324 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



three thousand people to hear them. I could get them into 

 Hewitt's Saturday night course next year, and then publish 

 them in the Monthly. The lectures are of course free, but 

 that makes no difference. Hewitt has been hunting for 

 something of the sort five years. 



Come down, at any rate, as soon after New Year's as you 

 can, and we will get the thing going. We start a new 

 series the first of the year that we think of calling The 

 Popular Science Library. The volumes will be sold at a 

 dollar, will have about one hundred and fifty pages, and 

 Eliza's translation of Quatrefages will be the first. It 

 will be a capital place for a thoroughly elementary book 

 on political economy such as might be worked out by the 

 route of these lectures. 



The correspondence is full of remarks and allusions 

 interesting to readers who are interested in Youmans 

 or in Spencer or in the doctrine of evolution, and the 

 judicious reader (to whom the power of skipping 

 when he chooses belongs as an inalienable right) will 

 not find fault with me as I proceed to string together 

 a few extracts covering the seven years from 1873 

 to 1880. 



37 QUEEN'S GARDENS, BAYSWATER, W., August 26, 1873. 

 MY DEAR YOUMANS : I greatly regret to hear that you 

 have been out of condition and that things have been going 

 unsatisfactorily in respect of work. I wish I could per- 

 suade you to adopt persistently the policy of having an 

 efficient amanuensis. Once establish the habit of dictating, 

 and you would, I am sure, find it a great economy of en- 

 ergy and a great relief; and it is clear to me that your 

 state of health is such as to make it highly important that 

 you should economize your energies. Instead of post- 

 poning the matter of an amanuensis and hoping to get satis- 

 factorily fixed presently, as you have continually said, you 



