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A Home Reverie
How rapidly time transforms the works of nature and of man. Here again is stand on the streets of the old town amazed at the transformation. I look in vain for a familiar face, all strangers. I scarce know which way to turn the new pretty modern station appeals to my taste and I pass on up the principal business street as if in dream-land for all the old landmarks have disappeared. All save a few, and those, surrounded by evidence of prosperity, stand alone in decay, like mortals grown old and decrepit. The last leaf upon the tree. In the spring while youth, health and beauty them usurped by the younger generation. Coming up beside the Old Murphy House like a giant rears the proud structure of a Metropolitan like hotel, reaching forth its hospitality to the weary wayfarer. Looking across the street on the site of what was familiarly known as the Old Maids Tavern recollection brings to mind before the approach of the steam railway initiated the first modern reform, a lumbering stage coach unloading a crowd of tired, dusty and hungry travelers. But gone is the Old Tavern while westward over the great wide plains, and on through the mountain gorges, the primitive stage coach has betaken its usefulness. Puffing down the street, rushes an automobile in the most hazardous manner, and while watching this up to date vehicle my gaze is riveted on a majestic structure built on the hallowed site of that old Court House whose walls reverberated with the clarion sounds of freedom, in the days which tried mens souls. Only a few relics of the old Court House remain, its early judges and advocates of the last have passed on to the bar of eternal justice. But progress halts not in her onward march, at tearing down the old and building up the new. Mercantile energy has invaded the eastern boundary of the Court House square and fine business blocks adorn that section. The manufacturing interest are also in keeping with the times, as an afternoon spent in surveying the machinery and beholding the wonders wrought out of wood, iron and steel will attest. Keeping in touch with the onward march, of industrial progress the several Christian denominations have erected splendid edifices of worship whose modern walls echo not the early prayers of the humble pioneer. Walking on up Union Street, the main through fare of the old town, my gaze is regarded now and then by a familiar site but in the main stream objects have replaced the old. Is t hat large building across the way a school-house with the stars and strips floating to the breeze? A passer by informs me that today ushers in the twenty-ninth commencement exercise of the Liberty High School. In memory I go back to the old School House on the Hill, when the course consisted of read, writing and arithmetic with a spelling-bee contest every Friday. Education here has advanced in the way of progress until it has outstripped its once commodious quarters and a next school building became and urgent necessity. Last but not least among the many attractions of Liberty are its beautiful homes evidence of comfort and refinement. Everywhere as my eye wanders, the word change seems written in a living characters and Liberty the old town, has been supplanted by the new. May she be in the evolution of progress be ever as firm of purpose, as undaunted in action and as to her standards as in the days of old when Liberty so valiantly responded to the battle cry of freedom.
Bessie Roach
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