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eth (five or six miles from Bedlington) at the very hour at which
he ought to have been on the platform. "A rapid wash while horses were
being got ready; no time for tea, and off we sped to our destination,
where we found the little hall crowded with an eager and appreciative
audience, some of whom had walked many miles to be present." A midnight
return drive with storm most furiously raging, and then to Newcastle,
where three lectures were delivered on the Sunday. "In forty-eight
hours I travelled nearly 630 miles, delivered four lectures, and came
back to that daily toil for that life-subsistence which is so hard
to win. I need hardly add that the mere travelling expenses on such
a journey swallow up all profit derivable from the lectures." The
Glasgow and Edinburgh lectures in the beginning of August meant "one
thousand miles and four lectures in two days and three nights, and
back to business by ten on Monday." At the end of August another visit
to Newcastle meant "another six hundred miles and three lectures in
one day and a half and two nights, following upon no less than three
open-air addresses at Northampton."

In the following year my father continued to do a great deal of public
speaking. His home troubles were growing greater, and his business life
in the city was daily becoming more difficult, but this seemed only
to make him toil the harder in that cause of religious and political
progress which lay so near his heart. At the new Hall of Science,
142 Old Street, which had just been leased in the interests of the
Freethought party, Mr Bradlaugh delivered in the year upwards of forty
lectures, for none of which he received a single penny, devoting the
whole of the proceeds towards paying the debt upon the building. He did
not allow any one month to pass without giving one or more Sundays to
the New Hall. He lectured several times also at the hall in Cleveland
Street; and in the latter part of the year, for the most part, he
visited thirty or more provincial towns, at many of which he gave three
discourses on the Sunday. In 1869 also Mr Bradlaugh took part in an
examination into alleged spiritualistic phenomena held by the London
Dialectical Society, but without any satisfactory results. Undoubtedly
the chief event of the year for him was his final defeat of the
Government in their prosecution of the _National Reformer_, and through
this the repeal of the odious Security laws. He was involved in another
law-suit, which, as we shall see later, led to the amending of the laws
relating to evidence.

Matters went rather more smoothly with my father's provincial
lecturing this year; no town seemed to be sufficiently encouraged
by the course of affairs in Devonport and Huddersfield to follow
their example very closely. But still he met with some rebuff. For
instance, when he was at Blyth on April 3rd, the innkeepers there were
all so pious that none would give him food or shelter. April 3rd was
a Saturday, not a Sunday, so there was not even the lame excuse of
keeping the Sabbath Day holy by refusing to harbour an Atheist. The
people of Blyth who undertook to provide for the creature comforts of
the inhabitants and visitors must have been bigoted to the last degree,
for in the week before Mr Bradlaugh's visit, a coffee-house keeper had
refused to supply with tea some persons who were rash enough to admit
that they had attended Mrs Law's lectures. Happily, such churlish
bigotry was by no means universal, for the Blyth Lecture Hall was
so crowded when Mr Bradlaugh arrived that he had to gain admittance
through a back window. He afterwards related how "one hearty fellow and
two or three Unitarians volunteered to give me a night's shelter, but
I was unaware of this until I had made my arrangements for a midnight
walk in the dark to Bedlington under escort of half a dozen stalwart
fellows." This is the occasion to which Mr Thomas Burt referred in his
article in the _Primitive Methodist Quarterly Review_ for July 1891.
Mr Burt there says that all the ordinary halls and schoolrooms were
refused to Mr Bradlaugh, but that a gentleman, Mr Richard Fynes, who
had recently purchased a chapel, and was a true lover of free speech,
granted the use of his building to the Bedlington Secular Society. Mr
Burt, who had gone from curiosity to hear Mr Bradlaugh, at the close of
the meeting asked him and some friends home to supper. His people were
rather horror-stricken, but, with true courtesy, allowed nothing of it
to appear to their guest, and the supper passed off quite smoothly, Mr
Bradlaugh making himself very agreeable. It is rather curious that Mr
Burt had no idea how _àpropos_ his hospitality was. It was not until
after he had given his invitation that he learned that in all Blyth
there was no place of refreshment that would open its doors to the
Atheist.

But unfortunately it was not only to Mr Bradlaugh himself that violence
was used or threatened: those who attended his lectures or who were
suspected of sympathising with his opinions sometimes ran considerable
risk. For instance, he had been lecturing at Portsmouth on Monday,
May 10th, on the Irish Church and the Land Question, and his lecture
created considerable excitement in the town. Shortly afterwards a
"converted clown" was holding forth on Portsea Common, and a man
suspected to be in sympathy with Mr Bradlaugh stayed to listen. The
converted one frequently addressed the new-comer as an "unhappy infidel
animal," and so worked upon his pious listeners that in the end they
turned upon the "infidel," who was "hissed, hooted, kicked, cuffed, and
knocked about so unmercifully that he sought protection" in flight. The
whole brutal mob pursued and overtook him, "his clothes were almost
torn from him, and but for the assistance of several passers-by--some
of whom also received rough treatment--he would probably have been
killed."[102]

[Footnote 102: _West Sussex Gazette_, June 24th. And _these_ are the
people who affect to believe in Mr Bradlaugh's violence and coarseness!
"Even so ye outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full
of hypocrisy and iniquity."]

True, everywhere he went my father met with hate and scorn; yet
everywhere he went he also met with a trust and love such as falls to
the lot of few men to know. The hate and scorn passed over him, scarce
leaving a trace, but the love and trust went deep into his heart,
making up, as he said, for "many disappointments." At Keighley "two
veterans, one eighty and one seventy-three, walked eleven miles to
hear me lecture; and at Shipley another greeted me, seventy-six years
old, asking for one more grip of the hand before he died."[103] On Mr
Bradlaugh's return journey from Yorkshire, at every station between
Leeds and Keighley men and women came to bid him good-bye; from a dozen
districts round they came, "old faces and young ones, men, women, and
smiling girls," and he was moved to the utmost depths of his nature to
see how their love for him grew with his 

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