but no very serious harm was done.  The “Palmerston” and the printing-office of the Mercury, the Whig organ, were the principal sufferers; doors and windows disappearing somewhat completely.  The day after the election I returned home, and soon after fell ill with a severe attack of congestion of the lungs.  Soon after my recovery I left Norwood and settled in a house in Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, where I remained till 1876.

In the following January (1875), after much thought and self-analysis, I resolved to give myself wholly to propagandist work, as a Freethinker and a Social Reformer, and to use my tongue as well as my pen in the struggle.  I counted the cost ere I determined on this step, for I knew that it would not only outrage the feelings of such new friends as I had already made, but would be likely to imperil my custody of my little girl.  I knew that an Atheist was outside the law, obnoxious to its penalties, but deprived of its protection, and that the step I contemplated might carry me into conflicts in which everything might be lost and nothing could be gained.  But the desire to spread liberty and truer thought among men, to war against bigotry and superstition, to make the world freer and better than I found it—­all this impelled me with a force that would not be denied.  I seemed to hear the voice of Truth ringing over the battlefield:  “Who will go?  Who will speak for me?” And I sprang forward with passionate enthusiasm, with resolute cry:  “Here am I, send me!” Nor have I ever regretted for one hour that resolution, come to in solitude, carried out amid the surging life of men, to devote to that sacred cause every power of brain and tongue that I possessed.  Very solemn to me is the responsibility of the public teacher, standing forth in Press and on platform to partly mould the thought of his time, swaying thousands of readers and hearers year after year.  No weighter responsibility can any take, no more sacred charge.  The written and the spoken word start forces none may measure, set working brain after brain, influence numbers unknown to the forthgiver of the word, work for good or for evil all down the stream of time.  Feeling the greatness of the career, the solemnity of the duty, I pledged my word then to the cause I loved that no effort on my part should be wanted to render myself worthy of the privilege of service that I took; that I would read and study, and would train every faculty that I had; that I would polish my language, discipline my thought, widen my knowledge; and this, at least, I may say, that if I have written and spoken much, I have studied and thought more, and that I have not given to my mistress Truth that “which hath cost me nothing.”