d he introduced Herbert Spencer to the world. It is
easy to say that Burroughs was peeping his shell when Youmans discovered
him, and that Spencer would have found a way in any event. We simply do
not know what would have happened if something else occurred, or hadn't.

Youmans was born in a New York State country village, and very early
discovered for himself that the world was full of curious and wonderful
things, just as most children do. He became a district school-teacher,
and so far as we know, was the very first man to publicly advocate
nature study as a distinctive means of child-growth. He taught his
children to observe; then he gave lectures on elementary botany; he
studied and he wrote, and he worked at the microscope.

And he became blind.

Did the closest observer on the continent cease work and grow
discouraged when sight failed? Not he.

He no more quit work than did Beethoven cease composing music when he no
longer was able to hear it.

We hear with the imagination, and we see with the soul. Youmans' sister,
Eliza Anne, became his guide and amanuensis; he saw the things through
her eyes and inspected the wonders with his finger-tips.

He became professor of Physics and Natural History at Yale, and when the
New England Lecture Lyceum was at its height, he rivaled Phillips,
Emerson and Beecher as a popular attraction. He made science a pleasure
to plain people, and started Starr King off on that tangent of putting
knowledge in fairylike and acceptable form. Youmans' lecture on "The
Chemistry of a Sunbeam" is one of the unforgettable things of a
generation past, so full of animation and rare, radiant spirit of
good-cheer was the man. He founded the "Popular Science Monthly," wrote
a dozen books on science, and several of these are now used in most of
the colleges and advanced schools of America and England.

The man had a head for business--he became rich.

It was about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six that Youmans was in
England on a business errand, introducing his books in the English
schools, that he first met Herbert Spencer, having been attracted to him
through a chance copy of "Social Statics" that his sister had read to
him. Youmans saw that Spencer was going right to the heart of things in
a way he himself could not. The men became friends, and of all Youmans'
wonderful discoveries, he considered Herbert Spencer the greatest.

"Sir Humphry Davy discovered, and possibly evolved, Michael