But even now, when you enter the building, you lower your voice, and
time turns backward for you, for the atmosphere which you breathe is
cold with the exudation of buried generations.
The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the walls are
immensely thick; it is cool in the summer and warm in the winter; it
is isolated and sombre; standing apart from the other state buildings,
sullen and decaying, brooding on the past.
Twenty years ago it was much the same as now; twenty years from now the
garish newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of
gloomy decadence.
People living in other states can form no conception of the vastness and
importance of the work performed and the significance of the millions of
records and papers composing the archives of this office.
The title deeds, patents, transfers and legal documents connected with
every foot of land owned in the state of Texas are filed here.
Volumes could be filled with accounts of the knavery, the
double-dealing, the cross purposes, the perjury, the lies, the bribery,
the alteration and erasing, the suppressing and destroying of papers,
the various schemes and plots that for the sake of the almighty dollar
have left their stains upon the records of the General Land Office.
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