The plan in most cases adopted, was to familiarize a sufficient number of
the _elect_, with a grossly immoral and treasonable pamphlet, called the
"Ritual of the Order," to enable them to officer the Temple, and "induct"
any number of "candidates" _supposed_ to be "in waiting in the ante-room,
into the sublime," but in fact dark and dubious "mysteries of the Order."

After one or more squads of these "candidates in" anxious and breathless
"waiting" had been inducted, (meanwhile staring like stuck pigs at every
object and officer which met their eyes,) in addition to the regular
officers of the Temple already installed, it was considered that enough
official and canvassing material had been acquired, and the more prominent
politicians, not officers of the Temple, deemed it prudent to absent
themselves from most of the weekly meetings. Again, it was an illusion of
these leaders, to put forward the most irresponsible persons at their
command, as the mouth-pieces and official representatives of the Order, to
the end that if detected, the theory of _crazy, powerless fools_, could be
wielded upon public sentiment by an undisturbed partisan press, to save
the scheme from thorough investigation and development by the authorities.

In evidence of the fact of these illusions, L.A. Doolittle lectures the
Temple in Chicago on the "purposes and plans of the Order," (but who by
the way, was not so "insane on the subject" as the men who put him forward
have sought to show him to be,) and prominent politicians, not before
known to be members of the fraternity, appear prior to semi-annual
elections as candidates for representatives in the Grand Council.

It was duly announced, also, that an extra session of the Supreme Council
had been convened in the city of New York, charged with the special
business of revising the ritual, changing the signs, passwords, grips, and