anced at me keenly. "Ah, little lady, you are facing, then, that
problem at last? I thought it must come. Write away."

While this pamphlet was in MS. an event occurred which coloured all my
succeeding life. I met Charles Bradlaugh. One day in the late spring,
talking with Mrs. Conway--one of the sweetest and steadiest natures
whom it has been my lot to meet, and to whom, as to her husband, I owe
much for kindness generously shown when I was poor and had but few
friends--she asked me if I had been to the Hall of Science, Old
Street. I answered, with the stupid, ignorant reflection of other
people's prejudices so sadly common, "No, I have never been there. Mr.
Bradlaugh is rather a rough sort of speaker, is he not?"

"He is the finest speaker of Saxon-English that I have ever heard,"
she answered, "except, perhaps, John Bright, and his power over a
crowd is something marvellous. Whether you agree with him or not, you
should hear him."

In the following July I went into the shop of Mr. Edward Truelove,
256, High Holborn, in search of some Comtist publications, having come
across his name as a publisher in the course of my study at the
British Museum. On the counter was a copy of the _National Reformer_,
and, attracted by the title, I bought it. I read it placidly in the
omnibus on my way to Victoria Station, and found it excellent, and was
sent into convulsions of inward merriment when, glancing up, I saw an
old gentleman gazing at me, with horror speaking from every line of
his countenance. To see a young woman, respectably dressed in crape,
reading an Atheistic journal, had evidently upset his peace of mind,
and he looked so hard at the paper that I was tempted to offer it to
him, but repressed the mischievous inclination.

This first copy of the paper with which I was to be so closely
connected bore date July 19, 1874, and contained two long letters from
a Mr. Arnold of Northampton, attacking Mr. Bradlaugh, and a brief and
singularly self-restrained answer from the latter. There was also an
article on the National Secular Society, which made me aware that
there was an organisation devoted to the propagandism of Free Thought.
I felt that if such a society existed, I ought to belong to it, and I
consequently wrote a short note to the editor of the _National
Reformer_, asking whether it was necessary for a person to profess
Atheism before being admitted to the Society. The answer appeared in
the _National Reformer_:--