Here is a portrait of my father in his masonic insignia.

He believed that freemasons generally get on in the world, and as the main object of his life was to get on, he joined them, and wanted me to do the same.

But I object to pretended secret societies and hocus pocus, and would not.

You see what he was--a portly, pushing, egotistical tradesman.

Mark the successful man, the merchant prince with argosies on every sea, the employer of thousands of hands, the munificent contributor to public charities, the churchwarden, the member of parliament, and the generous patron of his relatives his self-approbation struggling with the instinctive sense of baseness in the money-hunter, the ignorant and greedy filcher of the labor of others, the seller of his own mind and manhood for luxuries and delicacies that he was too lowlived to enjoy, and for the society of people who made him feel his inferiority at every turn." "And the man to whom you owe everything you possess," said Erskine boldly.
"I possess very little.