424 Life and Letters of Fraud)* G'a/fon 



A last brief letter closes the correspondence: 



10 South Strkkt, Park Lakk, W. June 13, '91. 



StiUislical Inquiry Entat/s. 



Mv Drak Sim, 1 Miiniwfully ncknowlwlge your just award thiit tlio season is now Urn far 

 •dvanoed for you to altt-nipt to carry out the pn-liiniiiarit's. I am only liopfl that whi-n the 

 Tmoations an* over 1 may still a|i}M>Hl tu your wiMloin. You liavc U't'ii more than kind. And 

 no one could do for the matter wliat you would. I trust your Dfmogra|)hy is making favourable 

 I am ever yours jfratcfully, Flokenck Niohtinoalk. 



One Clin hut rej^ret tliis coiichision to wliat niif^Iit have been a p;reat 

 success, the reahsjition of an ideal common to two of the most remarkable 

 minds of the nineteenth century. They were both "passionate statisticians," 

 lK)th saw a {jreat need — a need which still largely e.xists — and l>oth had 

 shown themselves capable of carrying great enterprises to successful con- 

 clusions. Yet somehow Francis Galton seemed to overlook the very kernel 

 of Florence Nightingale's schenie, and the whole vanished in a trivial essay 

 project. Yet the correspondence was, I believe, not without influence on 

 Galton himself, and probably contributed not a little to guide him con- 

 sciously or unconsciously when he came to make his own foundation in linking 

 it up with a school of statistical training. An additional twenty years demon- 

 strated to him not only the futility of advisory committees, but how little 

 in the way of research could be achieved by the offer of small monetary prizes. 



Something would certainly have failed in this chapter, if we had Ijeen 

 unable to show even this slender link between the master builder of the 

 modern theory of statistics and the "Passionate Statistician" whose mind 

 had been so deeply stirred by his greatest forerunner, Quetelet: 



"I might have doue it for you. So it seems: 

 Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. 

 Besides, incentives come from the soul's self, 

 The rest avail not." 



