A place on the staff of the National Reformer was offered me by Mr. Bradlaugh a few days after our first meeting, and the small weekly salary thus earned—­it was only a guinea, for national reformers are always poor—­was a very welcome addition to my resources.  My first contribution appeared in the number for August 30, 1874, over the signature of “Ajax,” and I wrote in it regularly until Mr. Bradlaugh died; from 1877 until his death I sub-edited it, so as to free him from all the technical trouble and the weary reading of copy, and for part of this period was also co-editor.  I wrote at first under a nom de guerre, because the work I was doing for Mr. Scott would have been prejudiced had my name appeared in the columns of the terrible National Reformer, and until this work—­commenced and paid for—­was concluded I did not feel at liberty to use my own name.  Afterwards, I signed my National Reformer articles, and the tracts written for Mr. Scott appeared anonymously.

The name was suggested by the famous statue of “Ajax Crying for Light,” a cast of which may be seen in the centre walk by any visitor to the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.  The cry through the darkness for light, even though light should bring destruction, was one that awoke the keenest sympathy of response from my heart: 

  “If our fate be death
  Give light, and let us die!”

To see, to know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though the knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes—­such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind in man.  Some regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it exists most strongly in some of the noblest of our race; that from the lips of those who have done most in lifting the burden of ignorance from the overstrained and bowed shoulders of a stumbling world has gone out most often into the empty darkness the pleading, impassioned cry: 

“Give light!”

The light may come with a blinding flash, but it is light none the less, and we can see.

And now the time had come when I was to use that gift of speech which I had discovered in Sibsey Church that I possessed, and to use it to move hearts and brains all over the English land.  In 1874, tentatively, and in 1875 definitely, I took up this keen weapon, and have used it ever since.  My first attempt was at a garden party, in a brief informal debate, and I found that words came readily and smoothly:  the second in a discussion at the Liberal Social Union on the opening of museums and art galleries on Sunday.  My first lecture was given at the Co-operative Institute, 55, Castle Street, Oxford Street, on August 25, 1874.  Mr. Greening—­then, I think, the secretary—­had invited me to read a paper before the society, and had left me the choice of the subject.  I resolved that my first public lecture should be on behalf of my own sex, so I selected for my theme, “The