labor, physical as well as mental, of lecturing on burning questions to large audiences. All that, however, goes on in hot, crowded rooms, full of vitiated air; and it gives no proper exercise to the legs and loins or the lower vital organs. After one of my remonstrances Mr. Bradlaugh invited me to play a game of billiards. It was the only time I ever played with him. His style with the cue was spacious and splendid; The balls went flying about the board, and I chaffed him on his flukes. He had not the temperament of a billiard-player. Still, I have heard that he played a fair game at St. Stephen's; but I can hardly believe it without first-hand testimony. I am willing to believe, however, that he was a good chess-player. Certainly he had a head for it But chess is a vile game for a brain-worker, whose recreations should never involve a mental strain.

When I first knew Mr. Bradlaugh he was living at Tottenham. I never visited him there, but I often called on him at his later lodgings in Turner-street, Commercial-road. He occupied the ground floor, consisting of two rooms. The back was his bedroom, and the front his library and workshop. It was what the Americans call a one-horse affair. Shelves all round the room were filled with books. Mr. Bradlaugh sat at a desk with his back to the fireplace. On his right was the door communicating with his bedroom facing him the door opening on the passage, and on his right (? left) the street window. The room itself could hardly have been more than twelve or thirteen feet square. I once told him he was too near the fireplace, and he said it was sometimes good to have the poker handy. At that I stared, and he told me the following story.

One day a gentleman called on him and was invited to take a chair. He sat down facing Mr. Bradlaugh, and explained that he wanted advice on a very particular matter. God Almighty had told him to kill someone, and he had a difficulty in selecting a victim. Mr. Bradlaugh put his hand behind him and quietly grasped the poker. The inspired gentleman put the problem as a knotty one, and begged the assistance of the clever Iconoclast. "Well," said Mr. Bradlaugh, keeping quite cool, "what do you say to the Archbishop of Canterbury?" "The very man!" exclaimed the inspired gentleman. He got Mr. Bradlaugh to give him the Archbishop's address, and said, "Good-day," with a profusion of thanks. Mr. Bradlaugh went to the door to look for a policeman, but none was visible, and the inspired gentleman was soon out of sight.

"So you see," said Mr. Bradlaugh, "It's good to have the poker handy. I never saw or heard of the man again, and I knew he couldn't get near the Archbishop. There are too many flunkeys in the way."

Those were my struggling days, and Mr. Bradlaugh was very kind to me. I remember the Sunday evening when I told him I thought of taking to the Freethought platform. He pointed out the hard and thorny path I should have to tread, but when he saw I was resolved on the attempt, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "There is no young man in the movement I would sooner welcome."

In the very same room, on another Sunday evening a little later, I first saw James Thomson. He came down to the Hall of Science with Mr. Bradlaugh, in whose employment he then was, and I gave him the article I had brought for the National Reformer. He shook hands very cordially, and I was delighted to meet one for whose poetry I had a profound admiration.

It was also at the Hall of Science, about the same time, that I met the eccentric Mr. Turberville, brother to Mr. Blackmore, the novelist. He was a man of parts with a bee in his bonnet. He claimed kinship with Turberville, a minor poet of the sixteenth century, and he loved to talk of poetry. His knowledge of Shakespeare was profound and minute. He admired Mr. Bradlaugh's perorations immensely, as well as his bold defence of Freethought. He made out a will in Mr. Bradlaugh's favor, but he subsequently made another will, and died in circumstances that necessitated an inquest. By agreement, however, Mr. Bradlaugh obtained £2,500 from the estate, and the windfall came opportunely, for his struggles and litigations had involved him in considerable debt. I know he often had to borrow money on heavy interest. One day, at Turner-street, he told me that a creditor of this species had coolly invited him to dinner. "Hang it," he said, "you can't dine with a man who charges you sixty per cent."

Another recollection I have of Mr. Bradlaugh is in connexion with the funeral of Mr. Austin Holyoake. The death of this gentleman was a great loss to the Freethought cause. He was highly respected by all who knew him. The geniality of his disposition was such that he had many friends and not a single enemy. For some years he was Mr. Bradlaugh's printer and publisher, and a frequent contributor to his journal. He was foremost in every good work, but he was one of those modest men who never get the credit of their labors. He died at 17 Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, in an upstairs room above the printing office, where his devoted wife had for many weeks nursed his flickering life. The funeral was a notable event. Those of us who could afford it rode in the undertaker's coaches, and the rest walked in procession to Highgate Cemetery. I can still see Mr. Bradlaugh in my mind's eye, bustling about on the ground floor, taking everything as usual on his own shoulders. He sorted us in fours for the coaches, my vis à vis being James Thomson. At the graveside, after the reading of Austin Holyoake's own funeral service by Mr. Charles Watts, Mr. Bradlaugh delivered a brief address which he had written for the occasion. On the whole it was too much a composition, but one sentence was true "Bradlaugh," and it sounds in my ears still:—"Twenty years of friendship lie buried in that grave."

How such scenes are impressed on one's memory! As I write I see the set face of Charles Bradlaugh. I behold the sob-shaken back and bowed head of Herbert Gilham just in front of me. I hear and feel the cool, rustling wind, like a plaintive requiem over the dead.

Once again, years afterwards, I saw Mr. Bradlaugh in the same cemetery, supporting the helpless figure of Mrs. Ernestine Rose as she left the open grave of the dear partner of her long life of labor for the cause of human redemption.

Owing to circumstances, into which I need not enter, I saw little of Mr. Bradlaugh between 1875 and 1880. When he was returned for Northampton I rejoiced, and when he was committed to the Clock Tower I saw my duty sun-clear. It was to participate as I could, and might, in the struggle. My contributions to Mr. Bradlaugh's journal were resumed, and I spoke at meetings in his behalf. In May, 1881, I started the Freethinker, my oldest living child. Mr. Bradlaugh acted with his natural generosity. He advertised my bantling gratuitously in his own journal, and gave it every possible facility. This was not known at the time, but I ought to state it now.

Throughout that long, terrible struggle with the House of Commons I was with Mr. Bradlaugh on every point. If he made a single mistake I have yet to see it indicated. My article in the first number of the Freethinker was entitled "Mr. Bradlaugh's Advisers." Its object was to show the absurdity of the plentiful advice offered him, and the absolute justice of the course he was pursuing.

Three weeks afterwards the bigots convened a ticket meeting at Exeter Hall. The chief promoters were Earl Percy, Sir Bartle Frere, and butcher Varley. Mr. Bradlaugh was afraid the meeting would have a pre-judicial effect on public opinion in the provinces. The fact of the tickets would be kept back, and the report would go forth that a vote was unanimously passed against him at a big London demonstration. It was necessary, therefore, that the meeting should be spoiled. And it was. Mr. Bradlaugh gave me the task of moving an amendment. We had a chat in his library at St. John's Wood, and as we parted he said, "I rely on you, Foote." He looked at me