is a compass whose never-failing needle directs us safely across the
desert sands of life, and through the dark labyrinths of an evil world,
and its precious promises gives us comfort while we bear the burdens
and endure the sorrows, pain and anguish incident to human life.

Since our organization is founded on the Bible, we should, as
Odd-Fellows, become more conversant with it. Many evils creep into our
lodges that could be avoided if we used the Bible more in our talks for
the good of the order. Intemperance is an evil that does us much harm.
What does the Bible say in regard to it? Proverbs, xx, 1, says: "Wine
is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby
is not wise." Proverbs, xxi, 17: "He that loveth pleasure shall be a
poor man; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich." Ah me! what
dead courage, what piles of bleached bones that was once the
concentration of all that was great and lofty and true. What
aspirations, ambitions, enterprise and resolutions--what genius,
integrity and all that belongs to true manhood--have been swept from
the tablets of time into oblivion by King Alcohol and his horrid half
brothers, the gambling hell and the brothel.

A few years ago a noted wild-beast tamer gave a performance with his
pets in one of the leading theatres. He put his lions, tigers,
leopards and hyenas through their part of the entertainment, awing the
audience by his awful nerve and his control over them. As a closing
act to the performance, he was to introduce an enormous
boa-constrictor, thirty feet long. He had bought it when it was only
two days old, and for twenty years he handled it daily, so that it was
considered perfectly harmless and completely under his control. He had
seen it grow from a tiny reptile, which he often carried in his bosom,
into a fearful monster. The curtain rose upon an Indian woodland