WCP1488

[1]

VA 23

THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

CANAL ZONE

OPERATING CLUBHOUSES OF THE

ISTHMIAN CANAL COMMISION

CORRESPONDENCE TABLES¹

Answ[ere]d²

Bajo Obispo

Canal Zone, Panama

7^th July, 1913

Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace,

London:

Most Venerable and Honored Sir:

Will you permit one who has long been following you from afar to address these words of grateful admiration to you on perusing your words with reference to present social conditions and their remedy?

After receiving my education at the feet of Dr. James Woodrow³—leader in the teaching of evolution in America from the seventies to his death eight years ago—I plunged into Central Africa at the age of twenty—one. I took your delightful book to the Amazon—written some sixty—odd years ago with me, and I read it again and again-and have loved you ever since. That was in 1895. I studied the pygmies, the gorillas, the chimpanzees; conducted a group of pygmies to America, & took every one of them back home to the High Kazai well and happy-the first ever to leave Africa; made four [2] expeditions there; then came here to learn sanitation by practically taking part in that feature of the work on the Canal Zone. I think you are right all the way through: on sociology, on the foolishness of some of "eugenics" people, on evolution, on the great duty before us. I am going to keep up your fight in my part of the world. I am now thirty-eight years old, and perhaps am getting equipped for the task, but I want you to know how I have loved and admired you all these long years—and how the "Travels on the Amazon"⁴—your sixty—year old child—often pillowed my head on the headwaters of the Congo, and how you leave in one of your readers a disciple and an affectionate friend.

May peace go with you on the long journey, and may the Great Power cause you to feel his inspiring influence even to the end.

With deep respect, believe me, | Most sincerely yours, | Samuel Phillips Verner⁵ [signature]