ANCIENT ORDER OF FORESTERS.

Evening Post, Issue 91, 25 May 1865, Page 3

ANCIENT ORDER OF FORESTERS.

The Ancient Order of Foresters, we are informed, has been incorporated from time immemorial. Tradition is eloquent of their prowess in "merry green wood," with bow and quarter staff. Did not the "Black Knight," in Ivanhoe, no other than the first King Richard, he of the lion heart, sup with Little John and jovial Friar Tuck, ia the recesses of Sherwood Forest ? Sherwood Forest is shorn of most of its ancient oaks, and the whistle of steam pipe disturbs the denizens of its remaining foliage. But tradition bequeaths more thnn romance. It often clothes very modem facts. It perpetuates the poetry of existence, although it may be dissipated by a too curious inquiry. There is hardly a sight in London more attractive than the Foresters' visit to the Crystal Palace. To see thousands of English workmen in the picturesque dress of the ancient Foresters, with pants and tunics of Lincoln Green, with hat and feather, baldric and bugle horn, brings very forcibly to the mind the employment of their forefathers, when *' Tiibal Cam was a man of might," and the smooth green sward was crowded with " yeomen bold and ladies bright." Ours is of course a practical age — and this annual fete is not without its purpose. The Foresters of our time are a brotherhood enlisted in the cause of benevolence. Mutual help is their maxim. When the pillar of light which shines upon hopeful work is suddenly put out, then Forestry kindles the branches gathered from week to week upon the widow's hearth and warms the houseless orphan. In a word, modern Forestry has resolved itself into one of the most powerful, whether estimated by number, wealth, or intelligence, of the social corporations or levers — as it has become the fashion to call such institutions — by which the working classes have raised themselves to position of equality with any other class in the community. We believe that, like a kindred society, the Odd Fellows, they can only be reckoned by hundreds of thousands. — N. Z. Herald.