28 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



In the fall of 1835 and the succeeding winter he was 

 attacked by inflammation of the eyes. This was the 

 prelude to those long painful years of blindness that 

 were to defeat all his plans of study and largely deter- 

 mine his career. His persistence in reading and writ- 

 ing when his eyes needed rest did much to aggravate 

 their malady. He had always a newspaper, pamphlet, 

 or book in his pocket to read at every spare moment. 

 At the noon dinner hour he would hurry through his 

 meal so as to have the more time to write in his cham- 

 ber. Imprudence and neglect prevented his recovery. 

 About this time, in his sixteenth year, his father's 

 house was extended and substantially rebuilt. Edward 

 mixed mortar, and fetched and carried generally. The 

 master mason, Ephraim Child, liked the bright, willing 

 lad, and in the evenings taught him to play the fife. 

 Years afterward, when blind, he became proficient on 

 the violin also, and his musical capacity brought him 

 both recreation and solace. 



In those days, as always, Edward pursued his ends 

 with puritanical energy. He was as uneasy as his 

 father at " neglect of work" and " loss of time." In 

 later years, while he sympathized with modern opin- 

 ions concerning the value of amusements, and could 

 give good advice to other people on the importance 

 of " intermittent activity" and of sometimes taking a 

 rest, nevertheless his inborn disposition was apt to 

 overpower his judgment in such matters, and the re- 

 sult for him was too much like " all work and no play." 

 Not dullness, but blindness, was the catastrophe partly 

 brought on, or at all events seriously aggravated, by 

 the unremittent application of his youthful days. 

 From his fourteenth year until his eighteenth his 

 life was a conflict between bad eyesight on the one 



