218 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



sity education ; and, enjoying the increased demand 

 for his works which Youmans had confidently pre- 

 dicted, Mr. Spencer next year began to collect and 

 organize the data since published in his Descriptive 

 Sociology, engaging three assistants for that purpose. 



ABERDOVEY, WALES, August <?, 1866. 



MY DEAR SISTER : When I asked Mr. Spencer where to 

 go in the country, he replied, " To get sea bathing, some 

 fishing, some social excitement, and moderate prices, Scar- 

 borough." I replied, " I think we will go there," and so 

 intended, but lingered in London until I received a letter 

 from him in Derby, saying that he had not yet heard from 

 his friends in Scotland, and might have some days to spare, 

 so he proposed to come to Scarborough and spend the 

 interval. I replied that I had not gone, and next day sent 

 him another note, proposing to meet him anywhere he 

 chose for a few days. He named Chester as the meeting 

 place, and last Tuesday, a week since, as the time, and 

 some place in north Wales as the destination. W T e met 

 and started. I undertook to travel with him, and broke 

 down the first day. Thursday I was down sick, Friday 

 miserable and unable to write ; hence, I sent nothing last 

 Saturday. Seeing that I could not stand much, he pro- 

 posed that we pitch for some place and stop. We agreed 

 upon Aberdovey, a Welsh watering place of stone houses 

 in the water under a high bank without a tree, a thousand 

 degrees below Perth Amboy. The cholera report in Lon- 

 don had risen from three hundred to one thousand the 

 previous week, and I thought Kitty had better come into 

 the country. So I wrote to her to join us at this place, 

 which she did last Saturday, and it is now Tuesday. 

 There's not a decent hotel in town, and so I found a lodg- 

 ing house, a stone affair, sort of like a blacksmith shop, 

 where we have three small rooms, and are as comfortable 



