see here Mark Twain - Wikipedia . Is one degree per month something pretty unique in his case or was the whole system so set up that people would be promoted quickly and so the number of novices at any given time minimized? Or were there wild variations depending on the preferences and practices of the local ruling clique?
I guess it depends how good you are with a pick-axe or a trowel. 
That is one degree a month. It would depend on what the lodges calendar looked like. Also if he was going to leave the area on a trip In August they could have rushed the degrees. this is just a guess.
It took him that long?
Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, became a Master Mason (third degree) in two DAYS!
From Joseph Smith: America's Hermetic Prophet
Apparently he was raised to the third degree “on sight,” a rare honor that would have eliminated Smith having to memorize all the rituals.
It’s Good to be King.
I wouldn’t call it terribly unusual–becoming a Master Mason is not really about learning a tradecraft skillset as much as it is about learning about going through a formal process of entering the brotherhood. Contacting the local lodge, getting a sponsor, getting a petition signed, having an interview–those things can be accomplished pretty quickly. Once the lodge hears the results of your interview, you can then be inducted as a 1st degree mason.
Normal procedure is to wait 28 days from that point before being offered the opportunity to proceed to 2nd degree. Then another 28 degrees for 3rd degree (Master Mason.)
Can it take longer? Sure, particularly in larger lodges. Can it be shorter? Yes–recently there has been a move to have sort of “rush” initiations, where a brother moves from Entered Apprentice to Master Mason in a weekend. This is because the attrition of older members was gutting the lodges, and younger guys these days are sort of “instant results” guys. It requires some memorization of ritual and ceremony and whatnot, but it’s not impossible to get it done in 48 hours.
I do believe that the degrees primarily involve moral lessons rather than in-depth knowledge and skill learning, or so I have been told. Now, it stands to reason that if a person is clearly morally ready, there should be no barrier to advancing, since otherwise what would a person do? Consider “Well, I’m ready for my second degree, but I need to wait six months for some arbitrary reason.” vs “I’m still not ready for my second degree because I don’t understand some things and my sponsor feels I need to feel more comfortable with lodge rituals.”
Now, in physical trade apprenticeships, when a person is inducted as an apprentice, they are expected to spend some time learning and practicing. The same thing applies generally with academic degrees, which were based on an apprenticeship model. One cannot go directly from their Bachelor’s degree to a Master’s degree or a Doctorate without further learning and practice.
Consider the Catechumenate of the early Christian church. Apparently, it was common for a congregation to require a person to study for three years before they could receive baptism, because it really took that long to teach the principles to minimally educated folk who probably had never left their hometown and never learned to read or write. Today, the process can go much faster and you can convert from practically any religion to any Christian tradition rapidly, and Roman Catholics, one of the most formal, generally only require 6 months unless you clearly aren’t progressing. They let the process go by quickly since that is all it really takes nowadays.
I did it in 2 months from 1st to 3rd degree. Not terribly difficult if you’re good at memorizing. Remember that the 2 months is 1st degree - 30 days - 2nd degree - 30 days - 3rd degree. There are provisions for making someone a Master Mason in one day in an emergency sistuation like being in he military and being shipped out soon.
Hate raising a zombie (hopefully, no apocalypse results), I just stumbled across this thread courtesy of Google… Google always leads me back home, I guess.
Twain’s rapid raising was fairly common in that era and, as mentioned up-thread, is increasingly common now. There is, however, a fairly wide discrepancy in Lodge practices. Some Lodges will initiate, pass, and raise candidates in A SINGLE DAY!! In my Lodge, 9-12 months is the minimum range. The reason for this being that some Lodges have greater needs (in order to survive) to get members and issue dues cards, while others have long prided themselves on having members with more intimate understanding of the rituals.
It doesn’t hurt that delayed gratification often makes things more desirable. Hence, waiting patiently at the door [paraphrased].
Another important thing to keep in mind is that Twain was initiated, passed, and raised in a Lodge with a lot of steamboat pilots. It’s not like those men were living sedentary lives. Logistics rears its ugly head.
Masonry is a very difficult trade requiring years of hard work under a master mason. Though there is no official standard, I wouldn’t hire him to lay a pebble if the supervisor progressed him that much.
That’s nothing. It only took him three weeks to become a 3rd degree black belt. So I hear.
Didn’t I hear Kim Sung Il became a 33rd degree Mason in a week?
Who’s Kim Sung Il?