386 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



being baulked of your hope by the very eagerness to 

 achieve ? You have done quite enough already in the way 

 of working for the public good. Pay a little regard to 

 yourself, and let things drift. As for trying to brave out 

 again the winter in New York, you have already had amply 

 sufficient lessons of the mischief of taking the risky course, 

 and I should have thought that you would be willing to 

 take the prudent one. Excuse my plain speaking, but it is 

 grievous to me to see you deliberately killing yourself. 



February 4, 188^. 

 I should like to hear something about you. It is now 

 a month since I gathered that you were in a very shaky 

 state, and that you were feeling obliged to go South. 

 What has happened ? ' 



March 2j, 188^. 

 There has just been published here a book entitled Can 

 the Old Faith live with the New ? by the Rev. George 

 Matheson, D. D., evidently a Scotch Presbyterian, for he 

 dates from Annelan, on the Frith of Clyde. It is really a 

 very clever attempt to show that the evolution doctrine is 

 not irreconcilable with the current creed. Accepting evo- 

 lution in its widest extent as no longer to be gainsaid, and 

 accepting also the metaphysics accompanying it — taking 

 these, indeed, as established — the aim is, as I say, to show 

 that the old faith may live with the new. It will, I think, 

 therefore be an admirable means of introducing evolution 

 doctrines into the ordinary mind. When you get back, 

 pray get hold of it and see whether something cannot be 

 done with it as a reprint. I should think Beecher would 

 rejoice over it and take its doctrines as texts. 



I hope you will be getting your breathing apparatus into 

 better order down South. Why have you not let me know 

 something of the results of the change ? I dare say you 

 find it difficult to kill time away from your work, but this 

 is better than to let time kill you while at your work. 



