312 Edward Livingston Yomnans. 



found unacceptable, but who were plainly and kindly 

 told wherein lay their deficiencies. Not seldom an ar- 

 ticle would be offered him unsuitable for the Monthly, 

 but such as some other editor might be glad to pub- 

 lish. In that case the indication would be given, usu- 

 ally accompanied by an introductory card. It was in 

 his treatment of callers that Youmans's good nature 

 was most severely tested. At all hours to his office 

 there would come inventors with models to be " no- 

 ticed," writers with bulky bundles of book manuscript 

 for examination, and readers to argue down some state- 

 ment published in the Monthly. He could instinc- 

 tively discriminate between the callers who had a right 

 to his time and those who had not. A crank or bore 

 would hear something like this : " My good sir, your 

 manuscript is very probably all that you claim, and 

 I should be glad to have the leisure to examine it in 

 detail ; but you see how it is. I have ever so much 

 work that I must finish to-day, and so I am obliged 

 to forego the pleasure." 



Youmans's extreme kindliness is well illustrated 

 by the effect produced upon the author of a rejected 

 manuscript, who wrote him the following letter : 



DR. E. L. YOUMANS. 



DEAR SIR : Your reasons for not putting my lecture in 

 The Popular Science Monthly are good and sufficient, and 

 perfectly satisfactory to me. You must both have and 

 deserve troops of friends, if the very kind notice you took 

 of my paper marks your habitual manner with new contribu- 

 tors, and I can only thank you, and say you were quite 

 right in rejecting it. 



Can you be as correct in some of your remarks ? Is 

 Herbert Spencer anything but a " religious destructive " ? 

 Does that philosopher exist in any other relation to religion 



