mind's eye, bustling about
on the ground floor, taking everything as usual on his own shoulders. He
sorted us in fours for the coaches, my _vis a vis_ being James Thomson.
At the graveside, after the reading of Austin Holyoake's own funeral
service by Mr. Charles Watts, Mr. Bradlaugh delivered a brief address
which he had written for the occasion. On the whole it was too much a
composition, but one sentence was true "Bradlaugh," and it sounds in my
ears still:--"Twenty years of friendship lie buried in that grave."

How such scenes are impressed on one's memory! As I write I see the set
face of Charles Bradlaugh. I behold the sob-shaken back and bowed
head of Herbert Gilham just in front of me. I hear and feel the cool,
rustling wind, like a plaintive requiem over the dead.

Once again, years afterwards, I saw Mr. Bradlaugh in the same cemetery,
supporting the helpless figure of Mrs. Ernestine Rose as she left the
open grave of the dear partner of her long life of labor for the cause
of human redemption.

Owing to circumstances, into which I need not enter, I saw little of Mr.
Bradlaugh between 1875 and 1880. When he was returned for Northampton
I rejoiced, and when he was committed to the Clock Tower I saw my duty
sun-clear. It was to participate as I could, and might, in the struggle.
My contributions to Mr. Bradlaugh's journal were resumed, and I spoke
at meetings in his behalf. In May, 1881, I started the _Freethinker_, my
oldest living child. Mr. Bradlaugh acted with his natural generosity.
He advertised my bantling gratuitously in his own journal, and gave it
every possible facility. This was not known at the time, but I ought to
state it now.

Throughout that long, terrible struggle with the House of Commons I was
with Mr. Bradlaugh on every point. If he made a single mistake I
have yet to see it indicated. My article in the first number of the
_Freethinker_ was entitled "Mr. Bradlaugh's Advisers." Its object was to
show the absurdity of the plentiful advice offered him, and the absolute
justice of the course he was pursuing.

Three weeks afterwards the bigots convened a ticket meeting at Exeter
Hall. The chief promoters were Earl Percy, Sir Bartle Frere, and butcher
Varley. Mr. Bradlaugh was afraid the meeting would have a pre-judicial
effect on public opinion in the provinces. The fact of the _tickets_
would be kept back, and the report would go forth that a vote was
unanimously passed against him at a big