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 appears for the first time my list of lecturing engagements, so that in February next I shall complete my first decade of lecturing for the Freethought and Republican Cause.  Never, since first I stood on the Freethought platform, have I felt one hour’s regret for the resolution taken in solitude in January, 1875, to devote to that sacred Cause every power of brain and tongue that I possessed.  Not lightly was that resolution taken, for I know no task of weightier responsibility than that of standing forth as teacher,