Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/44

40 fact of even enlightened systematic utility. Such flagrant solecisms of economy as that the post quartermaster's offices, the post office and the meat market should be huddled together in the same vicinity, will now be completely remedied. Hitherto appropriations have been too limited in amount and too rigidly doled out in detail by civilian 'watch dogs' of trivial parsimonies. Now at last the way seems tolerably clear by which the several functions of the post shall be grouped in order of the importance: first, that which is military, afterwards, and adjoining, that which is scholarly, and then, separate and apart, all other and subsidiary functions—supplying and purveying of goods, reception and entertaining of guests; all will be no longer scattered or occupying the most eligible positions, but grouped together and in exactly their right locality.

The plans as already outlined are in scope and arrangement as nearly perfect as practical ingenuity could devise. It is greatly to be hoped that in carrying out so thorough a reformation, they who are charged with the duty may remain unhampered by an authority supreme in the state, but which has in manifold instances in the past proved its woeful incapacity to deal with technical needs or more deplorably yet, with the demands of art. The mistake at Annapolis will probably not be here repeated; but the New West Point will be made to burgeon out of the old; the revolutionary relics retained with all their hallowed associations unimpaired, and the sacred traditions of the academy held inviolate.