scale, for convenience of comparison.

We are all lazy in recording facts bearing on ourselves, but parents
are glad enough to do so in respect to their children, and they
would probably be inclined to avail themselves of a laboratory where
all that is required could be done easily and at small cost. These
domestic records would hereafter become of considerable biographical
interest. Every one of us in his mature age would be glad of a series
of pictures of himself from childhood onwards, accompanied by
physical records, and arranged consecutively with notes of current
events by their sides. Much more would he be glad of similar
collections referring to his father, mother, grandparents, and other
near relatives. It would be peculiarly grateful to the young to
possess likenesses of their parents and those whom they look upon as
heroes, taken when they were of the same age as themselves. Boys are
too apt to think of their parents as having always been elderly men,
because they have insufficient data to construct imaginary pictures
of them as they were in their youth.

The cost of taking photographs in batches is so small, and the time
occupied is so brief, when the necessary preparations have been made
and the sitters are ready at hand, that a practice of methodically
photographing schoolboys and members of other large institutions
might easily be established. I, for one, should dearly prize the
opportunity of visiting the places where I have been educated, and
of turning over pages showing myself and my companions as we were in
those days. But no such records exist; the institutions last and
flourish, the individuals who pass through them are dispersed and
leave few or no memorials behind. It seems a cruel waste of
opportunity not to make and keep these brief personal records in a