ks, I herewith hand you check covering the full amount of my
subscription. I feel that I have already had full returns, for, while
the books are absolutely valueless, save as showing the industry of an
uneducated and indiscreet person, yet the experience that has come to me
in this transaction is not without its benefits."

This is the Oxford way of expressing the Illinois formula, "Your books
are not worth a damn--and are dear at that."

But the curious part of this transaction is that, after the death of
Doctor Jowett, his library was sold at auction, and his set of the
Synthetic Philosophy brought an advance of eight times its original
cost.

Truly my Lord Hamlet doth say:

Rashly,
And prais'd be rashness for it--let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do fail.

No one man's opinion concerning any book, or any man, is final. Speaker
Cannon is admired by one set of men and detested by others--all of equal
intelligence, although on this point the Speaker might possibly file an
exception.

Books are condemned offhand, or regarded as Bibles--it all depends upon
your point of view. Speaker Cannon may be right in his estimate of the
newly annexed sixty volumes of history that now grace his
library-shelves in Danville, proudly shown to constituents, or he may be
wrong; but anyway, Cannon's judgment about books is probably worth no
more than was the Reverend Doctor Jowett's. Gladstone spoke of Jowett as
that "saintly character"; and Disraeli called him "the bear of
Balliol--erratic, obtuse and perverse." But Jowett, Gladstone and
Disraeli all united in this: they had supreme contempt for the work of
Herbert Spencer; while the Honorable Joseph Cannon is neutral, but
inclined to be generous, having recently in a speech quoted from the
"Faerie Queene," which he declared was the best thing Herbert Spencer
had written, even if it was not fully up to date.

* * * * *

All during his life, Spencer was subject to attacks of indigestion and
insomnia. That these bad spells were "a disease of the imagination" made
them no less real. His isolation and lack of social ties gave him time
to feel his pulse and lie in wait for sleepless nights.

With the old ladies of his boarding-house, he was on friendly terms, and
his commonplace talk with them never gave them a guess concerning the
worldwide character of his work. Very seldom did he refer to what he wa