Now, everything that Russell did, he did his best to hasten,

    And one day he decided that he'd like to be a Mason;

    But nothing else would suit him, and nothing less would please,

    But he must take, and all at once, the thirty-three degrees.

    So he rode the—ah, that is, he crossed the—I can't tell;

    You either must not know at all, or else know very well.

    He dived in—well, well, never mind! It only need be said

    That somewhere in the last degree poor Russell dropped down dead.

    They arrested all the Masons, and they stayed in durance vile

    Till the jury found them guilty, when the Judge said, with a smile,

    "I'm forced to let the prisoners go, for I can find," said he,

    "No penalty for murder in the thirty-third degree!"

    When you turn down your glass, it's a sign

    That you're not going to take any wign.

    So turn down your plate

    When they serve things you hate,

    And you'll often be asked out to dign.

   In the warm sun of the southern morning the great plantation lay as though half-asleep, dozing and blinking at the advancing day. The plantation house, known in all the country side as the Big House, rested calm and self-confident in the middle of a wide sweep of cleared lands, surrounded immediately by dark evergreens and the occasional primeval oaks spared in the original felling of the forest. Wide and rambling galleries of one height or another crawled partially about the expanses of the building, and again 

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