The Popular Science Monthly. 315 



shake my head when you talk about making it more popu- 

 lar. This is just the tendency which all things set up with 

 a high standard have to guard against the tendency to 

 make material success the object, to the overlooking of the 

 original object. 



Such advice was congenial to Youmans, and he 

 never allowed himself to be diverted from his original 

 purpose. If timid and narrow-minded people were 

 thrown into a flutter by things said now and then in 

 the Monthly, he had the satisfaction of getting little 

 else but praise from the men whose esteem was worth 

 having ; as, for example, in the following letter from 

 that embodiment of sound sense and sturdy despiser 

 of sciolism, Dr. Holmes : 



BOSTON, May j, 1874. 



DEAR DR. YOUMANS : I received, a day or two since, the 

 copy of Dr. Carpenter's Mental Physiology, and thank you 

 for your kindness in transmitting it. I shall write to Dr. 

 Carpenter, to whom I have for so many years been under 

 frequent obligations, and whose works I have known ever 

 since I began teaching anatomy and physiology, and tell 

 him how glad I am to have in a collected form his original 

 and most interesting observations and ideas with reference 

 to the great problems which transcend all others in in- 

 terest the mechanism and the springs of this perpetual 

 mental movement which we can no more arrest than we 

 can the beating of our hearts, though we can modify it as 

 we can the acts of respiration. 



I must take this opportunity to tell you how much I 

 depend on The Popular Science Monthly. It comes to me 

 like the air they send down to the people in a diving bell. 

 I seem to get a fresh breath with every new number. Be- 

 lieve me, dear Dr. Youmans, 



Very truly yours, O. W. HOLMES. 



