First Acquaintance with Herbert Spencer. in 



cerned. In the first place, the Appletons became the 

 publishers of Youmans's books. His sagacity and his 

 magnetic personality prevailed with them as with al- 

 most everybody. By degrees he became an adviser 

 as regarded matters of publication, and it was largely 

 through his far-sighted advice that the Appletons 

 entered upon the publication of such books as those 

 of Buckle, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Haeckel, and 

 others of like character, always paying a royalty to 

 the authors, the same as to American authors, in spite 

 of the absence of an international copyright law. As 

 publishers of books of this sort the Appletons have 

 come to be pre-eminent. It is obvious enough nowa- 

 days that such books are profitable from a business 

 point of view ; but thirty years and more ago this 

 was by no means obvious, and I doubt if there was 

 any other house in the United States that would not 

 have been at least very likely to view the matter in 

 the same light as Messrs. Ticknor & Fields. The 

 Americans were at that time excessively provincial. 

 There was much intellectual eagerness, along with 

 very meagre knowledge, and few persons had access 

 to authoritative sources of information. Reprints of 

 English books, translations from French and German, 

 were sadly behind the times. In the Connecticut 

 town where I lived people would begin to wake up to 

 the existence of some great European book or system 

 of thought after it had been before the world any- 

 where from a dozen to fifty years. In those days, 

 therefore, it required some boldness to undertake the 

 reprinting of new scientific books, and none have rec- 

 ognized more freely than the Appletons the impor- 

 tance of the part played by Youmans in this matter. 

 His work as adviser to a great publishing house and 



