374 Edward Lloin'jston Youvians : 



recovered in one eye that it became possible to go about 

 freely, to read, to recognize friends, to travel, and make 

 ]uuch of life. I am told tliat his face had acquired an 

 expression characteristic of the blind, but that expression 

 Avas afterward completely lost. When I knew him it would 

 never have occurred to me that his sight was imperfect, 

 except perhaps as regards length of range. 



Mr. Youmans's career as a scientific lectvirer now began. 

 His first lecture was the beginning of a series on the 

 relations of organic life to the atmosphere. It was 

 illustrated with chemical apparatus, and was given in a 

 private room in New York to an audience which filled the 

 room. Probably no lecturer ever faced his first audience 

 without some trepidation, and Mr. Youmans had not the 

 main-stay and refuge afforded by a manuscript, for his 

 sight was never good enough to make such an aid available 

 for his lectures. At first the right words were slow in 

 finding their way to those ready lips, and his friends were 

 beginning to grow anxious, when all at once a happy 

 accident broke the spell. He was remarking upon the 

 characteristic instability of nitrogen, and pointing to a jar 

 of that gas on the table before him, when some fidgety 

 movement of his knocked the jar off the table. He 

 improved the occasion with one of his quaint hons mots, 

 and, as there is nothing that greases the wheels of life like 

 a laugh, the lecture went on to a successful close. 



This was the beginning of a busy career of seventeen 

 years of lecturing, ending in 1868 ; and I believe it is safe 

 to say that few tilings wei'e done in all those years of more 

 vital and lasting benefit to the American peo})le than this 

 broadcast sowing of the seeds of scientific thought in the 

 lectures of Edward Youmans. They came just at the time 

 when tlie world was ripe for the doctrine of Evolution, 

 when all the wondrous significance of the trend of scientific 

 discovery since Newton's time Avas beginning to burst upon 

 men's minds. The work of Lyell in geology, followed at 

 length in 1859 by the Darwinian theory ; the doctrine of 

 the correlation of forces and the consequent unity of nature; 

 the extension and reformation of chemical theory ; the 

 .simultaneous advance made in sociological inquiry, and in 

 the conce})tion of the true aims and proper nieth(xls of 

 education all this iuad(i the })erio(l a most fruitful one for 

 the i)eculiar work of such a teacher as Youmans. The 

 intellectual atniospliei'e was charged with concej)tions of 

 Evolution. ^Ir. Youmans had arrived at such conceptions 



