The Mt. Sterling advocate. (Mt. Sterling, Ky.) 1890-current, 1917-03-27

cluster and cling about your beauti-
full town long a center of Highland
culture; famed in bygone days for
it's inimitable Fairs; the seat of the
widely known and Justly popular
Swango Springs and other good
things, but lastly and mostly, for
thirty-two years the home of the
Hazel Green Herald, a newspaper
that has given an added distinction
to your district of country and its
editors and readers far and near
Your Academy, under the able
and brilliant management of my
excellent and beloved friend, Bro.
McGarvey, has lost none of it's wide
influence as an educational force
amongst a people who probably need
less learning than any people upon
whom the sun shines, the college
competition has been keened every
years. Nature has indeed been kind
to the boys and girls of the Ken
lucky mountains and fortune has
smiled on the home of the humblest
cottager giving to us good schools
like unto yours. Ignorance has
been subjugated and there are really
no backwoods any more except in
the distorted imaginations of people
less wise than we.
Outside of less than a dozen of
Kentucky's largest towns a finer
Fair was never held in Kentucky,
in my opinion, than those we used
to attend at Hazel Green when the
world was young and everybody re-
laXin', dancin' and a-courtin', our
hearts bubblin' over with the sun.
shine of happiness and THE moon
shine of sweet content and a pleas
ureable excitement. AS for myself
| still keep it up as a mild form of
innocent and wholesome amusement,
provoking fun and conserving the
poverty, like the best of mountain
GERS, and it may be disappointment,
but, like them, ever optimistic and
always unafraid, l never absented
myself from one of these Fairs and
l mark each one of them with
white stone concentrating a good
time amongst a gentle people of the
purest of pure Anglo-Saxon blood
uncontaminated with any foreign
element or inferior infusion, a local
community comfortable in their
prosperity and boundless in their
Inequalities.
The Swango Springs and the Hazel
Green Herald need no additional
eulogium at my hands. 1t is enough
to say that everybody who is thirsty
drinks from the Springs, and every.
body who has any sense reads The
Herald that is, everybody who has
the opportunity to do so and who
wishes to live long and keep posted"
and in touch with the spirit of the
age.
On this beautiful morning in
March the earth a-tremble with the
mysterious pulsations that are soon
to clothe the lowlands with grass
and the uplands with verdure, | my.
self writing this hasty, inadequate
letter in this paragon of Central
Kentucky towns, the entrepot of
mountain trade, with culture, refine
ment and wealth upon every hand
to attract and dazzle the eye. | see
much to admire. but in dear Hazel
Green and my own West Liberty,
the pride of the lovely Licking, see
much, to love. To my imagination
ever homesick when away from them,
even the old sedge fields in billowy
waves this windy March morning
wave and shine with as bright vel
low golden as the pictured plains of
Paradise, and the stately pine tree
at my fathers door towers heaven.
ward in grander majesty than monu-
mental shaft or architectural mag.
nificence.
May not, in conclusion, in a
spirit of reverence indulge the wish
and belief that the blessings of the
Supreme will fall and rest on Hazel
Green and The Herald, Looking for
ward, not backward" and consecrat-
ed by the journalistic genius of Col.
Cooper and his worthy and, It may !
be, public spirited successor; on
Campton and Governor Evans. late
ly deceased at very old age, a man
who might have attained high Office |
but had sense enough to know that
the past Of honor is the private
station; on West Liberty and, yours
in friendly rivalry, the Licking Valley |
Courier, on and all of us who love
them and who are pressing forward |
in the direction of better time,
sweetening the breath Of mountain
society, giving courage to struggling
mountain hearts by living together
in sweet accord and harmony.
For lack Of space | cease with
stinging sensation Of thought unsaid |