10 Herbert Spencer. 



tality on the part of new acquaintances was annoying ; but 

 what drove him nearly frantic was the desire of people, in 

 some places manifested, to look at him as they would look 

 at a fine animal at the agricultural fair. The culmination 

 of this latter outrage was reached, I regret to say, in my 

 native State, — at Burlington, Vermont, the home of Minis- 

 ter Phelps and Senator Edmunds. His arrival having been 

 announced in the daily paper, quite a number of people 

 called to pay their respects, and a little demonstration in 

 his honor was threatened. Mr. Spencer however, tired and 

 ill, had gone to his room, leaving orders that he could see 

 no one and must not be disturbed. The people would not 

 be appeased, and to his great horror a party of them went 

 to his door, knocked, and, when it was opened, told him 

 that they had come to see him and see him they would. 

 His traveling companion remonstrated, but they were many 

 and Mr. Spencer had no gun. They took their look and de- 

 parted, but of conversation they had none. You may force 

 a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. No 

 wonder that, after this, Mr. Spencer came to entertain a fear 

 respecting the permanency of our institutions, and to re- 

 mark, concerning our people, "The American has not, I 

 think, a sufficiently quick sense of his own claims, and, at 

 the same time, as a necessary consequence, not a sufficiently 

 quick sense of the claims of others, — for the two traits are 

 organically related. I observe that you tolerate various 

 small interferences and dictations which Englishmen are 

 prone to resist. I am told that the English are remarked 

 on for their tendency to grumble in such cases ; and I have 

 no doubt it is true." 



" Do you think it worth while," asks the interviewer, " for 

 people to make themselves disagreeable by resenting every 

 trifling aggression ? We Americans think it involves too 

 much loss of time and temper, and doesn't pay." 



"Exactly," replies Mr. Spencer ; "that is what I mean by 

 character. It is this easy-going readiness to permit small 

 trespasses, because it would be troublesome or profitless, or 

 unpopular to resist, which leads to the habit of acquiesence 

 in wrong and the decay of free institutions." * 



One time, at the Athenaeum club, I was introduced by 

 Mr. Spencer to Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the lunch-room. I 



* "Herbert Spencer in America." D. Appleton & Co. 188a 



