he nineteenth century the most
civilized race, as we consider ourselves, still finds men willing to
adopt as a profession--until lately the only profession for
gentlemen--the study of the surest means of killing other men."

Mr. Spencer said: "I feel just so myself, but I will tell you how I
curb my indignation. Whenever I feel it rising I am calmed by this
story of Emerson's: He had been hooted and hustled from the platform
in Faneuil Hall for daring to speak against slavery. He describes
himself walking home in violent anger, until opening his garden gate
and looking up through the branches of the tall elms that grew between
the gate and his modest home, he saw the stars shining through. They
said to him: 'What, so hot, my little sir?'" I laughed and he laughed,
and I thanked him for that story. Not seldom I have to repeat to
myself, "What, so hot, my little sir?" and it suffices.

Mr. Spencer's visit to America had its climax in the banquet given
for him at Delmonico's. I drove him to it and saw the great man there
in a funk. He could think of nothing but the address he was to
deliver.[73] I believe he had rarely before spoken in public. His
great fear was that he should be unable to say anything that would be
of advantage to the American people, who had been the first to
appreciate his works. He may have attended many banquets, but never
one comprised of more distinguished people than this one. It was a
remarkable gathering. The tributes paid Spencer by the ablest men were
unique. The climax was reached when Henry Ward Beecher, concluding his
address, turned round and addressed Mr. Spencer in these words:

"To my father and my mother I owe my physical being; to you, sir, I
owe my intellectual being. At a critical moment you provided the safe
paths through the bogs and morasses; you were my teacher."

[Footnote 73: "An occasion, on which more, perhaps, than any other in
my life, I ought to have been in good condition, bodily and mentally,
came when I was in a condition worse than I had been for six and
twenty years. 'Wretched night; no sleep at all; kept in my room all
day' says my diary, and I entertained 'great fear I should collapse.'
When the hour came for making my appearance at Delmonico's, where the
dinner was given, I got my friends to secrete me in an anteroom until
the last moment, so that I might avoid all excitements of
introductions and congratulations; and as Mr. Evarts, who presided,
handed me on t