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f gloomy solemnity to tell something so serious
about Charles that the daughter Elizabeth, who happened to be there,
was ordered out of the room. She remained weeping in the passage during
the whole time of the family conclave, thinking that her brother must
have done something very dreadful indeed.

Then the father went to see his son at Westminster, and obtained
permission for the new recruit to spend the Christmas Day with his
family. It is only natural to suppose that this semi-reconciliation
must have afforded them all some sort of comfort, while I have a very
strong personal conviction that the whole affair preyed upon the
father's mind, and that the harshness he showed his son was really
foreign to his general temper. Anyhow, his character underwent a great
change after he let himself come under the influence of Mr Packer. He
who before never went inside a church, now never missed a Sunday; he
became concentrated and, to a certain extent, morose, and at length, on
the 19th August 1852, some twenty months after his son's enlistment,
he was taken suddenly ill at his desk in Cloak Lane. He was brought
home in a state of unconsciousness, from which he was only aroused to
fall into violent delirium, and so continued without once recovering
his senses until the hour of his death, which was reached on Tuesday
the 24th. He was only forty-one years of age, and had always had good
health previously, never ailing anything; and I feel quite convinced
that the agony of mind which he must have endured from the time when
his son was first denounced to him as an "Atheist" was mainly the cause
of his early death.

The 7th Dragoon Guards was at that time quartered in Ireland, and Mr
A. S. Headingley tells at length the tragic-comic adventures the new
recruit met with at sea on the three days' journey from London to
Dublin:--

 "The recruits who were ordered to join their regiment were marched
 down to a ship lying in the Thames which was to sail all the way to
 Ireland. Bradlaugh was the only recruit who wore a black suit and a
 silk hat. The former was very threadbare, and the latter weak about
 the rim, but still to the other recruits he seemed absurdly attired;
 and as he looked pale and thin and ill conditioned, it was not long
 before some one ventured to destroy the dignity of his appearance by
 bonneting him. The silk hat thus disposed of, much to the amusement
 of the recruits, who considered horse play the equivalent of wit, a
 raid was made upon Bradlaugh's baggage. His box was ruthlessly broken
 open, and when it was discovered that a Greek lexicon and an Arabic
 vocabulary were the principal objects he had thought fit to bring into
 the regiment, the scorn and derision of his fellow soldiers knew no
 bounds.

 "A wild game of football was at once organized with the lexicon,
 and it came out of the scuffle torn and unmanageable. The Arabic
 vocabulary was a smaller volume, and it fared better. Ultimately,
 Bradlaugh recovered the book, and he keeps it still on his shelf,
 close to his desk, a cherished and useful relic of past struggles and
 endeavours.

 * * * * *

 "His luggage broken open, his books scattered to the winds, his hat
 desecrated and ludicrously mis-shaped by the rough hands of his fellow
 recruits, Bradlaugh certainly did not present the picture of a future
 leader of men. Yet, even at this early stage of his military life an
 opportunity soon occurred which turned the tables entirely in his
 favour.

 "The weather had been looking ugly for some time, and now became more
 and more menacing, till at last a storm broke upon the ship with a
 violence so intense that the captain feared for her safety. It was
 absolutely necessary to move the cargo, and his crew were not numerous
 enough to accomplish, unaided, so arduous a task. Their services
 also were urgently required to man[oe]uvre the ship. The captain,
 therefore, summoned the recruits to help, and promised that if they
 removed the cargo as he indicated, he would give them £5 to share
 among themselves. He further encouraged them by expressing his hope
 that if the work were well and promptly done, the ship would pull
 through the storm.

 "The proposition was greeted with cheers, and Bradlaugh, in spite of
 his sea-sickness, helped as far as he was able in moving the cargo.
 The ship now rode the waves more easily, and in due time the storm
 subsided; and, the danger over, the soldiers thought the hour of
 reckoning was at hand. The recruits began to inquire about the £5
 which had been offered as the reward of their gallant services; but,
 with the disappearance of the danger, the captain's generosity had
 considerably subsided. He then hit on a mean stratagem to avoid the
 fulfilment of his promise. He singled out three or four of the leading
 men, the strongest recruits, and gave them two half-crowns each,
 calculating that if the strongest had a little more than their share,
 they would silence the clamours of the weaker, who were altogether
 deprived of their due.

 "The captain had not, however, reckoned on the presence of Bradlaugh.
 The pale, awkward youth, who as yet had only been treated with jeers
 and contempt, was the only person who dared stand up and face him. To
 the unutterable surprise of every one, he delivered a fiery, menacing,
 unanswerable harangue, upbraiding the captain in no measured terms,
 exposing in lucid language the meanness of his action, and concluding
 with the appalling threat of a letter to the _Times_. To this day
 Bradlaugh remembers, with no small sense of self-satisfaction, the
 utter and speechless amazement of the captain at the sight of a person
 so miserable in appearance suddenly becoming so formidable in speech
 and menace.

 "Awakened, therefore, to a consciousness of his own iniquity by
 Bradlaugh's eloquence, the captain distributed more money. The
 soldiers on their side at once formed a very different opinion of
 their companion, and, from being the butt, he became the hero of the
 troop. Every one was anxious to show him some sort of deference, and
 to make some acknowledgment for the services he had rendered."

While serving with his regiment Mr Bradlaugh was a most active advocate
of temperance; he began, within a day or so of his arrival in Ireland,
upon the quarter-master's daughters. He had been ordered to do some
whitewashing for the quarter-master, and that officer's daughters
saw him while he was at work, and took pity on him. I have told how
he looked; and it is little wonder that his appearance aroused
compassion. They brought him a glass of port wine, but this my father
majestically refused, and delivered to the amused girls a lecture
upon the dangers of intemperance, emphasising his remarks by waves of
the whitewash brush. He has often laughed at the queer figure he must
have presented, tall and thin, with arms and legs protruding from his
clothes, and raised up near to the ceiling on a board, above the two
girls, who listened to 

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