s
doing and thinking--and then only among his most intimate friends.
Huxley was his nearest confidant; and a recent writer, who knew him
closely in a business way for many years, says that only with Huxley did
he throw off his reserve and enter the social lists with abandon.

No one could meet Spencer, even in the most casual way, without being
impressed with the fact that he was in the presence of a most superior
person. The man was tall and gaunt, self-contained--a little aloof--he
asked for nothing, and realized his own worth. He commanded respect
because he respected himself--there was neither abnegation, apology nor
abasement in his manner. Once I saw him walking in the Strand, and I
noticed that the pedestrians instinctively made way, although probably
not one out of a thousand had any idea who he was. No one ever affronted
him, nor spoke disrespectfully to his face; if unkind things were said
of the man and his work, it was in print and at a distance.

His standard of life was high--his sense of justice firm; with pretense
and hypocrisy he had little patience, while for the criminal he had a
profound pity.

Music was to him a relaxation and a rest. He knew the science of
composition, and was familiar in detail with the best work of the great
composers.

In order to preserve the quiet of his thoughts in the boarding-house, he
devised a pair of ear-muffs which fitted on his head with a spring.

If the conversation took a turn in which he had no interest, he would
excuse himself to his nearest neighbor and put on his ear-muffs. The
plan worked so well that he carried them with him wherever he went, and
occasionally at lectures or concerts, when he would grow more interested
in his thoughts than in the performance, he would adjust his patent.

So well pleased was he with his experiment that he had a dozen pairs of
the ear-muffs made one Christmas and gave them to friends, but it is
hardly probable they had the hardihood to carry them to a Four-o'Clock.
Seldom, indeed, is there a man who prizes his thoughts more than a
polite appearance.

In an address before the London Medical Society, in Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-one, Spencer said, "The man who does not believe in devils
during his life, will probably never be visited by devils on his
deathbed." Herbert Spencer died December Eighth, Nineteen Hundred
Three, in his eighty-fourth year. Up to within two days of his death,
his mind was clear, active and alert, and