288 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



have nevertheless a great respect for these Dutchmen. 

 They are strong, self-reliant, and honest. 



Bancroft is extremely obliging and attentive. I have 

 met Helmholtz, Reymond, and Virchow at his table, and it 

 was pleasant and interesting, of course, but business was 

 interdicted, and nothing was gained. I shall go to Leipsic 

 in a day or two to satisfy myself about some things, and 

 then work my passage back to London. It is a horrid, 

 stupid place here. 



BERLIN, November 23, 1871. 



And so you wonder that I can care for anything ! Well, 

 I don't much not much; the caring time is past dregs 

 only remain. Half a hundred years, and to what end ? 

 What a confounded sell life turns out to be! The only 

 interest is in studying it. I am afraid there is too much 

 truth in that old philosophic view, that " the interest is in 

 the chase and dies with the capture." And so I think I 

 shall go to bed at ten o'clock, two hours earlier than usual. 

 To bed ! and such a bed not a sheet, not a blanket, but 

 only a kind of narrow feather-bed ; they call it down that 

 you have to sleep under, and you can't sleep under it. I 

 woke up a hundred times during the night with divers 

 parts of my body out in the air. One hauls them in, but 

 to what purpose ? You reawaken with only a variation of 

 the exposure. I have augmented my cold here, and shall 

 quit the ranch to-morrow. It seems to me that if a social 

 organism were constructed especially to get the least out 

 of life, to thwart it all round and make discomfort a policy, 

 these Dutch would take the premium ! 



And on that I went to bed, and here I am, November 

 25th, at Leipsic, a hundred miles south of Berlin. I had a 

 letter to one important man ; he is dead. To another, and 

 he is so sick I have been unable to see him. It snows, 

 rains, sleets, and is dark, muddy, and detestable in Leipsic. 

 Not a publisher can speak a word of English in Leipsic. 



