Fairchild: Preservation of Life Records 



355 



built their tombs more deeply into the 

 solid rock, inscribing on the walls their 

 deeds. They left accounts of them- 

 selves which thousands of years later 

 have been deciphered and have revealed 

 their lives. What the^^ did five thou?:and 

 years ago, and for a different reason and 

 at great expense, the poorest of us now 

 might do, leaving our images in the 

 silver, of photographic prints, and ac- 

 counts of what we did and who we were 

 to guide mankind in its long studies 

 of that great science of inheritance. 

 What it required hundreds of slaves to 

 accomplish in the days of the Pharaohs, 

 the printing press and the camera can 

 do for us all. 



This record of life is made for many of 

 us, but the accounts are scattered after 

 we are dead, and our graveyards, in- 

 stead of being the places where our 

 deeds are recorded and where those im- 

 perishable shadows, our photographs, 

 may be seen, are cold, dreary, silent 

 and speechless. 



We cannot help feeling that those who 

 control our cemeteries have an oppor- 

 tunity here to exert a truly great in- 

 fluence for the betterment of our race. 

 If they should gather for all who are 

 buried in their confines all the data 

 available at the time of the person's 

 death, including photographs, and store 

 this data as our libraries store books, 

 having it in shape for easy display, 

 would not such places become the 

 centers of information regarding the 

 stocks from which we came ? A system 

 of exchange could easily be worked out 

 which would make it possible to trace 

 the heredity of all. 



There comes to most of us at some 

 time the desire to see where our an- 

 cestors are buried, and we go to some 

 New England village cemetery, or 

 perhaps to some little churchyard abroad 

 and succeed in finding the gravestones. 

 Perhaps in the church warden's registry 

 or the town clerk's office we find re- 

 corded the birth or marriage or death 



"Sad places are these which mark man's (Jisappearance beneath the sod, but sad as they are, 

 why should they be so hopelessly useless? ... In a hundred years, a sinking grave- 

 stone, a name and date that are hard to read, and perhaps an epitaph — though now tliese 

 are few — are the most we can get from any cemetery." (Fig. 7.) 



