ODD FELLOWS, INDEPENDENT ORDER OF. The order was introduced into the United States in 1806. Some persons who had been members of English lodges estab lished a lodge at Baltimore in 1819; and this lodge soon received a charter from the Man chester unity. The lodges already established in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston accepted charters from the Maryland grand lodge. The American lodges have long ceased to hold friendly relations with the Manchester unity. The U. S. grand lodge has established grand lodges in all the states and in most of the territories. About 20 odicals, devoted to the order, are published in this country. American odd-fellowship seeks " to visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan." There are now (1881) about 475,000 members of the organization in the United States, and the annual disbursements for relief of families, burials, education, etc., are over $1,500.000. To become a member of a U. S. lodge a person must be a white male, at least 21 years of age, and must believe in a supreme being.
ODE (Gr. a song) originally meant any lyrical piece adapted to be sung. In the modern use of the word, odes are distinguished from songs by not being necessarily in a form to be sung, and by embodying loftier conceptions and more intense and passionate, emotions, The language of the ode is therefore abrupt, concise, and energetic; and the highest art of the poet is called into requisition in adapting the meters and cadences to the varying thoughts and emotions. Hence the changes of meter and versification
that occur in many odes. The rapt state of inspiration that gives birth to the ode, leads the poet to conceive all nature as animated and conscious, and instead of speaking abort persons and objects, to address them as present.
Among, the highest examples of the ode are the Song of Aroses and several of the psalms. Dryden's Alexander's Feast is reckoned one of the first odes in the English Ian gnage. We may mention, as additional specimens, Gray's Bard, Collin's We to the Passions, Burns's Scots icha hale, Coleridge's Ode to the Departing Year and Dejection., Shelley's Ode to the Skylark, and Wordsworth's Ode on the Recollections of Immortality in Childhood. • ' - - ,