by P W George
It is a mystery: We go to Lodge, year in and year out, knowing exactly what we are to see and hear; we meet upon the Level and part upon the Square; and yet, somehow, a tie is spun and woven between man and man, light as air but stronger than steel, which even the wild hell of war cannot break-who can explain it! It is enough to know that Masonry does teach us the one truth most worth knowing: “From man to man nothing matters but charity.”
What can be done with Masonry, and what Masonry can do with men; what a real Lodge means in the life of a community-softening its hardness, sweetening its bitterness, untangling its snarls, healing bruised hearts and broken friendships, serving the needy and consoling the sorrowful, and in myriad ways mitigating the moral and social climate-is shown us in the stories which make up the present volume. Written with real art and an exquisite human touch, they make us feel the Spirit of the Lodge; its men become our neighbors and friends; its Altar is a shrine of fellowship; and the business of the Lodge is not simply a Ritual but a practical mysticism in which men find God, themselves, and one another.
The Lodge in Friendship Village and Other Stories by P.W. George (a pseudonym for Robert E. Martin) is a collection of Masonic-themed fiction originally published in 1927 and later reprinted by the Masonic Book Club in 1987. The stories focus on fellowship and brotherhood within a fictionalized lodge setting.
Westphalia Press 