The International Scientific Series. 283 



LONDON, September 13, 1871. 



My DEAR SISTER : I am astonished to write this date 

 how the time slips ! Of myself what shall I say ? I have 

 constantly reported myself better of an infernal cold which 

 has had me in its clutches a month. I have been down 

 sick and confined to my room with it for nearly a week. 

 I am certainly better to-day than for the past several 

 days. 



I have been immensely reconciled and comforted men- 

 tally by my progress. Mr. Appleton will be here in a few 

 days, and then the business aspect of affairs can be set- 

 tled. 



I have turned up a new thing with regard to Spencer. 

 He has heard that Emerson characterized him as a " stock 

 writer," which means a " job writer." His disgust is un- 

 speakable ; he has been for the past week gathering up the 

 proofs that he has had one method from the beginning, 

 that he has never written a single article proposed by any- 

 body else; that he had the law of evolution worked out as 

 the basis of a philosophy before Darwin or Wallace ever 

 published a line about it. You know he applied at first for 

 a Government situation to help him. He yesterday handed 

 me the letters to Government on his behalf from Huxley, 

 Tyndall, Mill, Latham, Fraser, Hooker, Holland, Grote, and 

 Sir G. C. Lewis. It astonished me. They recognized as 

 far back as 1858 that he was the man to make a new or- 

 ganon of philosophy. 



I play billiards every night with Spencer after dinner ; 

 game fifty, but one red ball, which thins out the chances*. 

 Scratches here are flukes. Spencer gives me thirty, and 

 then I get to fifty first about as one to three. But I do a 

 stupendous amount of fluking, sometimes to Spencer's 

 great disgust. We started the other night and I fluked up 

 to fifty before he got one. He stands aghast ! I assure 

 him that it is merely my general way. 



