Mary, while appreciating Sibylla’s good qualities, never failed to be amused at her broad “Pennsylvania German” dialect.

The morning of the “Fair,” Mary arose earlier than usual to allow Sibylla and Jake to get an early start, as it was quite a distance from the farm to the Fair grounds.  As they were about to drive away, Sibylla, alighting from the carriage, said, “I forgot my ‘Schnupftuch.’” Returning with it in her hand, she called, as she climbed into Jake’s buggy, “Gut-by, Mary, it looks fer rain.”

“Yes” said Jake, “I think it gives rain before we get back yet.  The cornfodder in the barn this morning was damp like it had water on it.”

And said Mary, “The fragrance of the flowers was particularly noticeable early this morning.”  Jake, as it happened, was no false prophet.  It did rain before evening.

Later in the day, Mary and Ralph drove to a near-by town, leaving horse and carriage at the hotel until their return in the evening, and boarded a train for Allentown.  On arriving there, they decided to walk up Hamilton Street, and later take a car out to the Fair grounds.  As they sauntered slowly up the main street, Mary noticed a small church built between two large department stores and stopped to read a tablet on the church, which informed the passerby that “this is to commemorate the concealment of the Liberty Bell during the Revolutionary War.  This tablet was erected by the Liberty Bell Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution.”

The First Zion’s Reformed Church was founded in 1762.  In front of the Church a rough block of granite, erected to the memory of John Jacob Mickley, contained the following inscription:  “In commemoration of the saving of the Liberty Bell from the British in 1777.  Under cover of darkness and with his farm team, he, John Mickley, hauled the Liberty Bell from Independence Hall, Philadelphia, through the British lines, to Bethlehem, where the wagon broke down.  The Bell was transferred to another wagon, brought to Allentown, placed beneath the floor of the Second Church building of Zion’s Reformed Church, where it remained secreted nearly a year.  This tablet was placed by the order of the Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, June 2nd, 1907, under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Daughters of the Revolution.”

This was all very interesting to a girl who had been born and reared in Philadelphia; one who in earliest childhood had been taught to love and venerate the “old Bell.”

Ralph was quite as interested in reading about the old Bell as was Mary, and said; “Did you know that the City of Philadelphia purchased the State House property, which included the Bell, in 1818, in consideration of the sum of seventy thousand dollars?  No building is ever to be erected on the ground inside the wall on the south side of the State House, but it is to remain a public green and walk forever?”

[Illustration]