how
often it happens that a poor old woman will starve herself to death, in
order that she may be respectably buried.

71. Now, this being one of the most complete and special ways of wasting
money,--no money being less productive of good, or of any percentage
whatever, than that which we shake away from the ends of undertakers'
plumes,--it is of course the duty of all good economists, and kind
persons, to prove and proclaim continually, to the poor as well as the
rich, that respect for the dead is not really shown by laying great
stones on them to tell us where they are laid; but by remembering where
they are laid, without a stone to help us; trusting them to the sacred
grass and saddened flowers; and still more, that respect and love are
shown to them, not by great monuments to them which we build with _our_
hands, but by letting the monuments stand, which they built with _their
own_. And this is the point now in question.

72. Observe, there are two great reciprocal duties concerning industry,
constantly to be exchanged between the living and the dead. We, as we
live and work, are to be always thinking of those who are to come after
us; that what we do may be serviceable, as far as we can make it so, to
them, as well as to us. Then, when we die, it is the duty of those who
come after us to accept this work of ours with thanks and remembrance,
not thrusting it aside or tearing it down the moment they think they
have no use for it. And each generation will only be happy or powerful
to the pitch that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two duties to the
Past and the Future. Its own work will never be rightly done, even for
itself--never good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes--if it does
not prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come. And its own
possessions will never be enough for it, and its own wisdom never enough
for it, unless it avails itself gratefully and tenderly of the treasures
and the wisdom bequeathed to it by its ancestors.

73. For, be assured, that all the best things and treasures of this
world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we are
all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each and
all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snowball,
higher and higher--larger and larger--along the Alps of human power.
Thus the science of nations is to be accumulative from father to son:
each learning a little more and a littl