The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-06
Ally TELEGRAPH HlLADELPHA TUESDAY JUNE g. 1871

until he read the story of the Templars and
their tour in his newspaper.
And yet there was certainly something
strange, unusual, and worth noting in this
demonstration. Precisely what 3 knight
Templar" extant in this nineteenth century
and in the State of Pennsylvania may be we
profess not to know. 1t is difficult to con-
ceive what there can possibly be in common
between the white-mantled warrior-monks
who held Acre TO the death against the Mos
lem, and whom profigate king when the
cross no longer needed their arms in battle,
surrendered over to awful tortures and to
ISLANDERS not less awful, and company of
respectable pacific citizens of Pennsylvania
marching harmlessly about the friendly
highways of New York in straight-collared
black coats, with plumes ia their hats and
embroidered girdles and capes and aprons
upon their portly persons. Yet here thew
are, these respectable citizens of Pennsylya-
MIA, not only arrsying themselves like Solo
mon in all his glory, but starting off in
solid battalion across the Atlantic, with intent
to visit the remotest sites of the Templars of
old in Europe and the East. When we stop
to think about it, is it not truly an extraordi-
nary phenomenon?
From one point of view the phenom enon
would seem to be ineligible enough. With
out dwelling on the charitable uses to which
that they are mainly devoted, it is clear, we
think, that their existence may be adequately
accounted for by the thirst of Americans for
something richer and more picturesque than
the monotonous round of business and of
grinding personal cares. We crate on high
days and holidays about the servile love of
efete Europeans for hierarchical grandeurs
and parade. But if Europeans love these
things it is less because they are Europeans
than because they are men. Our own people
prove this when they array themselves pic
turesquely, meet in 'loages" and
''encampments, and go about
with ''besuseants, and with baldrics.
Nature driven out with pitchfork
comes back triumphantly. When we find
well-to-do citizens in smoky Pennsylvania
towns persuading themselves that they are
the modern representatives of Brian de Bois
Gullbert, and putting on for promenade
through the highways garments of silver aud
silk and gold, we may be pretty sure that life
in Pennsylvania town leaves, as the French
say, something to be desired" Ah, how
should it not Not even in New York is
life of mere getting and spending such an
existence as the better kind of those who lead
1t find really tolerable. They are always try
ing to knock out q window here or a door
there in the dull casemate of their experience.
in the hope of catching a breath of
fresh air or gleam of sunshine. These
forty six Pennsylvanians, with their red-cross
banner and their astonishing pantaloons and
plumes, wandering off over the ocean to
spend the Fourth of July with the premier
earl of England in one of Englands noblest
and most exquisite baroNIal castles, and
purposing pilgrimages to consecrated shrines
in the Mediterranean and the Levant, were
really notable apparition among us, were it
but as an eloquent, albeit unconscious, pro-
test against the adequacy of prose and of
routine to the needs of human nature Man
shall not live by bread alone and playing at
Knights Templar is better than not playing
at ALL