DISCOURAGEMENT, BUT NOT DESPAIR. 139 



he met with somewhat better success. Six Granges were 

 organized before the close of the year, making ten in all. 

 One of these, the North Star Grange, of St. Paul, deserves 

 more than a passing notice. Its members took hold of the 

 work with alacrity ; they persisted, nowithstanding the dif 

 ficulties under which the new organization labored ; and, to its 

 credit be it said, the Grange has never missed a meeting 

 since. 



Among those who most vigorously denounced the scheme, 

 were the class who, while conducting their own affairs with 

 secrecy, saw in the future of this organization a power that 

 might combat and render nugatory their own schemes of 

 aggrandizement. The journals devoted to this class were 

 not slow in ringing the changes on the terrible abuse of 

 power that would ensue, if the organization should prove 

 successful and become powerful. 



The journals of our large cities, acting in the interests of 

 great organizations, were especially virulent. Even a por 

 tion of the religious press attempted to cast obloquy on the 

 Order, having suddenly bethought itself that all secret 

 orders were inimical to the interests of humanity ; unaware, 

 perhaps, that through secret societies and means some of 

 the most self-sacrificing and disinterested actions that have 

 ever cast a halo over the divine-human in man have been 

 performed ; and taking no note of the fact that the admis 

 sion of wives and mothers into full communion with the 

 Order was the element that must conserve the purity of the 

 organization. Happily for the Order, and happily for its 

 members, that this idea early suggested itself to the found 

 ers. Happy for humanity all over the earth, if this sacred 

 element could pervade, not only each and every secret 

 society, but all political organizations as well, 



