The members bound themselves by oath to maintain profound and absolute secrecy with reference to the order and everything pertaining to it. This obligation prohibited those who assumed it from disclosing that they were Ku Klux, or the name of any other member, and from soliciting any one to become a member. Each member was required to provide himself with the following outfit: A white mask, a tall cardboard hat so constructed as to increase the wearer’s apparent height, a gown or robe of sufficient length to cover the entire person. The matter of color and material was left to the individual’s taste and fancy, and each selected what in his judgment would be the most hideous and fantastic. Each member carried also a small whistle with which, by means of a code of signals agreed upon, they held communications with one another. The “den” was at first in the law office of a member of the Pulaski bar, where the suggestion for the formation of the Klan had been made. But the room was small, and it was too near the business portion of the town to be a suitable place for meeting. On the brow of a ridge that runs along the western outskirts of the town there stood at that time the ruins of an old residence that had been partially demolished by a cyclone. Underneath the portion that remained standing was a large cellar. No other houses stood near, and around these ruins were the storm-torn, limbless trunks of trees which had once formed a magnificent grove. This dreary, desolate and uncanny place was in every way most suitable for a “den,” and the Klan appropriated it. When a meeting was held one Lictor was stationed near the house and the other fifty yards from it on the road leading into the town. These were dressed in the fantastic regalia of the order and bore tremendous spears as the badge of their office. At the close of the war, when the young men of the South who had escaped death on the battle-field returned to their homes, they passed through a period of enforced inactivity. They could not engage at once in business or professional pursuits. In the case of many, business habits were broken up. Few had capital to enter mercantile or agricultural enterprises. There was also a total lack of the amusements and social diversions which prevail wherever society is in a normal condition. The reaction, therefore, which followed the excitement of army scenes and service was intense.