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a4 ' HERBERT SPKNCKR
Spencer's next activity was an inquiry into his
father's system of short-hand, which he fount! to he better than Pitman's. He passed to speculation* on the methods to be followed in forming a universal language, and to shrewd criticisms of the* decimal system of enumeration, In the autumn of 1842 he interested himself enthusiascktlly in ** The Complete Suffrage Movement," For t youth of twenty-two he took a big plunge into polities, ** It produced in me a high tide of mental energy ** j the signature on a draft democratic bill " has a sweep and vigour exceed- ing that of any other signature I ever made, either before or since«w
In the spring of 1843 Herbert Spencer went to
London and tried very unsuccessfully* to get «ditor§ to accept his wares, He mtdc a pamphlet of hit Nonconformist letters, but perhaps a hundred copies were sold ! "The printer's bill was £lo 2s, <W.» and the publisher's payment to me on the ilm year's was fourteen shillings and threepence ! **
Experimenting with Life*—-Spencer** half yeir in
London came to little. As he says, he was too much4 * in the mood of Mr Micawber,—waiting for something it* turn up, and waiting in vain,'* So he raised the and retreated to Derby, There he read Mill** Sjtttrm of Logic, Carlyle's Sartor /four/or and some of Emerson's essays, He tried his hand at improving watches, printing-presses, type-making, and what not} he speculated on the role of carbon in the earth's history, and on phrenology j and in 1844 he migrated to Birmingham to be sub-editor of i short- lived paper called The Pi/ot*
It was then that he made a superficial acquaintance
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