judgment,
were of priceless service to me, and what of value there is in my work
is very largely due to his influence, which at once stimulated and
restrained.

One very charming characteristic of his was his extreme courtesy in
private life, especially to women. This outward polish, which sat so
gracefully on his massive frame and stately presence, was foreign
rather than English--for the English, as a rule, save such as go to
Court, are a singularly unpolished people--and it gave his manner a
peculiar charm. I asked him once where he had learned his gracious
fashions that were so un-English--he would stand with uplifted hat as
he asked a question of a maidservant, or handed a woman into a
carriage--and he answered, with a half-smile, half-scoff, that it was
only in England he was an outcast from society. In France, in Spain,
in Italy, he was always welcomed among men and women of the highest
social rank, and he supposed that he had unconsciously caught the
foreign tricks of manner. Moreover, he was absolutely indifferent to
all questions of social position; peer or artisan, it was to him
exactly the same; he never seemed conscious of the distinctions of
which men make so much.

Our first conversation, after the meeting at the Hall of Science, took
place a day or two later in his little study in 29, Turner Street,
Commercial Road, a wee room overflowing with books, in which he looked
singularly out of place. Later I learned that he had failed in
business in consequence of Christian persecution, and, resolute to
avoid bankruptcy, he had sold everything he possessed, save his books,
had sent his wife and daughters to live in the country with his
father-in-law, had taken two tiny rooms in Turner Street, where he
could live for a mere trifle, and had bent himself to the task of
paying off the liabilities he had incurred--incurred in consequence of
his battling for political and religious liberty. I took with me my
MS. essay "On the Nature and Existence of God," and it served as the
basis for our conversation; we found there was little difference in
our views. "You have thought yourself into Atheism without knowing
it," he said, and all that I changed in the essay was the correction
of the vulgar error that the Atheist says "there is no God," by the
insertion of a passage disclaiming this position from an essay pointed
out to me by Mr. Bradlaugh. And at this stage of my life-story, it is
necessary to put very clearly the