and after he had left, word went
round that he had gone, and the riot he had quelled broke out afresh.
The Riot Act was at last read, the soldiers were called out, stones
flew freely, heads and windows were broken, but no very serious harm
was done. The "Palmerston" and the printing-office of the _Mercury_,
the Whig organ, were the principal sufferers; doors and windows
disappearing somewhat completely. The day after the election I
returned home, and soon after fell ill with a severe attack of
congestion of the lungs. Soon after my recovery I left Norwood and
settled in a house in Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, where I remained
till 1876.

In the following January (1875), after much thought and self-analysis,
I resolved to give myself wholly to propagandist work, as a
Freethinker and a Social Reformer, and to use my tongue as well as my
pen in the struggle. I counted the cost ere I determined on this step,
for I knew that it would not only outrage the feelings of such new
friends as I had already made, but would be likely to imperil my
custody of my little girl. I knew that an Atheist was outside the law,
obnoxious to its penalties, but deprived of its protection, and that
the step I contemplated might carry me into conflicts in which
everything might be lost and nothing could be gained. But the desire
to spread liberty and truer thought among men, to war against bigotry
and superstition, to make the world freer and better than I found
it--all this impelled me with a force that would not be denied. I
seemed to hear the voice of Truth ringing over the battlefield: "Who
will go? Who will speak for me?" And I sprang forward with passionate
enthusiasm, with resolute cry: "Here am I, send me!" Nor have I ever
regretted for one hour that resolution, come to in solitude, carried
out amid the surging life of men, to devote to that sacred cause every
power of brain and tongue that I possessed. Very solemn to me is the
responsibility of the public teacher, standing forth in Press and on
platform to partly mould the thought of his time, swaying thousands of
readers and hearers year after year. No weighter responsibility can
any take, no more sacred charge. The written and the spoken word start
forces none may measure, set working brain after brain, influence
numbers unknown to the forthgiver of the word, work for good or for
evil all down the stream of time. Feeling the greatness of the career,
the solemnity of the duty, I pledge