AFFABILITY. The ancient lodges were so many schools or academies for teaching and improving the arts of designing, especially architecture ; and the present lodges are often employed that way in lodge hours, or else in agreeable Tbnversation, though without politics or party feeling ; and none of them are ill employed ; have -no transaction unworthy of an honest man or a gentleman ; no personal piques, no quarrels, no cursing and swearing, no cruel mockings, no obscene talk, or ill manners, for the noble and eminent brethren are affable to the meanest ; and these are duly respectful to their betters in harmony and proportion ; and though on the level, yet alwkys within compass, and according to the square and plumb.—Euclid.
AGE. It is men of mature age and sound judgment alone who can preserve the Order in its native purity ; and those lodges whose officers are careful to act in strict accordance to the laws and to the spirit of Freemasonry will always have a supply of men of mature age as can didates. In the lectures the question of age occurs, but
that refers merely to the degree wrought upon. In the ancient mysteries the mystical age of 1, 3, 5, and 7, refer to so many years of probation.—Gadicke. The symbolic ge of an Entered Apprentice is 3 years, of a Fellow ;raft 5, and a Master Mason 7 ; a Petit Architect 21, and a Grand Architect 27 ; that of a Knight of the East is 70; a Prince of Jerusalem 5 x 15= 75 ; a Secret Master, a Maitre Ecossais, and a Prince of Mercy, 81; and a Scotch Knight 500 years. It was by this figurative way of reasoning that the celebrated impostor the Count St Germain, boasted that he was 500 years old.