The man sat down stupidly, staring at me, and in a minute or two more the train pulled up at a station.  It had been stopped by signal.  In a moment I was at the window, calling the guard.  I rapidly explained to him that I was travelling alone, that a half-drunken man was with me, and I begged him to put me into another carriage.  With the usual kindliness of a railway official, the guard at once moved my baggage and myself into an empty compartment, into which he locked me, and he kept a friendly watch over me at every station at which we stopped until he landed me safely at Glasgow.

At Glasgow a room had been taken for me at a Temperance Hotel, and it seemed to me a new and lonely sort of thing to be “on my own account” in a strange city in a strange hotel.  By the way, why are Temperance Hotels so often lacking in cleanliness?  Surely abstinence from wine and superfluity of “matter in the wrong place” need not necessarily be correlated in hotel-life, and yet my experience leads me to look for the twain together.  Here and there I have been to Temperance Hotels in which water is used for other purposes than that of drinking, but these are, I regret to say, the exceptions to a melancholy rule.

From Glasgow I went north to Aberdeen, and from Aberdeen home again to London.  A long weary journey that was, in a third-class carriage in the cold month of February, but the labor had in it a joy that outpaid all physical discomfort, and the feeling that I had found my work in the world gave a new happiness to my life.

I reported my doings to the chief of our party in America, and found them only half approved.  “You should have waited till I returned, and at least I could have saved you some discomforts,” he wrote; but the discomforts troubled me little, and I think I rather preferred the independent launch out into lecturing work, trusting only to my own courage and ability to win my way.  So far as health was concerned, the lecturing acted as a tonic.  My chest had always been a little delicate, and when I consulted a doctor on the possibility of my lecturing he answered:  “It will either kill you or cure you”.  It has entirely cured the lung weakness, and I have grown strong and vigorous instead of being frail and delicate as of old.

On February 28th I delivered my first lecture at the Hall of Science, London, and was received with that warmth of greeting which Freethinkers are ever willing to extend to one who sacrifices aught to join their ranks.  From that day to this that hearty welcome at our central London hall has never failed me, and the love and courage wherewith Freethinkers have ever stood by me have overpaid a thousandfold any poor services I have been fortunate enough to render to the common cause.

It would be wearisome to go step by step over the ten years’ journeys and lectures; I will only select, here and there, incidents illustrative of the whole.

Some folk say that the lives of Freethought lecturers are easy, and that their lecturing tours are lucrative in the extreme.  On one occasion I spent eight days in the north lecturing daily, with three lectures on the two Sundays, and made a deficit of 11s. on the journey!  I do not pretend that such a thing would happen now, but I fancy that every Freethought lecturer could tell of a similar experience in the early days of “winning his way”.