At the opening of the new year (1879) I met for the first time a man to whom I subsequently owed much in this department of work—­Edward B. Aveling, a D.Sc. of London University, and a marvellously able teacher of scientific subjects, the very ablest, in fact, that I have ever met.  Clear and accurate in his knowledge, with a singular gift for lucid exposition, enthusiastic in his love of science, and taking vivid pleasure in imparting his knowledge to others, he was an ideal teacher.  This young man, in January, 1879, began writing under initials for the National Reformer, and in February I became his pupil, with the view of matriculating in June at the London University, an object which was duly accomplished.  And here let me say to any one in mental trouble, that they might find an immense relief in taking up some intellectual recreation of this kind; during that spring, in addition to my ordinary work of writing, lecturing, and editing—­and the lecturing meant travelling from one end of England to the other—­I translated a fair-sized French volume, and had the wear-and-tear of pleading my case for the custody of my daughter in the Court of Appeal, as well as the case before the Master of the Rolls; and I found it the very greatest relief to turn to algebra, geometry, and physics, and forget the harassing legal struggles in wrestling with formulae and problems.  The full access I gained to my children marked a step in the long battle of Freethinkers against disabilities, for, as noted in the National Reformer by Mr. Bradlaugh, it was “won with a pleading unequalled in any case on record for the boldness of its affirmation of Freethought,” a pleading of which he generously said that it deserved well of the party as “the most powerful pleading for freedom of opinion to which it has ever been our good fortune to listen.”

In the London Daily News some powerful letters of protest appeared, one from Lord Harberton, in which he declared that “the Inquisition acted on no other principle” than that applied to me; and a second from Mr. Band, in which he sarcastically observed that “this Christian community has for some time had the pleasure of seeing her Majesty’s courts repeatedly springing engines of torture upon a young mother—­a clergyman’s wife who dared to disagree with his creed—­and her evident anguish, her long and expensive struggles to save her child, have proved that so far as heretical mothers are concerned modern defenders of the faith need not envy the past those persuasive instruments which so long secured the unity of the Church.  In making Mrs. Besant an example, the Master of the Rolls and Lord Justice James have been careful not to allow any of the effect to be lost by confusion of the main point—­the intellectual heresy—­with side questions.  There was a Malthusian matter in the case, but the judges were very clear in stating that without any reference whatever to that, they would simply, on the ground of Mrs. Besant’s ’religious,