit up with a sick brother seemed a very real brotherhood. Now I find we don't do any such things, and of course I see the joke."

"Do you, now! How keen is your sense of humor?" answered the Old Tiler. "Who told you we didn't sit with our sick friends?"

"Why, no one. But if we did, I'd have heard of it, wouldn't I ?"

"Depends on how long your ears are. The other day I went to buy a hat. The salesman showed me one and said it was fifteen dollars. I asked him where the holes were. He didn't know what holes I meant. So I explained I meant the holes for the ears of the jackass who would pay fifteen dollars for that hat. Now if you have ears long enough, maybe you could hear about our sitting up with our sick friends. But I presume, though you have ears long enough, you are hard of hearing.

"Listen, boy, till I tell you something. In small towns, in times of a few decades ago, nurses were few and far between. Men had to do their part and when a brother was sick, we often sat up with him, to cheer him, hand him water or medicine, doing what we could to alleviate his ills. In these modern days, with a doctor and a nurse on every street corner, there is less need for us to try to help our brethren in that way. But don't you get your head filled with the idea that we never do. Only last month the Master called for volunteers to sit up all night in a house where an old lady was dying. The brother, from that house, was out of town. The old lady had her daughter and her nurse, but her daughter was afraid to be in the house alone with death approaching. We had sixteen volunteers, and two every night for a week, did their part. All they did was sit there and read but who knows what comfort they were to that distracted daughter ? The old lady finally died, not during the night, but in the day time. It looks, at first sight, as if what we did was wasted. But it wasn't. The old lady might have died in the night; our brethren were there to help the daughter if she did. The daughter knew her husband's brethren were within call; she slept, if she slept at all, secure in the protection Masonry threw about her.

"You say *we don't sit up.' Don't confuse 'sitting up' with actually resting erect in a chair. Let me tell you, young man, that no brother of this or any other good lodge, can be reported sick and not receive a call from Master, Warden, chairman of sick committee, or some brother whose official as well as fraternal business it is to see that the sick are looked after. It makes no difference whether the sick one is wealthy or poor, high or low ... we call to see what we can do. Most members of the lodge are fairly prosperous citizens, able to look after themselves. But just because a man can pay for a doctor and a nurse and medical treatment, doesn't mean he isn't human enough to value the interest the lodge takes in him. The thought that the mighty brotherhood to which he belongs is anxious about him, in itself is a medicine. It acts as a tonic. We may never see the sick man; he may be too ill to admit us to his bedside, but they tell him about it, and it heartens him.

"The wealthiest member of this lodge was visited last year when he was sick. It happened that I was one of the visitors and that a chap whose business it was to run a street car was the other. The sick man is a banker, and president or director in half the companies in town. You'd think maybe he wouldn't have time for us? I tell you I never saw a man more pleased than Mr. Rich Man. He had us shown up to his room and he insisted we stay with him, and he talked lodge and asked questions and wanted information about the fellows just as if he was a poor man like the rest of us. He happens to be a real Mason as well as a wealthy man. After we left, he wrote a letter to the Master and said our visit had done him more good than his doctor, and wouldn't he please send us or some other brethren back?

"It isn't always what we do or say with the sick that helps. For instance, I called on a sick brother who was so ill he couldn't see me. But I saw his wife and his home and it was easy to see the brother needed help. But he was too proud to ask for it or his wife didn't know enough to ask the lodge for it. So I went back and reported and we had our own doctor and nurse on the job right away and fixed them up, and paid some bills and generally bossed the ranch until the Brother got well. I am happy to say he has paid back every cent we spent on him, little by little, but he says he can never repay the brotherly kindness.

"Now, 'sitting up with a sick lodge member' may be a good alibi for the poker player; I don't know. I have read it in joke papers and heard it pulled on the stage. But I could never see much that was funny about it, because I know how well Masonry does care for her sick, and how much it means to an ill man to have his brother take an interest in him. If you know any sick, tell us. If you hear of any, tell us. And if — say, did you ever visit a sick brother?"

"I never had the chance," defended the Very New Brother.

"You mean you never made the chance for yourself!" countered the Old Tiler. "Now will you go to the sick committee and ask for duty or will I report your name for that duty to the Master? Or do you want to go on thinking it's a joke ?"

"I got an earful, didn't I?" responded the New Member. "You tell me to whom to go and you bet I'll go."

"Humph," said the Old Tiler.

A Well Kept Secret
Picked Up in Passing - Presented by T Hargreaves

Hjalmar Schacht, a genius in financial affairs during the Hitler war years, was generally disliked by the Nazis because he was a Freemason. After the war years he was acquitted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials. Schacht was a member of "Zur Freundchaft" Lodge and as early as World War I had published articles on the obligation of a Mason in his heart and spirit, to the people with whom he lived.

General Werner Von Blomberg was minister of war in the Hitler Cabinet from 1933 to 1938 and Schacht wished to honor him on one of his birthdays. In 1933 Freemasonry was dissolved in Germany, and Lodges taken over and their contents confiscated. Among these articles was a very fine painting of Gebhard Lebrecht von Bluecher, General Field Marshal in the Prussian Army. Bluecher was a very ardent Mason and after the battle of Katzbach in 1813 he declared, "Masonry is holy to me and it will be so until I am called to the Eternal East and any Brother is near and dear to my heart."

The oil painting of Bluecher was made during the years 1802-1806 at the time that he was the Master of his Lodge "Zu den 3 Balken" in Muenster, Germany. The painting depicts the Marshal in uniform with all of his military orders and decorations, and you can also see around his neck a large blue ribbon with a square on the end. He is standing before an Alter on which is a book with a sword lying thereon. He holds a gavel in his right hand. One can distinctly see the Masonic insignia.

Schacht found that this painting was available for a very low price and bought it. It would have been extremely dangerous to give Von Blomberg this painting since he was a strong Nazi, so Schacht found an artist who painted over parts of the picture so that it would be impossible to see the Masonic paraphernalia. But the artist was unaware that the jewel around his neck also indicated Freemasonry and left that part untouched.

On one of his birthdays Von Blomberg received the painting from Bro. Schacht and felt very honored that Schacht had compared him to the famous Marshal Bluecher and placed it in one of the largest rooms of his villa for all to see. It has to be said to the honor of all Masons that they recognized the picture belonging to a Lodge in Muenster but not one gave the secret away. To the end of the Hitler regime it remained a well kept secret, and at the same time became a source of hearty laughter in the circle of our Brothers.