WHY SHOULD NOT CEMETERIES 



PRESERVE OUR LIFE RECORDS? 



A Plea That Cemeteries Should Become the Historic Spots Where the Records of 

 Our Deeds and Our Likenesses Are Preserved 



David and Marian Fairchild 



WHY should not our cemeteries 

 be something more than the 

 mere resting places of our 

 bones ? The savage tribes of 

 Borneo bury their dead with quite as 

 much ceremony as that with which we 

 escort the remains of those dearest to us 

 to the grave. They erect sticks over 

 these burial places, and they soon forget 

 them, just as we do. 



Who has not hunted in vain through 

 a great cemetery for some granite shaft 

 that looks almost like scores of others, 

 but which is precious because it wit- 

 nesses the spot where some earthly 

 form loved when alive disappeared 

 forever into the earth from which it 

 came. vScattered in more' or less orderly 

 groups over a hillside lie these spots, 

 each sacred to some one, each visited 

 perhaps on birthdays or marriage days 

 by the living souls in whose memory the 

 image that lies buried is slowly fading. 



Sad places are these which mark 

 man's disappearance beneath the sod, 

 but, sad as they are, why should they be 

 so hopelessly useless ? Our dead are 

 buried in them, and their bones are 

 protected from molestation perhaps for 

 centuries, but is that not really all? In 

 a hundred years, a sinking gravestone, 

 a name and date that are hard to read, 

 and perhaps an epitaph — though now 

 these are few — are the most we can get 

 from any cemetery. 



Yet these are the most sacred spots of 

 the human race. Every career ends in 

 one; that of the greatest human being 

 who has lived as well as the smallest 

 finds its close somewhere in a graveyard. 



This has been for centuries, and is 

 today, the attitude of our minds 

 towards cemeteries, but has not the 



time come when a different point of 

 view regarding them is possible ? The 

 theories of descent and of the con- 

 tinuity of the germ plasm have brought 

 the realization that the living descend- 

 ants of the dead are imperishable parts 

 of them which go on living on this earth, 

 and are an extension, a projection, of 

 the life which shone out through the 

 eyes and found expression in the voices 

 of forms which lie buried beneath the 

 cemetery sod. To know, to under- 

 stand those who are living, we must 

 know about the dead who bore them. 

 It is not only the very few distinguished 

 members of a family who leave their 

 mark upon their descendents; we are 

 just as much influenced by those who 

 live their lives quietly and having done 

 nothing spectacular, pass away without 

 leaving any account of themselves in 

 literature or art or business. 



This growing conviction that we can- 

 not understand people unless we know 

 their ancestry is making it more and 

 more necessary that the records of our 

 ancestors be kept, but where ? The 

 most sacred spot appears to be that 

 beneath which they are buried, but, as 

 the graveyard is organizjed today, this 

 spot reveals nothing whatever — teaches 

 nothing. It is the spot of all most 

 terrible to visit, for it is there that we 

 gaze into the abyss of death — and 

 wonder. Need this be so ? Need our 

 graveyards be, so far as teaching is 

 concerned, as silent as the barbaric 

 graveyards of the savage tribes? Can 

 we not arrange to have them instead 

 storehouses of all possible information 

 about the dead who are in them? 



The Pharaohs of Egypt thought to 

 live on into eternity, and day by day 



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