, having seen the cancelled certificate.

My second lecture was delivered on September 27th, during the election
struggle, at Mr. Moncure D. Conway's Chapel in St. Paul's Road, Camden
Town, and was on "The true basis of morality.". The lecture was
re-delivered a few weeks later at a Unitarian chapel, where the minister
was the Rev. Peter Dean, and gave, I was afterwards told, great offence
to some of the congregation, especially to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who
declared that she would have left the chapel had not the speaker been a
woman. The ground of complaint was that the suggested "basis" was
Utilitarian and human instead of Intuitional and Theistic. Published as a
pamphlet, the lecture has reached its seventh thousand.

In October I had a severe attack of congestion of the lungs, and soon
after my recovery I left Norwood to settle in London. I found that my
work required that I should be nearer head-quarters, and I arranged to
rent part of a house--19, Westbourne Park Terrace, Bayswater--two lady
friends taking the remainder. The arrangement proved a very comfortable
one, and it continued until my improved means enabled me, in 1876, to
take a house of my own.

In January, 1875, I made up my mind to lecture regularly, and in the
_National Reformer_ for January 17th I find the announcement that "Mrs.
Annie Besant (Ajax) will lecture at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on
'Civil and religious liberty'", Mr. Conway took the chair at this first
identification of "Ajax" with myself, and sent a very kindly notice of
the lecture to the _Cincinnati Commercial_. Mr. Charles Watts wrote a
report in the _National Reformer_ of January 24th. Dr. Maurice Davies
also wrote a very favorable article in a London journal, but
unfortunately he knew Mr. Walter Besant, who persuaded him to suppress my
name, so that although the notice appeared it did me no service. My
struggle to gain my livelihood was for some time rendered considerably
more difficult by this kind of ungenerous and underhand antagonism. A
woman's road to the earning of her own living, especially when she is
weighted with the care of a young child, is always fairly thorny at the
outset, and does not need to be rendered yet more difficult by secret
attempts to injure, on the part of those who trust that suffering and
poverty may avail to bend pride to submission.

My next lecture was given in the Theatre Royal, Northampton, and in the
_National Reformer_ of February 14th