368 Edward Livingston Yotivians: 



virtues of his class. There was much that was similar in 

 the temperament and disposition of Edward Youmans 

 the sagacity and penetration, the broad common sense, the 

 earnest purpose veiled but not hidden by the blithe humor, 

 the devotion to ends of wide practical value, the habit of 

 making in the best sense the most out of life. 



When Edward was Init six months old, his parents moved 

 to Greenfield, near Saratoga Springs. With a comfortable 

 house and three acres of land, his father kept a wagon-shop 

 and smithy. In those days, while it was hard work to 

 wring a subsistence out of the soil or to prosper upon any 

 of the vocations which rural life permitted, there was doubt- 

 less more independence of character and real J;hriftiness 

 than in our time, when cities and tariffs have so sapped the 

 strength of the farming country. In the family of Vincent 

 Youmans, though rigid economy was practised, books were 

 reckoned to a certain extent among the necessaries of life, 

 and the house was one in which neighbors were fond of 

 gathering to discuss questions of politics or theology, social 

 reform or improvements in agriculture. On all such 

 questions Vincent Youmans was apt to have ideas of his 

 own ; he talked with enthusiasm, and was also ready to 

 listen ; and he evidently supplied an intellectual stimulus 

 to the whole community. For a boy of bright and inquis- 

 itive mind, listening to such talk is no mean source of 

 education. It often goes much further than the reading of 

 books. From an early age Edward Youmans seems to have 

 appropriated all such means of instruction. He had that 

 insatiable thirst for knowledge which is one of God's best 

 gifts to man ; for he who is born with this a])petit.e must 

 needs be grievously ill-made in other respects if it does not 

 constrain him to lead a ha})py and useful life. 



After ten years at Greeiifield the family moved to a farm 

 at Milton, some two miles distant. Until his sixteenth 

 year Edward helj^ed his father at farm-work in the Summer 

 and attended the district school in Winter. It was his 

 good fortune for some time to fall into the hands of a 

 teacher who had a genius for teaching a man who in those 

 days of rote-learning did not car(> to have things U^.arned l)y 

 heart, but sought to stimulate the thinking ])Owers of his 

 ])upils, and who in tliat age of canes and ferules never 

 found it necessary to use such means of discipline, be(5a\ise 

 the fear of displeasing liim was of itself all-sufficient. 

 Exj)erience of tlie nu^thods of such a nuin was enough to 

 shar])en one's disgust for the excessive mechanism, the 



