A PHILOSOPHER'S PECULIARITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11686, 22 June 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

A PHILOSOPHER'S PECULIARITIES.

Mr. Hebukut Spenceti has just entered his eighty-second year, Though more or less of an invalid, he continues to entertain his friends in his Brighton home. Comic- operas have much amused him in his time, but in: hits given them up now, and he has given up also the prolonged games at billiards, at which In; whs an adept rather proud of his skill. It is recorded that on one. occasion ho found at his club his master in a very young man, who beat him thoroughly. Win his defeat was no longer to be disguised Mr. Spencer leaned on his cue urn! delivered himself of the following: "'A certain proficiency in this game is possibly a, desirable accomplishment, bat the extraordinary ability, sir, you have just displayed can only be the fruit of a misspent youth." Mr. Spencer has not, we are told, found the publication of philosophical works remunerative. His publishers have been obliged to mind their " p's" and " ij's" in the make-up of those books, for it has been the author's invariable habit closely to supervise the work of the printer, and to insist on the carrying out of his instructions, 'the following copy of an autograph postcard of 1893 illustrates this:—"ln making up into pages avoid sundry things which 1 dislike. (1) The division between sections must on no account correspond '.villi I lie endings or beginnings of pages. (2) 1 dislike also to have paragraphs beginning or ending with pages. (3) I disapprove entirely of the spaces habitually left between text and extracts. There must be no more space than between two hues of lest."