Excerpt from The Unpartizan Review, Vol. 14: July December 1920

Those who have read Herbert Spencer's story of his own life will recall that, during his early manhood, he was engaged in a subordinate capacity in building railways in England. In the Spring of 1882, I stood with him on a bridge crossing the tracks of the London and Northwestern Railway at Harrow Road, near Willesden Junction, and he pointed to the sloping embankment edging the railway as one that he had constructed forty-four years earlier. A short distance across the fields we could see a farm-house at which he had lodged when so engaged, and it was while returning to this lodging that he had had an exciting adventure with a runaway truck. This he narrated as we leaned on the parapet of the bridge. The story is tamely told in the Autobiography, where it lacks the vivid, colorful quality it had when I first heard it.

The occasion was on one of those delightful walks in which Spencer was wont to indulge when his work was possible without frequent reference to notes. Taking a cab or train to the outskirts of London, we would start briskly across the country by paths known to him from long familiarity, and, finding a grassy knoll or shady nook, he would recline with hands clasped behind his head and dictate for ten or fifteen minutes.

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