Edward Livingston Youmans 93 



of only three : the late Professor Gurney, of Har- 

 vard ; Mr. George Litch Eoberts, now an eminent 

 patent lawyer in Boston ; and Mr. John Spencer 

 Clark, now of the Prang Educational Company. 

 I have since known that there were at least two 

 or three others about Boston, among them my 

 learned friend the Rev. William Rounseville Alger, 

 besides several in other parts of the country. 

 When we sometimes ventured to observe that 

 Spencer's work was as great as Newton's, and that 

 his theory of evolution was going to remodel human 

 thinking upon all subjects whatever, people used 

 to stare at us and take us for idiots. Any one 

 member of such a small community was easy to 

 find ; and I have always dated a new era in my 

 life from the Sunday afternoon when Youmans 

 came to my room in Cambridge. It was the begin- 

 ning of a friendship such as hardly comes but once 

 to a man. At that first meeting I knew nothing 

 of him except that he was the author of a text- 

 book of chemistry which I had found interesting, 

 in spite of its having been crammed down my 

 throat by an old-fashioned memorizing teacher who, 

 I am convinced, never really knew so much as the 

 difference between oxygen and antimony. At first 

 it was a matter of breathless interest to talk with 

 a man who had seen Herbert Spencer. But one 



