Mystic London Part 3

CHAPTER IX.

TEA AND EXPERIENCE.

I was walking the other day in one of the pleasant western suburbs, and rashly sought a short cut back; when, as is generally the case, I found that the longer would have been much the nearer way home. Before I knew it, I was involved in the labyrinths of that region, sacred to washerwomen and kindred spirits, known as Kensal New Town; and my further progress was barred by the intervention of the Paddington Ca.n.a.l, which is spanned at rare intervals in this locality by pay-bridges, to the great discomfort of the often impecunious natives. There was not even one of these at hand, or my halfpenny would have been paid under protest; so I had to wander like a lost sprite among the network of semi-genteel streets that skirt that most ungenteel thoroughfare, the Kensal New Town Road, and forthwith I began to find the neighbourhood papered with placards, announcing a "Tea and Experience Meeting" at a local hall, under the presidency of the Free Church pastor, for the following Monday evening. Bakers' shops bristled with the handbills, and they studded the mult.i.tudinous pork butchers' windows in juxtaposition with cruel-looking black puddings and over-fat loin chops. I determined I would go, if not to the tea, certainly to the "Experience," for I like novel experiences of all kinds: and this would certainly be new, whether edifying or not.

I got at length out of the labyrinth, and on the following Monday ventured once more within its mazes, though not exactly at six o'clock, which was the hour appointed for the preliminary experience of tea. I had experienced that kind of thing once or twice before, and never found myself in a position of such difficulty as on those occasions. In the first place I do not care about tea, when it is good; but loathe it when boiled in a washhouse copper, and poured out from a large tin can, of which it tastes unpleasantly. But, then again, the quant.i.ty as well as the quality of the viands to be consumed was literally too much for me.

I might have managed one cup of decidedly nasty tea, or what pa.s.ses muster for such, but not four or five, which I found to be the minimum.

I could stomach, or secretly dispose of in my pockets, a single slice of leaden cake or oleaginous bread-and-b.u.t.ter; but I could not do this with mult.i.tudinous slabs of either. I never went to more than one tea-meeting where I felt at home, and that was at the Soiree Suisse, which takes place annually in London, where pretty Helvetian damsels brew the most fragrant coffee and hand round delicious little cakes, arrayed as they are in their killing national costume and chattering in a dozen different patois. I had a notion that tea at Kensal New Town would be very much less eligible, so I stopped away. Perhaps I was prejudiced.

The tea might have been different from what I expected. The experiences certainly were.

I got there about half-past seven, having allowed an interval of an hour and a half, which I thought would be sufficient for the most inveterate tea-drinker, even among the Kensal Town laundresses, should such happen to be present. I took the precaution, however, of bespeaking a lad of fifteen to accompany me, in case any of the fragments of the feast should yet have to be disposed of, since I knew his powers to equal those of the ostrich in stowing away eatables, especially in the lumpy cake line. Arrived at the hall, however, I found no symptoms of the tea save a steamy sort of smell and the rattle of the retreating cups and saucers. Whether "to my spirit's gain or loss," I had escaped the banquet and yet got in good time for the subsequent experiences.

A motherly-looking woman stood at the door, and gave me a cheery invitation to come in. She looked rather askance at my boy, but finding him properly convoyed by my sober self, she admitted him within the portal. A good many young gentlemen of a similar age were evidently excluded, and were regaling themselves with pagan sports outside. The hall was partially filled with respectable-looking mechanics, their wives, and families, there being more wives than mechanics, and more families than either. Children abounded, especially babies in every stage of infantile development. Many were taking their maternal tea; and the boys and girls were got up in the most festive attire, the boys particularly shining with yellow soap. Most of the mammas wore perky hats, and many had follow-me-lads down the back, but all were exceedingly well-dressed and well-behaved, though evidently brimful of hilarity as well as cake and tea.

At the end of the hall was the inevitable platform, with chairs and a large cushion spread over the front rail for convenience of praying; since the "experiences" were to be interspersed with sacred song and prayer. Two gentlemen--I use the term advisedly--mounted the rostrum, one a long-bearded, middle-aged man, in a frock coat, who was the pastor, and another an aged minister, superannuated, as I afterwards discovered, and not altogether happy in his worldly lot. He was very old, grey-haired, and feeble, with a worn suit of clerical black, and a voluminous white tie. He sat humbly, almost despondingly, by the side of his younger brother in the ministry, while the latter delivered a merry little opening address, hoping all had made a good tea; if not, there was still about half a can left. n.o.body wanted any more; so they had a hymn from the "Sacred Songster," a copy of which volume I purchased in the hall for twopence halfpenny. The tune was a martial one, well sung by a choir of men and women to the accompaniment of a harmonium, and bravely borne part in, you may depend upon it, by the whole a.s.sembly, I verily believe, except the babies, and one or two of these put in a note sometimes. The hymn was called, "Oh, we are Volunteers!" and was very Church-militant indeed, beginning thus:--

Oh, we are volunteers in the army of the Lord, Forming into line at our Captain's word; We are under marching orders to take the battle-field, And we'll ne'er give o'er the fight till the foe shall yield.

Then came the chorus, repeated after every verse:--

Come and join the army, the army of the Lord, Jesus is our Captain, we rally at His word: Sharp will be the conflict with the powers of sin, But with such a leader we are sure to win.

The poor old minister offered up a short prayer. The pastor read the 1st Corinthians, chapter 13, and explained briefly what charity meant there; adding that this gathering was very like one of the Agapae of the early Christians--a remark I had not expected to hear in that a.s.sembly. Then there was another hymn, "Beautiful Land of Rest," when it did one good to hear the unction with which the second syllable of the refrain was given:--

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Beautiful land of rest.

After this the "Experiences" commenced in real earnest. Brothers and Sisters were exhorted to lay aside shyness and mount the platform. Of course no one would do so at first; and the poor shaky old minister had to come to the rescue.

He told us, at rather too great length, the simple story of his life--how he was a farmer's son, and had several brothers "besides himself." He had to learn verses of the Bible for his father, which used to go against the grain, until at last, instead of being "a wicked boy,"

he took up religion on his own account. He began to be afraid that, if he died, he should go to "a bad place," and therefore started saying his prayers. His brother George used to push him over when he was praying half-dressed in the bedroom, or occasionally vary proceedings by stirring him up with a sweeping brush. At last he found out a quiet place under a haystack, and there retired to pray. The old man drew a perfect picture of the first prayer thus offered, and told us he could remember every little detail of the spot, and the great oak tree spreading its branches over it. "Here I am," he said, "a poor old pilgrim on the bright side of seventy now, and yet I can remember it all. I say the 'bright' side, for I know it is a bright home I am soon going to." Then he told us how G.o.d took his wife from him and all his worldly goods, and he was quite eloquent about the comfort his religion was to him now as he went to his little lonely lodging. He drew next too truthful a picture of the state of things he saw around him in Kensal New Town--mothers with infants in their arms crowding the tavern doors; and finished up with a story, of which he did not see the irrelevancy, about a fine lady going to the "theatre," and saying how much she had enjoyed the antic.i.p.ation, then the play itself, and, lastly, the thought of it afterwards. She was overheard by a faithful pastor, who told her she had omitted one detail. "No," she said, "I have told you all." "You have told us how you enjoyed the thoughts of the theatre, and the performance, and the recollection of it afterwards; but you have not told us how you will enjoy the thoughts of it on your death-bed." Of course the "fine lady" was converted on the spot, as they always are in tracts; and the good old fellow brought his long-winded narrative of experiences to an end by-and-by, the pastor having omitted to pull his coat-tails, as he promised to do if any speaker exceeded the allotted time. "The people were certainly very attentive to hear him," and one man next my boy expressed his satisfaction by letting off little groans, like minute guns, at frequent intervals.

Then another hymn was sung, "The Beautiful Land on High," which, by the way, is a favourite with the spiritualists at their "Face Seances." I half expected to see a ghostly-looking visage peep out of some corner cupboard, as I had often done with my spiritual friends--that being another experience which I cultivate with considerable interest and curiosity. The hymn being over, a black-bearded, but soft-voiced man, in a velveteen coat, got upon the platform, and told us how the chief delight of his life was at one time making dogs fight. When the animals were not sufficiently pugnacious of themselves, his habit was to construct an apparatus, consisting of a pin at the end of a stick, and so urge them to the combat, until it proved fatal to one of them. It was, he said, dreadful work; and he now considered it the direct machination of Satan. Another favourite pursuit was interrupting the proceedings of open-air missionaries. One day after he had done so, he went home with a companion who had taken a tract from one of the missionaries. He had a quarrel with his "missis." "Not that missis sittin' there," he said, alluding to a smart lady in front, "but my first missis." In order to show his sulks against his missis, he took to reading the tract, and it soon made him cry. Then he went to chapel and heard a sermon on Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. He was a little exercised by this, and saw the minister in the vestry, but soon fell back into bad habits again, singing canaries for _10s. 6d._ a side.

As he was taking his bird out one Sunday morning, the bottom of the cage came out, and the canary escaped. This he looked upon as "G.o.d's work,"

since it caused him to go to chapel that morning. His conversion soon followed, and he applied to that circ.u.mstance, in a very apposite manner, the Parable of the Prodigal, concluding with a stanza from the well-known hymn--

G.o.d moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.

Another moustached man followed. He was exceedingly well-dressed, though he told us he was only a common labourer. He had long given up his "'art" to G.o.d, but to little purpose until he came to this chapel.

"But there," he said, "down in that corner under the gas-lamp, I prayed for the first time. I prayed that G.o.d would take away my stony 'art and give me a 'art of flesh, and renew a right sperrit within me." From that time he led a new life. His fellow-workmen began to sneer at the change, and said ironically they should take to going to chapel too. "I wish to G.o.d you would," was his reply. He described the personal influence of the pastor upon him, which strengthened the good resolutions he had formed, and enabled him to say, "I will not let Thee go."

I could not help thinking, as I listened to the simple, earnest words of the speaker, that here was an element the National Church is too apt to ignore. The Roman Catholic Church would seize hold upon that man, and put him in a working men's guild or confraternity. The Free Church found him work to do, and gave him a chief seat in the synagogue, and an opportunity of airing his "experiences" on a platform. Surely better either one or the other, than sotting his life at a public-house, or turning tap-room orator. He ended by crying shame upon himself for having put off the change until so late in life, and added a wish that all the labouring cla.s.ses could see, as he had been brought to see, where their chief interest as well as happiness lay.

A tall man from the choir followed, and was considerably more self-possessed than the other two speakers. He told us at the outset that he had been "a Christian" for fourteen years. It was generally laid down as a rule, he said, that big men were good-tempered. He was not a small man; but until he gave his heart to G.o.d he was never good-tempered. He had, for thirty-two years, been brought up in the Church of England, but had found no conversion there. He had no wish to speak against the Church, but such was the case. He wandered about a good deal in those years, from Roman Catholic to Old Methodist chapels; but the latter settled him. He was attending a cla.s.s meeting in Kensal New Town one night, and suddenly a determination came over him that he would not sleep that night until he had kneeled down and prayed with his wife, though it would be the first time he had done so for thirty-two years. When it came to bedtime his courage failed him. He could not get into bed; and he did not like to tell his wife why. "That," he said, "was the devil worritin' me." His wife said, "I know what's the matter with you. You want to pray. We will see what we can do." His wife, he told us, was "unconverted," but still she "throwed open the door" on that occasion. He never knew happiness, he said, until he came to Jesus; and he added, "Oh, I do love my Jesus." He often talked to his fellow-workmen about the state of their souls, and they asked him how it was he was so certain of being converted (a question I fancy others than they would like to have solved), and he answered them, "I feel it.

I was uncomfortable before; and now I am happy. I don't wonder so much at the old martyrs going boldly up to the stake, because I feel I could do anything rather than give up my Jesus."

Hereupon the pastor, antic.i.p.ating the departure of some of the a.s.sembly--for the clock was pointing to ten--announced a Temperance Meeting for the following Monday, and also said he should like the congregation to get up these meetings entirely on their own account, without any "clerical" element at all, and to make the Tea Meeting a "Free and Easy" in the best sense of the word.

I went--shall I confess it?--to the experience meeting rather inclined to scoff, and I stopped, if not altogether to pray, at least to think very seriously of the value of the instrumentality thus brought to bear on such intractable material as the Kensal New Town population.

The more c.u.mbrous, even if more perfect or polished, machinery of the Established Church has notoriously failed for a long time to affect such raw material; and if it is beginning to succeed it is really by "taking a leaf out of the book" of such pastors as the one whose Tea-and-Experience Meeting I had attended. "Palmam qui meruit ferat."

Stiggins element, I must, in all justice, say there was none. The pastor was a simple but a refined and gentlemanly man; so was the poor broken old minister. There was no symptom of raving or rant; no vulgarity or bad taste. A gathering at a deanery or an episcopal palace could not have been more decorous, and I doubt if the hymns would have been sung as heartily. There was as little clerical starch as there was of the opposite element. Rubbing off the angles of character was one of the objects actually proposed by the pastor as the result of these gatherings; and I really felt as though a corner or two had gone out of my const.i.tution. If a man is disposed to be priggish, or a lady exclusive, in religious matters, I would recommend the one or the other to avail themselves of the next opportunity to attend a Tea-and-Experience Meeting at Kensal New Town.

CHAPTER X.

SUNDAY LINNET-SINGING.

There is something very Arcadian and un-c.o.c.kney-like in the idea of linnet-singing in Lock's Fields. Imagination pictures so readily the green pastures and the wild bird's song, and Corydon with his pipe and his Phyllis, that it seems a pity to disabuse that exquisite faculty of our nature so far as to suggest that the linnets of which we speak are not wild, but tame and caged, and the fields very much less rural than those of Lincoln's Inn. This was the announcement that drew me to the New Kent Road on a recent Sunday morning to hear what poor c.o.c.kney Keats called the "tender-legged linnets:" "Bird-singing.--A match is made between Thomas Walker (the Bermondsey Champion) and William Hart (Champion of Walworth) to sing two linnets, on Sunday, for _2l._ a side; birds to be on the nail precisely at two o'clock; the host to be referee. _10s._ is now down; the remainder by nine this evening, at the Jolly Butchers, Rodney Road, Lock's Fields. Also a copper kettle will be sung for on the same day by six pairs of linnets; first pair up at half-past six o'clock in the evening. Any person requiring the said room for matches, &c., on making application to the host, will immediately be answered."

Rodney Road, be it known, is anything but a romantic thoroughfare, leading out of the New Kent Road, a little way from the Elephant and Castle; and the caravanserai bearing the t.i.tle of the Jolly Butchers is an unpretending beershop, with no outward and visible signs of especial joviality. On entering I met mine host, rubicund and jolly enough, who politely pioneered me upstairs, when I reported myself as in quest of the linnets. The scene of contest I found to be a largish room, where some twenty or thirty most un-Arcadian looking gentlemen were already a.s.sembled, the only adjunct at all symptomatic of that pastoral district being their pipes, at which they were diligently puffing. The whole of the tender-legged compet.i.tors, both for the money and the copper kettle, were hanging in little square green cages over the fireplace; and the one idea uppermost in my mind was how well the linnets must be seasoned to tobacco smoke if they could sing at all in the atmosphere which those Corydons were so carefully polluting. Corydon, besides his pipe, had adopted nuts and beer to solace the tedium of the quarter of an hour that yet intervened before the Bermondsey bird and its Walworth antagonist were to be "on the nail;" and ever and anon fresh Corydons kept dropping in, until some fifty or sixty had a.s.sembled. They were all of one type. There was a "birdiness" discernible on the outer man of each; for birdiness, as well as horseyness, writes its mark on the countenance and the attire. In the latter department there was a proclivity to thick pea-jackets and voluminous white comforters round the neck, though the day was springlike and the room stuffy. The talk was loud, but not boisterous, and garnished with fewer elegant flowers of speech than one would have expected. Five minutes before two the non-competing birds were carefully m.u.f.fled up in pocket-handkerchiefs, and carried in their cages out of earshot, lest their twitterings might inspire the competing minstrels. Bermondsey and Walworth alone occupied the nails. Scarcely any bets were made. They seemed an impecunious a.s.semblage, gathered for mere sport. One gentleman did, indeed, offer to stake "that 'ere blowsy bob," as though a shilling in his possession were a rarity of which his friends must be certainly aware. What was the occult meaning of the epithet "Blowsy" I could not fathom, but there were no takers; and, after the windows had been opened for a few minutes to clear the atmosphere, they were closed again; the door locked; the two markers took their place at a table in front of the birds, with bits of chalk in their hands; mine host stood by as referee in case of disputes; time was called; and silence reigned supreme for a quarter of an hour, broken only by the vocal performances of the Bermondsey and Walworth champions respectively. If a hapless human being did so far forget himself as to cough or tread incontinently upon a nutsh.e.l.l, he was called to silence with curses not loud but deep.

The Walworth bird opened the concert with a brilliant solo by way of overture, which was duly reported by the musical critic in the shape of a chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the issue at stake, devoted the precious moments to eating, emitting nothing beyond a dyspeptic twitter which didn't count; and his proprietor stood by me evidently chagrined, and perspiring profusely, either from anxiety or superfluous attire. Nearly half the time had gone by before Bermondsey put forth its powers. Meanwhile, Walworth made the most of the opportunity, singing in a manner of which I did not know linnets were capable. There were notes and pa.s.sages in the repertoire of Walworth which were worthy of a canary. The bird no doubt felt that the credit of home art was at stake, and sang with a vigour calculated to throw foreign feathered artistes into the shade. Bermondsey evidently sang best after dinner, so he dined like an alderman; yet dined, alas! not wisely, but too well, or rather too long. Then he sang, first, a defiant roulade or so, as much as to say, "Can you beat that, Walworth?" pausing, with his head wickedly on one side, for a reply. That reply was not wanting, for Walworth was flushed with success; and one could not help regretting ignorance of bird-language so as to gather exactly what the reply meant. Then came a protracted duet between the two birds, which was the piece de resistance of the whole performance. The silence became irksome. I could not help congratulating myself on the fact that no Corydon had brought his Phyllis; for Phyllis, I am sure, would not have been able to stand it.

Phyllis, I feel certain, would have giggled. We remained mute as mice, solemn as judges. The ghost of a twitter was hailed with mute signs of approval by the backers of each bird; but a glance at the expressive features of the host warned the markers that nothing must be chalked down that did not come up to his idea of singing. Had the destinies of empires hung upon his nod he could scarcely have looked more oracular.

But Walworth could afford to take matters easily now. For the last five minutes the Bermondsey bird did most of the music; still it was a hopeless case. Success was not on the cards. By-and-by, time was again called. Babel recommenced, and the result stood as follows:

Walworth 3 score 18 Bermondsey 1 score 10

It was an ignominious defeat truly; and, had one been disposed to moralize, it had not been difficult to draw a moral therefrom. It was not a case of "no song, no supper;" but of supper--or, rather, dinner--and no song. Bermondsey had failed in the artistic combat, not from lack of powers, as its brilliant part in the duet and its subsequent soli proved, but simply from a Sybaritic love for creature comforts. I ventured to suggest it might have been expedient to remove the seed, but was informed that, under those circ.u.mstances, the creature--its proprietor called it an uglier name--would not have sung at all. The remarkable part of the business to me was that they did sing at the proper time. They had not uttered anything beyond a twitter until silence was called, and from that moment one or the other was singing incessantly. I suppose it was the silence. I have noticed not only caged birds, but children--not to speak ungallantly of the fair s.e.x--generally give tongue most freely when one is silent, and presumably wants to keep so.

The contest, however, was over, the stakes paid, and Corydon sought his pastoral pipe again--not without beer. It was a new experience, but not a very exciting one--to me, at least. It evidently had its attractions for the very large majority of attendants. In fact, Rodney Road is generally a "birdy" neighbourhood. Its staple products, to judge by the shops, seemed birds and beer. I was much pressed by mine host to stay for the evening entertainment, when six birds were to sing, and the attendance would be more numerous. As some five hours intervened I expressed regret at my inability to remain, reserving my opinion that five hours in Lock's Fields might prove the reverse of attractive, and Corydon in greater force might not have an agreeable effect on that already stuffy chamber. So I took myself off, wondering much, by the way, what strange a.s.sociation of ideas could have led any imaginative man to propose such an incongruous reward as a copper kettle by way of praemium for linnet-singing.

CHAPTER XI.

A WOMAN'S RIGHTS DEBATE.

There never was a time when, on all sorts of subjects, from Mesmerism to Woman's Rights, the ladies had so much to say for themselves. There is an ancient heresy which tells us that, on most occasions, ladies are p.r.o.ne to have the last word; but certain it is that they are making themselves heard now. On the special subject of her so-called "Rights"

the abstract Woman was, I knew, prodigiously emphatic--how emphatic, though, I was not quite aware, until having seen from the top of a City-bound omnibus that a lady whom I will describe by the Aristophanic name of Praxagora would lecture at the Castle Street Co-operative Inst.i.tute. I went and co-operated so far as to form one of that lady's audience. Her subject--the "Political Status of Women"--was evidently attractive, not only to what we used in our innocence to call the weaker s.e.x, but also to those who are soon to have proved to them the fallacy of calling themselves the stronger. A goodly a.s.semblage had gathered in the fine hall of the Co-operators to join in demolishing that ancient myth as to the superiority of the male s.e.x. My first intention was to have reported verbatim or nearly so the oration of Praxagora on the subject; and if I changed my scheme it was not because that lady did not deserve to be reported. She said all that was to be said on the matter, and said it exceedingly well too; but when the lecture, which lasted fifty minutes, was over, I found it was to be succeeded by a debate; and I thought more might be gained by chronicling the collision of opinion thence ensuing than by simply quoting the words of any one speaker, however eloquent or exhaustive.

I own with fear and trembling--for it is a delicate, dangerous avowal--that, as a rule, I do not sympathize with the ladies who declaim on the subject of Woman's Rights. I do not mean to say I lack sympathy with the subject--I should like everybody to have their rights, and especially women--but they are sometimes a.s.serted in such a sledge-hammer fashion, and the ladies who give them utterance are so p.r.o.ne to run large and be shrill-voiced that their very physique proves their claim either unnecessary or undesirable. I feel certain that in whatever station of domestic life those ladies may be placed, they would have their full rights, if not something more; and as for Parliamentary rights, I tremble for the unprotected males should such viragos ever compa.s.s the franchise; or, worse still, realize the ambition of the Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes, and sit on the benches of St. Stephen's clad in the nether garments of the hirsute s.e.x. There was nothing of that kind on Tuesday night. In manner and appearance our present Praxagora was thoroughly feminine, and, by her very quietude of manner, impressed me with a consciousness of power, and determination to use it.

Her voice was soft and silvery almost as that of Miss Faithfull herself; and when, at the outset of her lecture, she claimed indulgence on the score of never having spoken in a public hall before, we had to press forward to the front benches to catch the modulated tones, and men who came clumping in with heavy boots in the course of the lecture were severely hushed down by stern-visaged females among the audience.

Disclaiming connexion with any society, Praxagora still adopted the first person plural in speaking of the doctrines and intentions of the down-trodden females. "We" felt so and so; "we" intended to do this or that; and certainly her cause gained by the element of mystery thus introduced, as well as by her own undoubted power of dealing with the subject. When the "we" is seen to refer to the brazen-voiced ladies aforesaid, and a few of the opposite s.e.x who appear to have changed natures with the gentle ones they champion, that plural p.r.o.noun is the reverse of imposing, but the "we" of Praxagora introduced an element of awe, if only on the omne ignotum pro magnifico principle. In the most forcible way she went through the stock objections against giving women the franchise, and knocked them down one by one like so many ninepins.

That coveted boon of a vote she proved to be at the basis of all the regeneration of women. She claimed that woman should have her share in making the laws by which she was governed, and denied the popular a.s.sertion that in so doing she would quit her proper sphere. In fact, we all went with her up to a certain point, and most of the audience beyond that point. For myself I confess I felt disheartened when, having dealt in the most consummate way with other aspects of the subject, she came to the religious phase, and begging the question that the Bible and religion discountenanced woman's rights, commenced what sounded to me like a furious attack on each.

Now I happen to know--what perhaps those who look from another standpoint do not know--that this aggressive att.i.tude a.s.sumed so unnecessarily by the advocates of woman's rights is calculated to keep back the cause more than anything else; and matter and manner had been so much the reverse of hostile up to the moment she plunged incontinently into the religious question, that it quite took me by surprise. I have known scores of people who, when they came under vigorous protest to hear Miss Emily Faithfull on the same fertile subject, went away converted because they found no iconoclasm of this kind in her teaching. They came to scoff and stopped, not indeed to pray, but to listen very attentively to a theme which has so much to be said in its favour that it is a pity to complicate its advocacy by the introduction of an extraneous and most difficult question. So it was, however; with pale, earnest face, and accents more incisive than before, Praxagora said if Bible and religion stood in the way of Woman's Rights, then Bible and religion must go. That was the gist of her remarks. I need not follow her in detail, because the supplementary matter sounded more bitterly still; and, had she not been reading from MS. I should have thought the lecturer was carried away by her subject; but no, she was reading quite calmly what were clearly enough her natural and deliberate opinions. I said I was surprised at the line she took.

Perhaps I ought scarcely to have been so, for she was flanked on one side by Mr. Bradlaugh, on the other by Mr. Holyoake! but I never remember being so struck with a contrast as when at one moment Praxagora pictured the beauty of a well-regulated home, and the tender offices of woman towards the little children, and then shot off at a tangent to fierce invectives against the Bible and religion, which seemed so utterly uncalled for that no adversary who wanted to damage the cause could possibly have invented a more complete method of doing so.

The lecture over, the chairman invited discussion, and a fierce little working man immediately mounted the platform and took Praxagora to task for her injudicious onslaught. But, as usual, this gentleman was wildly irrelevant and carried away by his commendable zeal. Over and over again he had to be recalled to the question, until finally he set his whole audience against him, and had to sit down abruptly in the middle of a sort of apotheosis of Moses--as far as I could hear, for his zeal outran his eloquence as well as his discretion, and rendered him barely audible. A second speaker followed, and, though cordially sympathizing with the address, and tracing woman's incapacity to her state of subjugation, regretted that such a disturbing element as religion had been mixed up with a social claim. He considered that such a subject must inevitably prove an apple of discord. For this he was at once severely handled by Mr. Bradlaugh, who, consistently enough, defended the line Praxagora adopted towards the religious question, and justified the introduction of the subject from the charge of irrelevance. He also deprecated the surprise which the last speaker had expressed at the excellent address of Praxagora by pointing out that in America about one-third of the press were females, a fact which he attributed to the plan of Mixed Education. Then a new line was opened up by a speaker--it was as impossible to catch their names as to hear the stations announced by porters on the Underground Railway. He predicted that if women did get the franchise, Mr. Bradlaugh's "Temple" would be shut up in six months, as well as those of Messrs. Voysey and Conway and Dr. Perfitt.