Entered Apprentice

“ Seven is the number of the Entered Apprentice as it relates to the seven liberal arts and sciences, and these are the powers with which the Entered Apprentice must labor before he is worthy to go onward into the more elevated and advanced degrees. ”

“ Strengthen our belief that Death hath no power over a faithful and righteous soul! Though the dust returneth to the dust as it was, the spirit returneth unto Thee. As we mourn the departure of a brother beloved from the circle of our Fraternity, may we trust that he hath entered into a higher brotherhood, to engage in nobler duties and in heavenly work, to find rest from earthly labor and refreshment from earthly care. May Thy peace abide within us, to keep us from all evil! Make us grateful for present benefits, and crown us with immortal life and honor. ”

“ Most holy and glorious Lord God, the great Architect of the universe, the giver of all good gifts and graces! In Thy name we have assembled and in Thy name we desire to proceed in all our doings. Grant that the sublime principles of Freemasonry may so subdue every discordant passion within us, so harmonize and enrich our hearts with Thine own love and goodness, that the Lodge at this time may humbly reflect that order and beauty which reign forever before Thy throne! ”

“ An apprentice tries to hit his master a thump; well, if he be the weaker, why, he gets the worst of it; if he be the stronger, he has the best of it; he is turned out-of-doors, perhaps put into the cage,—and that is all. ”

“ Our march round the Lodge reminds us of the travels of human life, in which Masonry is an enlightened, a safe, and a pleasant path. Its tesselated pavement of Mosaic-work intimates to us the chequered diversity and uncertainty of human affairs. Our step is time; our progression, eternity.
Following our ancient Constitutions, with mystic rites we dedicate this Hall to the honor of Freemasonry.
Our best attachments are due to the Craft. In its prosperity, we find our joy; and, in paying it honor, we honor ourselves. But its worth transcends our encomiums, and its glory will outsound our praise. ”

“ Without the shadow of a doubt the truth that there is—and alas, that there is—much truth in the outcry concerning the inferiority of training and capacity of the British artisan, may be very largely imputed to the relaxation and degeneration of the old system of apprenticeship; for, with all its faults, it did at least provide that a skilled master should become personally responsible for the training of the apprentice in his craft. ”

“ A shoemaker once engaged an apprentice. A short time after the apprenticeship began, the shoemaker asked the boy what he would call him in addressing him, "Oh, I would just call you master," answered the apprentice. "No," said the master, "you must call me master above all masters." ”

“ Apprentices were taken in to assure an adequate supply of competent workers for the future. The standard indenture of an apprentice bound him to live in his master's house, to serve him diligently, obey reasonable commands, keep his master's secrets, protect him from injury, abstain from dice, cards and haunting of taverns, not marry, commit no fornication, nor absent himself without permission. ”

“ My apprentices have always been the sons of respectable persons, and have generally been the means of recommending each other, through their connexions with each other’s families. I always received a good premium with each apprentice, one only excepted, who was a cast-off apprentice from the Foundling, but who became a good servant under a kind master and mistress, and staid with us many years after her apprenticeship was expired. ”

“ The assistant is dreaming of the delicious time—only four hours off now—when he will resume the tale of his bruises and abrasions. The apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts of boyhood, and his imagination rides cap-à-pie through the chambers of his brain, seeking some knightly quest in honour of that Fair Lady, the last but one of the girl apprentices to the dress-making upstairs. He inclines rather to street fighting against revolutionaries—because then she could see him from the window. ”

“ The earthly apprentice, freed from his articles of apprenticeship, may serve any master, the heavenly apprentice asks but one. Oh, Jesus, Master, Thou Saviour of our race, have mercy upon us, grant us so to serve Thee in time, that our earthly labours ended, we may hear Thee say, "Well done good and faithful servant," while the pure and beautiful angels shall rehearse to each other, "Rejoice, another apprentice is out of his time." ”

“ Often the apprentices were received into the house of the master as their home, and according to legend and romance it was in order for the industrious and virtuous apprentice to marry the old man's daughter and succeed to the business. ”

“ An apprentice who goes to a trade has to do as his master tells him. Look at it, we are apprentices, and we ought to become obedient to our masters, that we may become workmen who need not be ashamed to present ourselves before our masters, or before those who of right take cognizance of us. ”

“ The second son had bound himself apprentice to a miller. And when his time was up, his master said to him,
"As you have behaved yourself so well, I will give you an ass of a remarkable kind: he will draw no cart, and carry no sack."
"What is the good of him then?" asked the young apprentice.
"He spits out gold," answered the miller. "If you put a cloth before him and say, 'Bricklebrit,' out come gold pieces."
"That is a capital thing," said the apprentice, and, thanking his master, he went out into the world. ”

“ The crumbling edifice of apprenticeship is made to repose upon a basis of literary studies which positively unfit the young apprentice to enjoy the few benefits which that obsolete institution can still offer. ”

“ With the development of gilds, regulations specifying the conditions of such apprenticeship began to be issued, e.g. the master craftsman might teach his art to as many members of his family as he pleased, but he could only have one other apprentice. ”

“ An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France, [72] the master was responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for his moral training. ”

“ Thus the relationship of the apprentice to the master is a twofold one, the apprentice being a pupil, but also a workman. It is the duty of the master to instruct the apprentice. For this purpose the apprentice is wholly entrusted to the master’s care, and must carry out the duties ordered by the master. ”

“ When he stepped into the room, a month later, the apprentice said to him: "All the wheels and other pieces are now ready; when they have been put together the clock is finished." He showed him all these things, and his master could not help thinking, "What will come of it all?" ”

“ Such a course would not only render the apprentice an ornament to society but would fill his bosom with gratitude to his master, and naturally inspire him with a desire to repay the kindness of his benefactor. No master should take an apprentice unless prepared to discharge these duties. ”

“ The experience while it lasts may have educational value for the pupil. But in spite of what it may or may not hold, for the general run of pupils it leads up a blind alley because the apprenticeship does not fulfill the promise which apprenticeship supposedly holds out. That is, the pupil, when he becomes a worker, will be thrown back into some factory groove where his experience as an apprentice cannot be used, where he is closed off from the chance to develop and use the knowledge or training he received. ”

“ This evergreen, which once marked the temporary resting-place of the illustrious dead, is an emblem of our faith in the immortality of the soul. By it we are reminded that we have an immortal part within us, that shall survive the grave, and which shall never, never, never die. By it we are admonished that, though, like our brother whose remains lie before us, we shall soon be clothed in the habiliments of death, and deposited in the silent tomb, yet, through our belief in the mercy of God, we may confidently hope that our souls will bloom in eternal spring. ”

“ A single pale apprentice, with an apron on and a brush in his hand, walked from one end of the shop to the other, or examined with slow inactivity the sheets of some unbound work, moving about his task with the same indifference to its speedy execution, as if the years of Mathuselah were bound up in his indentures. ”

“ Are the qualifications which would be required of one applying, for the first time, for admission to the degree of an Apprentice more than would subsequently be required of the same person on his applying for a greater favor and a higher honor--that of being advanced to the second degree? ”

“ The end and design of Apprenticeship, is for the training up of youth to the knowledge and practice of some art or business; whereby they may learn to get their own living, and become useful to the public; and for the promoting this good and laudable design, the Master here covenants to furnish the Apprentice with all necessaries during the term of his Indenture, and to take especial care of his instruction and improvement in the trade he follows. ”

“ No one might practise any “art or mystery” who had not properly served an apprenticeship to it. To maintain a requisite balance no one was allowed to keep more than three apprentices without employing a journeyman. ”

“ He might have work enough to keep an apprentice busy, but where would he find a lad sufficiently behind the times to learn a humble trade now banished to the limbo of superseded, almost forgotten things? ”

“ As all our boys are invari [Pg 63] ably sent out as indoor apprentices, this was no small difficulty; for we not only look for Christian masters, but consider their business, and examine into their position, to see whether they are suitable; and the master must also be willing to receive the apprentice into his own family. Under these circumstances, we again gave ourselves to prayer, as we had done for more than twenty years before, concerning this thing, instead of advertising, which, in all probability, would only bring before us masters who desire apprentices for the sake of the premium. ”

“ Here is immediate compensation, which, while it cannot assuage our grief, may teach resignation to the inevitable doom of all things mortal.
While we stand around the open grave, in the presence of a body once, and so lately, warm with life and animate with thought, now lingering for a brief moment at the dark portal of the tomb—like a beam of holy light the belief must come, this cannot be all there is of day. Stricken human nature cries out: There must be a dawn beyond this darkness and a never setting sun, while this short life is but a morning star. ”

“ The apprentice has in most cases first to go through a course of menial drudgery which teaches him nothing — unless it be how to abuse other apprentices when he comes to have any under him — which uselessly consumes his time, and which not seldom impairs his self-respect. The pupil of the Technical Institute, child of poor people though he be, enters at once upon the exercise and development of his natural abilities. ”

“ Item, and that you instruct and teach apprentices; and that none take, or employ, any man’s apprentice when their time of apprenticeship is not completed, under the pain of paying Twenty Pounds, the one-half to the Incorporation, one-fourth to the Lodge, and one-fourth to Saint Thomas’s Altar, to say mass to their Soul. ”

“ The first stage in the evolution in a given field may be called the apprentice stage. Just as physicians, lawyers, and in fact practitioners in all the professions and crafts trained their assistants in their establishments for the purpose of making them proficient in their daily work, so did merchants at this stage give apprentice training in commercial branches to their employees. ”

“ Summary.—Many boys and girls were put out as apprentices from old charity schools, and many parishes have still funds for apprenticing boys and girls to trades. For centuries a man could only become a craftsman who had been an apprentice. The apprentice had to serve for seven years, and the life was often very hard and trying, but it made good craftsmen in many cases. There were plait schools and lace-making schools in some parts of the country, and almost every village had its little school taught by the parish clerk or an old lady. ”

“ The length of the apprenticeship naturally differs in different occupations. At the end of it the apprentice becomes a full workman, and a member of his trade or guild. Now not only are the individual records of the apprentices for ability and industry strictly kept, and excellence distinguished by suitable distinctions, but upon the average of his record during apprenticeship the standing given the apprentice among the full workmen depends. ”

“ During the first three years of their apprenticeship they receive in addition to the reindeer a generous supply of food free of charge. Cloth, clothing, traps, guns, and ammunition are also given to the fortunate apprentice, who soon becomes a person of consequence in the community. ”

“ If they develop habits of thrift, a faculty of organization, and power of command, the way is open for them to become master, and in like manner there would be nothing to prevent the non-premium apprentice from rising higher than a mere "journeyman" sailor, if I may thus use the expression, in the fact that he had been apprenticed on a lower grade than those intended for officers from the beginning. ”

“ I know no Greek or Latin word (I might venture, I believe, to assert that there is none) which expresses the idea we now annex to the word apprentice, a servant bound to work at a particular trade for the benefit of a master, during a term of years, upon condition that the master shall teach him that trade.
Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. ”