One day we were sitting in our rooms in the Grand Hotel looking out over Trafalgar Square.  The Life Guards passed and the following took place: 

“Mr. Spencer, I never see men dressed up like Merry Andrews without being saddened and indignant that in the 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 the dais, I begged him to limit his conversation with me as much as possible, and to expect very meagre responses.  The event proved that, trying though the tax was, there did not result the disaster I feared; and when Mr. Evarts had duly uttered the compliments of the occasion, I was able to get through my prepared speech without difficulty, though not with much effect.” (Spencer’s Autobiography, vol.  II, p. 478.)]