ODD FELLOWS’ DINNER.

Marlborough Express, Volume V, Issue 261, 19 November 1870, Page 4

ODD FELLOWS’ DINNER.

To the Editor of the Marlborough Express. Sin,— Humbug is very objectionable, let it come from where it will, or be supported by whom it may ; and, though it should put in an appearance under the wing of that redoubtable body, the Odd Fellows, yet must it be exposed. We were told at the dinner the other evening that the Order of Odd Fellows was “a society banded together for good.” So far well; but, when we are told that it is a tree the branches of which “ spread all over the civilised world, under the shadow of which the sick and needy find safe and pleasant shelter,” and that the Order was established to help the orphan and the widow,” we ask ourselves what this means. Is it true that Odd Fellowship is an institution similar to the Sisters of Mercy ? Do Odd Fellows go about seeking for the needy and the sick, for the widow and the orphan, to relieve them ? Not at all. They act entirely upon the worldly maxim that “God helps those that help themselves.” If we let these Odd (odd, sure enough) Fellows pass with these assumptions, we will have the baker, the butcher, and the grocer telling us in our public gatherings that they established their respective places of business for the benefit of the needy, the sick, the fatherless, and the widow; and so they do, when these needy and fatherless individuals can pay for what they get. And in this matter of paying there is more charity in business transactions

than in Odd Fellowship, for the butcher will not ask you to pay before you have got the meat, and he may give credit; but in Odd Fellowship you must pay beforehand, and be what is called “ good on the books,” otherwise your neediness will go unrelieved so far as Odd Fellowship is concerned. The Order helps those who have already paid for the help they are to have. This talk, then, about the “spreading tree under which the sick and. needy find shelter,” is just so much bosh —humbug—unless you add at the end such observations as “ when you have paid for it,” and then all the poetry is gone out of it. Odd Fellowship is a provident institution, and not a charitable institution, and therefore it is not entitled to use such language as that which is cited above. Let its members, then, drop speaking of their society in terms which are only so much bombast. ' Let them also drop the tricking of themselves out in absurd dressing, and in using high sounding titles, all of which may be harmless, but are at the same time very silly. They remind one of children playing, and are quite unbecoming to sensible men at this period of the historj' of the Anglo-Saxon race.— lam, &c,, Anti-Humbug. November 15, 1870.