surely most needless proceeding; it strikes me this is an unnecessary indignity to which to subject an uncondemned prisoner, except in cases of theft, where stolen property might be concealed about the person.  It is extremely unpleasant to be handled, and on such a charge as that against myself a search was an absurdity.  The woman was as civil as she could be, but, as she fairly enough said, she had no option in the matter.  After this, I went back to the room and rejoined my fellow prisoner and we chatted peaceably with our guardians; they quite recognised our object in our proceedings, and one gave it as his opinion that we ought to have been summoned, and not taken by warrant.  Taken, however, we clearly were, and we presently drove on to Guildhall, Mr. Outram in the cab with us, and Mr. Williams on the box.

“At Guildhall, we passed straight into the court, through the dock, and down the stairs.  Here Mr. Outram delivered us over to the gaoler, and the most uncomfortable part of our experiences began.  Below the court are a number of cells, stone floored and whitewashed walled; instead of doors there are heavy iron gates, covered with thick close grating; the passages are divided here and there with similar strong iron gates, only some of which are grated.  The rules of the place of course divided the sexes, so Mr. Bradlaugh and myself were not allowed to occupy the same cell; the gaoler, however, did the best he could for us, by allowing me to remain in a section of the passage which separated the men’s from the women’s cells, and by putting Mr. Bradlaugh into the first of the men’s.  Then, by opening a little window in the thick wall, a grating was discovered, through which we could dimly see each other.  Mr. Bradlaugh’s face, as seen from my side, scored all over with the little oblong holes in the grating reflected by the dull glimmer of the gas in the passage, was curious rather than handsome; mine was, probably, not more attractive.  In this charming place we passed two hours-and-a-half, and it was very dull and very cold.  We solaced ourselves, at first, by reading the Secular Review, Mr. Bradlaugh tearing it into pages, and passing them one by one through the grating.  By pushing on his side and pulling on mine, we managed to get them through the narrow holes.  Our position when we read them was a strange satire on one article (which I read with great pain), which expressed the writer’s opinion that the book was so altered as not to be worth prosecuting.  Neither the police nor the magistrate recognised any difference between the two editions.  As I knew the second edition, taken from Mr. Watts’, was almost ready for delivery as I read, I could not help smiling at the idea that no one ’had the courage’ to reprint it.