the wrong place” do not seem necessary correlatives, yet I rarely went to a temperance hotel in which water was liberally used for other purposes than that of drinking.  From Glasgow I went north to Aberdeen, where I found a very stern and critical audience.  Not a sound broke the stillness as I walked up the hall; not a sound as I ascended the platform and faced the people; the canny Scot was not going to applaud a stranger at sight; he was going to see what she was like first.  In grim silence they listened; I could not move them; they were granite like their own granite city, and I felt I would like to take off my head and throw it at them, if only to break that hard wall.  After about twenty minutes, a fortunate phrase drew a hiss from some child of the Covenanters.  I made a quick retort, there was a burst of cheering, and the granite vanished.  Never after that did I have to complain of the coldness of an Aberdeen audience.  Back to London from Aberdeen, and a long, weary journey it was, in a third-class carriage in the cold month of February; but the labour 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 life.

On February 28th I stood for the first time on the platform of the Hall of Science, Old Street, St. Luke’s, London, and was received with that warmth of greeting which Secularists are always so ready to extend to any who sacrifice aught to join their ranks.  That hall is identified in my mind with many a bitter struggle, with both victory and defeat, but whether in victory or in defeat I found there always welcome; and the love and the courage wherewith Secularists stood by me have overpaid a thousandfold any poor services I was fortunate enough to render, while in their ranks, to the cause of Liberty, and wholly prevent any bitterness arising in my mind for any unfriendliness shown me by some, who have perhaps overstepped kindness and justice in their sorrowful wrath at my renunciation of Materialism and Atheism.  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 standing platform work, he answered, “It will either kill you or cure you.”  It entirely cured the lung weakness, and I grew strong and vigorous instead of being frail and delicate, as of old.

It would be wearisome to go step by step over eighteen years of platform work, so I will only select here and there incidents illustrative of the whole.  And here let me say that the frequent attacks made on myself and others, that we were attracted to Free-thought propaganda by the gains it offered, formed a somewhat grotesque contrast to the facts.  On one occasion I spent eight days in Northumberland and Durham, gave twelve lectures, and made a deficit of eleven shillings on the whole.  Of course such a thing could not happen in later years, when I had made my name by