354 Edivard Livingston Youmans. 



result, and the ethical writers — mainly Sidgwick, of Cam- 

 bridge — have said, '' After all, morality is found to have 

 nothing to do with evolution." / can begin to see that it 

 does, and how it does. . . . Here comes Spencer, bullying 

 me for writing, and I tell him this is the last letter I will 

 write in the next seven weeks. 



Hyeres, France, December ^i, 1878. 



It is the last day of the year, our last day in this place. 

 We shall leave to-morrow for Cannes fifty miles distant, 

 and what it will turn out to be I neither know nor care, so 

 w^e get away from here. One Englishman said last night, 

 "This is a beastly, stinking hole," which is an accurate 

 description of the" place. ... I slept but little last night, 

 owing to the mosquitoes, which are abundant, and fiercer 

 than at home. It is still rainy, cloudy, and muddy, so as 

 to make going out a misery ; yet we go out vigorously and 

 regularly and with long pulls. I hope in the coming places 

 we shall have better walking, but come what will, there is 

 to be but seven weeks more of it. And when we shall 

 have had a week's experience each of seven more "beastly, 

 stinking holes," I shall have had enough of this region. 

 " Knowest thou the land ? " Certainly I do — all I want 

 to. We go this afternoon three miles to the seaside by 

 rail, and back on foot, to see some Roman antiquities ! ! ! 



I have packed, and it is no small job ; ready to move 

 to-morrow. And we leave a sad lot at the Hotel of the 

 Golden Isles — all consumptive, or attending upon some- 

 body who has consumption. I have not seen the first case 

 of anybody who came here for pleasure alone. . . . We 

 have had our last dig through the mud of this miserable 

 region, wandering here and there in search of a dryer place, 

 and always finding a worse one. But I think there is 

 virtue in the exertion. It seems to me I am better for it; 

 and Spencer insists that I am growing stronger, but he is 

 interested in bulling this Mediterranean stock. Spencer 



