Because the genius of our people is connected with the fact, we will just add, that at this place, as at other of the armories of the General Government, all the parts of the muskets are so constructed as to suit any one musket of the million that may be made. No single part is particular; no screw has a special gun; no spring, clasp, or brace, is intended to suit one, or two, or twenty, but each part of any musket will answer for the same part of any others without alteration of any kind. This looks like the perfection of mechanism, and the machinery used looks as if it were made by and for such perfection.
No one who visits in Springfield will neglect the large public cemetery; it is worth a visit of miles—and it requires the travel of miles, for it is large. Good taste and ingenuity are manifested in all its parts; and the buried, if they have a consciousness of their whereabout, must be satisfied to await, in that beautiful retreat, the summons which shall call together the separated bones, and clothe them anew with the incorruptible, in which they are to stand and be judged.
And the living will learn in this beautiful city of the dead, to contemplate the only certainty of their lives, and to see the slow approach of their dissolution, without that shock which the Golgothas and Aceldamas of other times were sure to impart to the delicate and sensitive.
I know that the cynic loves to point to the ornamented grave-yard, or the magnificent cemetery, as the exhibition of the pride of the living—the vanity of the survivors. And I dare not say, that even with the chastened, holy feelings which grief ensures, some particle of human vanity may not mingle, and that the monument which professes to record the virtues of the dead, may not, indeed, betoken the pride of the living.
But suppose it does—admit the charge, and what then? The pride of the living is shown where no future error of the lauded will belie or disgrace the memorial, and where the self-esteem which is gratified in the erection of the cenotaph, will never be wounded by the ingratitude of the one that sleeps beneath. Let vanity have its hour if it uses the time to praise the virtuous, and make death less repulsive; and pride which beautifies where dead men’s bones and all manner of uncleanliness once were found, commends itself to forgiveness, if it may not command our approval.