o much to do in holding its own
that little time and thought could be given to international
organisation. For myself, my introduction to Dr. Buechner, led to much
interesting correspondence, and I translated, with his approval, his
"Mind in Animals," and the enlarged fourteenth edition of "Force and
Matter," as well as one or two pamphlets. This autumn of 1880 found
the so-called Liberal Government in full tilt against the Irish
leaders, and I worked hard to raise English feeling in defence of
Irish freedom even against attack by one so much honoured as was Mr.
Gladstone. It was uphill work, for harsh language had been used
against England and all things English, but I showed by definite
figures--all up and down England--that life and property were far
safer in Ireland than in England, that Ireland was singularly free
from crime save in agrarian disputes, and I argued that these would
disappear if the law should step in between landlord and tenant, and
by stopping the crimes of rack-renting and most brutal eviction, put
an end to the horrible retaliations that were born of despair and
revenge. A striking point on these evictions I quoted from Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, who, using Mr. Gladstone's words that a sentence of eviction
was a sentence of starvation, told of 15,000 processes of eviction
issued in that one year. The autumn's work was varied by the teaching
of science classes, a debate with a clergyman of the Church of
England, and an operation which kept me in bed for three weeks, but
which, on the other hand, was useful, for I learned to write while
lying on my back, and accomplished in this fashion a good part of the
translation of "Mind in Animals."

And here let me point a moral about hard work. Hard work kills no one.
I find a note in the _National Reformer_ in 1880 from the pen of Mr.
Bradlaugh: "It is, we fear, useless to add that, in the judgment of
her best friends, Mrs. Besant has worked far too hard during the last
two years." This is 1893, and the thirteen years' interval has been
full of incessant work, and I am working harder than ever now, and in
splendid health. Looking over the _National Reformer_ for all these
years, it seems to me that it did really fine educational work; Mr.
Bradlaugh's strenuous utterances on political and theological matters;
Dr. Aveling's luminous and beautiful scientific teachings; and to my
share fell much of the educative work on questions of political and
national morality in