The Scientific Lecturer. 77 



ing there was no sleeping car. By the time I reached 

 here I was pretty completely used up." 



Such a fatiguing life, however, has its compensa- 

 tions. It brings the lecturer into friendly contact 

 with the brightest minds among his fellow-country- 

 men in many places, and enlarges his sphere of influ- 

 ence in a way that is not easy to estimate. Clearly, 

 an earnest lecturer, of commanding intelligence and 

 charming manner, with a great subject to teach, must 

 have an opportunity for sowing seeds that will pres- 

 ently ripen in a change of opinion or sentiment, in an 

 altered way of looking at things on the part of whole 

 communities. No lecturer has ever had a better op- 

 portunity of this sort than Edward Youmans, and none 

 ever made a better use of his opportunity. His gifts 

 as a talker were of the highest order. The commonest 

 and plainest story, as told by Edward Youmans, had 

 all the breathless interest of the most thrilling ro- 

 mance. Absolutely unconscious of himself, simple, 

 straightforward, and vehement, wrapped up in his 

 subject, the very embodiment of faith and enthusiasm, 

 of heartiness and good cheer, it was delightful to hear 

 him. And when we join with all this his unfailing 

 common sense, his broad and kindly view of men and 

 things, and the delicious humour that kept flashing out 

 in quaint, pithy phrases such as no other man would 

 have thought of, and such as are the despair of any 

 one trying to remember and quote them, we can seem 

 to imagine what a power he must have been with his 

 lectures. 



When such a man goes about for seventeen years, 

 teaching scientific truths for which the world is ripe, 

 we may be sure that his work is great, albeit we have 

 no standard whereby we can exactly measure it. In 



