Last Years. 39 1 



flattering, invitation to accept at some suitable time the 

 hospitality of your Penn Club. 



I thank you most cordially for this offer, which I as 

 sincerely appreciate as if it were in my power to comply 

 with it. But I am physically broken down, emaciated to 

 a skeleton, with strength enough to barely creep around a 

 little. . . . 



Everybody assures me, loudly and simultaneously, that, 

 though a little thin, 1 never looked better ; that there is 

 nothing much the matter, and that as soon as the weather 

 gets settled I shall pick up and be all right again, and, as 

 Sancho Panza remarks, " according as they say true, so 

 help them God." 



At any rate, should it ever become physically possible, 

 I will avail myself of the proffered hospitality of your club. 

 I am a member of the Authors' Club and the Century Club, 

 but have not been able to attend either of them this 

 winter. Ever sincerely yours, 



E. L. YOUMANS. 



This is the last of Youmans's letters that I have 

 now at hand ; but there are several letters to him 

 from Spencer in this last year, from which I make the 

 following extracts: 



LONDON, Februaiy 20, 1886. 



MY DEAR YOUMANS: I often find myself repeating the 

 proposition, which I fancy you have before now heard me 

 express, that each of us, as he gets older, needs a keeper. 

 As internal judgment and will get weaker they require to 

 be supplemented by external judgment and will. But the 

 worst of it is that at the time when this kind of govern- 

 ment is most needed it is very commonly most resisted. 



I very much fear that you are in a condition in which 

 something approaching to coercion is called for. When I 

 advised that you should submit yourself to the winter re- 

 quirements and stay indoors altogether, I did not think of 



