Arizona republican., 1905-01-28
Providing for Posterity.

Providing for Posterity.
 When the archaeologist of A. D. 39O5 stands on the brink of the gap in the high bridge and speculates on how it happened to what record will he turn for information? That is the question reduced to a logical exposition-that President Eliot of Harvard asks his contemporaries He complained, in an address delivered before the Archae- ologicaI Institute of America, that nothing is being done to preserve the 1 history of this period for remote pos terity; that, unlike the ancients to whose forethought we are indebted for some of the most interesting informa- tion that ever men of learning fought over we are doing nothing to illumine our pilgrimage for the ediicatiOn of our descendants.
 And there really is some ground for President EHot's plaint. We are so busy laying up store of dollars for our | children of the next generation to squander on yeIIow-bodied airships that we have altogether overlooked making provision for the remote de- | scendants of the archaeologists of to- day. We erect a public building at the | cost of millions in money and billions | in explanation and justification for the l expenditure; We bury under the corner stone s3.72 in current coin, today's newspapers containing yesterdays news and a writing bearing the names of the architect and that of the distin- | guished gentleman who performs the i function of tapping the stone with an l expensive trowel. All of which will be very helpful when the building falls down in fifty years or less if the record | is rescued from the ruin, but which will probably not be of much use to | the savant of 39O5 in case 1t is left for him to unearth.
 1 Of course the future has not done so much for us that we are bound to be l grateful, but some of those gentlemen who, like the Laird of S1ibo, are in | danger of dying in disgrace might do much worse than to make some pro vision for leaving a record of the do ings of these stirring times for the in l spiration of posterity. For it would be most aggravating to the shade of A Carnegie to be judged according to es-
 timate of Marie Coreui, in case the archaeological of the future should find
 a potsherd containing a critique of the ironmaster by that deIectabIe writer. And the dust of all of us would rise in a rebeIIious cloud if the poets of
 the age were to be valued in the flu
 ture by the standard set by the dis
 covery of copies of the works of Alfred
 Austin or the Sweet Singer of Mich
 igan.''
 To provide against being unappre-
 ciated by the archaeologists of 2,00O
 years hence we should do something
 Experience teaches us that the man of science sometimes goes far afield in
 making his conclusions. It would be a
 matter of eternal regret to all of us if
 we were permitted to understand that
 the finding of a jawbone of massive
 proportions buried in the site of the
 lost city of Boston led the curator ot
 the Smithsonian institution in 39O5 tc
 construct about it an effigy of Thomas
 w Lawson, while we know that the
 bone was, in 1905, devoted to the per
 sonal use of Col. John L. Sullivan.
 It is plainly up to us to correct the
 errors of the historian of the future by leaving him unmistakable evidence o the facts we want known. But we feal that President Eliot's plaint will b' unavaiIing. Those of us who can bes
 afford to contribute to the preservation of the truth for posterity are rathe anxious that the truth be forgotten.