Excerpt from The Half Century of California Odd Fellowship: Illustrated To-day we are living in a commercial, a money-making age, the pessimist tells us, and in the footsteps of the Perfect Man we are making no progress. Never was there a more unreliable statement made, for the dawn of this century saw in existence more charitable and benevolent organizations than in any previous period of time. Organizations in which men and women have bound themselves together under various social names, each institution striving to accomplish the most in helpful assistance. In this grand work for humanity. Odd Fellowship leads, and beneath its white three-linked banner a million and a half Odd Fellows and a half million Rebekahs march. Faith, Hope and Charity their watch-word - Friendship, Truth and Love, their battle cry. This army, like the Crusaders of old, gathers increasing numbers, power and enthusiasm as it moves through the century, and before I pen its record on this western shore, let us learn something of its God-ordained American origin. Five years after the close of the war between England and the United States, an Englishman by the name of Thomas Wildey had the courage to emigrate to the enemies country. The Americans then had no love for the Britons, and yet Thomas Wildey, with his wife, landed at Baltimore looking for work. In his veins there flowed no royal blood; no kingly heritage had he. He was of the lowly class - a common mechanic - a coach-spring maker; and yet, within his heart there was the ring of true manhood, and his name was destined to rest among the immortals. On his arrival in the Monumental City he found a pestilence raging. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.