552 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
Tommy Atkins tells, “ If you’ve ’eard the East a callin’, you won’t never 
heed naught else.” 
And so on this anniversary we can all join in these aspirations and 
desires, we can appreciate the lilt and swing of the song of the old trail 
by the man who wants 
“ To see the old stars wheel back once more 
And blaze in the velvet blue, 
Where the blindest bluffs hold good, my friends, 
And the wildest tales are true. 
And the men bulk big on the old trail, our 
Own trail, the out trail, and life runs large 
On the long trail, the trail that is always new.” 
To the general toast, Our sister societies , Gardiner G. Hubbard 
responded on behalf of the National Geographic Society. 
On behalf of the Anthropological Society 0. T. Mason re¬ 
sponded. He said: 
I am delighted to have the honor of sitting down with you this evening 
in this beautiful wigwam around your annual feast. 
Your President has asked me to respond to the toast The Anthropological 
Society of Washington. As I have been thinking over the relationship be¬ 
tween our two societies and the position which the Philosophical Society 
holds among the scientific associations of Washington, I am reminded 
that there has existed in all tribes of men the custom of keeping up a 
perpetual fire in or around the chief’s house or in some special place 
apart. We are told also that the extinction of this fire portended the 
direst calamities. Among the American wild tribes, in the pueblo region, 
in the city of Mexico, or in the capital of the Incas; upon the steppes of 
Siberia, among the negro tribes of Africa, wherever the sense of reverence 
was found, there men erected a holy of holies, upon which the divine 
presence was believed to dwell in a perpetual flame. 
The Bantu tribes of South Africa have a custom, when they set up a 
new kraal or village, of taking fire from the old chiefs hearth to kindle 
their own. 
Both among the Greek and early Latin races, at the founding of a new 
colony, fire was solemnly sent from the prytaneum, or Vesta temple of 
the mother colony, to kindle a similar sacred fire in the new settlement. 
In the middle ages, in Catholic countries, on Holy Saturday (before 
Easter) all lamps in each church were extinguished and the Paschal 
candle was lighted with the help of flint and steel. From this sacred 
source the other lights in the church were kindled, and the various 
households in the parish took a flame to relight their own fires and 
lamps * 
The ancient Israelites in their wanderings were accompanied by a pillar 
*Encyc. Brit., xxiv, 193. 
