CHAPTER 18.

An Epilogue

Literary compositions of a decade or so ago were frequently concluded with an epilogue. This was a postscript tacked on at the close of a story in order to take the reader beyond its natural conclusion, into the future, where the lives of the characters were worked out according to the writer's satisfaction. The reader's imagination was by-passed and where he might have enjoyed pondering on how a character would develop his future, if left to his own devices, that postscript or epilogue left no room for speculation.

Now the author of this chapter has no such thought of spoiling present enjoyment by prophetic pronouncement upon the future. And yet, it is a highly pleasurable, if unprofitable, pastime for one generation to conjecture upon the future of generations to come, and only natural that the imaginations of those who delve into the past be stimulated beyond the present. With humble respect for the past one anxiously observes the trend of the present, and projects, more or less unconsciously, into the future. So the story of El Paso's first hundred years is written and one curiously wonders about the second hundred years. This epilogue serves as a liaison between these two. A wise philosopher once said that "the past is but the prologue to the future." Just so the first hundred years of El Paso's story introduces what is to come.

As the story has unfolded one is impressed by the imagination, the ambition and the determination of the founding fathers. Whether or not one is willing to go along all the way with their motives and methods in establishing this town, one is forced to admit that defeat was defied by them and no end too great to accomplish. Tenacity of purpose brought rewarding ends which perhaps justified somewhat questionable means. The determination to establish a town on this treeless expanse of grassland never flagged and from its inception El Paso became a town of homes having easy access to the outer world by means of two intersecting railroads.

After 100 years El Paso is still primarily a town of nice homes at the crossroads of two arterial highways. Easy accessibility to nearby cities has discouraged rather than encouraged the location of new industries, often to the distress of our citizens who have watched rival villages grow into booming small cities with the influx of manu-

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