dmirable
skill of physician and nurse pulled him through. Said the _Baltimore
Advertiser_:--

"This long and severe illness has disappointed the hopes and retarded
the object for which he came to this country; but he is gentleness and
patience itself in his sickness in this strange land, and has endeared
himself greatly to his physicians and attendants by his gratitude and
appreciation of the slightest attention."

His fortitude in face of death was also much commented on, lying there
as he did far from home and from all he loved best. Never a quiver of
fear touched him as he walked down into the valley of the shadow of
death; the Rev. Mr. Frothingham bore public and admiring testimony in
his own church to Mr. Bradlaugh's noble serenity, at once fearless and
unpretending, and, himself a Theist, gave willing witness to the
Atheist's calm strength. He came back to us at the end of September,
worn to a shadow, weak as a child, and for many a long month he bore
the traces of his wrestle with death.

One part of my autumn's work during his absence was the delivery and
subsequent publication of six lectures on the French Revolution. That
stormy time had for me an intense fascination. I brooded over it,
dreamed over it, and longed to tell the story from the people's point
of view. I consequently read a large amount of the current literature
of the time, as well as Louis Blanc's monumental work and the
histories of Michelet, Lamartine, and others. Fortunately for me, Mr.
Bradlaugh had a splendid collection of books on the subject, and ere
we left England he brought me two cabs-full of volumes, aristocratic,
ecclesiastical, democratic, and I studied all these diligently, and
lived in them, till the French Revolution became to me as a drama in
which I had myself taken part, and the actors were to me as personal
friends and foes. In this, again, as in so much of my public work, I
have to thank Mr. Bradlaugh for the influence which led me to read
fully all sides of a question, and to read most carefully those from
which I differed most, ere I considered myself competent to write or
to speak thereon. From 1875 onwards I held office as one of the
vice-presidents of the National Secular Society--a society founded on
a broad basis of liberty, with the inspiring motto, "We Search for
Truth." Mr. Bradlaugh was president, and I held office under him till
he resigned his post in February, 1890, nine months after I had joined
the Theoso