“Carry this message to Hiram Abif-- Excellent Master of forge and mine:-- I and the Brethren would like it if He and the Brethren will come to dine (Garments from Bozrah or morning-dress) As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less. “God gave the Hyssop and Cedar their place-- Also the Bramble, the Fig and the Thorn-- But that is no reason to black a man’s face Because he is not what he hasn’t been born. And, as touching the Temple, I hold and profess We are Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.” So it was ordered and so it was done, And the hewers of wood and the Masons of Mark, With foc’sle hands of the Sidon run And Navy Lords from the _Royal Ark_, Came and sat down and were merry at mess As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less. _The Quarries are hotter than Hiram’s forge, No one is safe from the dog-whips’ reach. It’s mostly snowing up Lebanon gorge, And it’s always blowing off Joppa beach; But once in so often, the messenger brings Solomon’s mandate: “Forget these things! Brother to Beggars and Fellow to Kings, Companion of Princes--forget these things! Fellow-Craftsman, forget these things!”_ “IN THE INTERESTS OF THE BRETHREN” I was buying a canary in a birdshop when he first spoke to me and suggested that I should take a less highly coloured bird. “The colour is in the feeding,” said he. “Unless you know how to feed ’em, it goes. Canaries are one of our hobbies.” He passed out before I could thank him. He was a middle-aged man with grey hair and a short, dark beard, rather like a Sealyham terrier in silver spectacles. For some reason his face and his voice stayed in my mind so distinctly that, months later, when I jostled against him on a platform crowded with an Angling Club going to the Thames, I recognised, turned, and nodded. “I took your advice about the canary,” I said. “Did you? Good!” he replied heartily over the rod-case on his shoulder, and was parted from me by the crowd. * * * * * A few years ago I turned into a tobacconist’s to have a badly stopped pipe cleaned out. “Well! Well! And how did the canary do?” said the man behind the counter. We shook hands, and “What’s your name?” we both asked together. His name was Lewis Holroyd Burges, of “Burges and Son,” as I might have seen above the door--but Son had been killed in Egypt. His hair was whiter than it had been, and the eyes were sunk a little.