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o say that she
is most certainly a marvellously audacious woman." Before he quitted
New York for the New England States the Lotos Club gave him another
dinner, at which he met Petroleum V. Nasby and Colonel John Hay.

[Footnote 182: See p. 160.]

In Boston, despite all the prejudices excited against him by the Boston
papers, Mr Bradlaugh met with a really splendid reception. His first
meeting was presided over by Wendell Phillips, who introduced him as
"a man who, Sir Charles Dilke says, does the thinking for more minds,
has more influence, than any other man in England;"[183] and who
himself compared him with Samuel Adams, "the eloquent agitator, the
most statesmanlike mind God lent New England in 1776." Boston people
remarked that the audience was a curious one, unusual to the regular
lyceum lectures. It included many cultivated people, many scholarly and
solid men, many accomplished and delicate women, but in addition to
these, who were customary attendants at lecture courses, there was an
unusually large number of young men present, and more remarkable still
was the large attendance of working men, the whole forming a "strangely
composite" but wonderfully sympathetic audience. On the platform were
Charles Sumner, who, at the close of the address, spoke words of warm
encouragement to my father; William Lloyd Garrison, who cheered him
repeatedly; and other prominent Boston men.

[Footnote 183: This saying, attributed to Sir Charles Dilke, was given
on the authority of Mr Jenkins, author of "Ginx's Baby," who had lately
been in Boston.]

The next day, with Wendell Phillips and George Julian Harney as guides,
he visited the different places of interest in Boston, including
Theodore Parker's house, where he was deeply affected by the reverent
care Mrs Parker bestowed on the rooms formerly occupied by her husband,
and by the evident worship in which she held every memory of him. Mrs
Parker gave him photographs of Theodore Parker and of the library; with
these in his hand, he said, "I hurried away, almost too much moved to
thank the widow for her gentle courtesy."

A large part of his first Sunday in Boston was passed with Charles
Sumner in his rooms at the Coolidge House. They had a very interesting
talk together on the politics of the hour and future possibilities, and
also on matters connected with the Abolition struggle. Mr Bradlaugh
felt a deep admiration for Sumner, and Sumner, in his turn, was most
kind to my father and warm in his praises.

He was invited by Dr Loring, President of the Massachusetts Senate,
to a dinner at the Massachusetts Club, given to Charles Sumner, to
congratulate him on his supposed recovery to health--congratulations
which proved, alas! all too premature. At this dinner he met Henry
Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, and Joshua B. Smith--born
a slave, then a Senator--besides other distinguished men. Every one was
kind to him: Henry Wilson gave him a pressing invitation to Washington;
Sumner bade him disregard the unfair attacks made upon him. When his
health was proposed, and they all rose to their feet to give him three
hearty cheers of greeting, he felt amply repaid for the pain he had
suffered from those coarse attacks, bred by bigotry, which had alike
preceded and pursued him from the Old World to the New. He dined with
Sumner on other occasions, and receptions were given him in Boston, to
which most of the leading men were invited. In fact, such honours and
hospitalities were heaped upon him that, as one journal remarked, he
seemed to have persuaded some people at least "that there are others
besides Satan who are not so black as they are painted."

He naturally became a prey to the usual autograph-hunter. The "Theodore
Parker Fraternity" determined to utilise the demand for his signature
by procuring a supply for their "Fair," and Wendell Phillips undertook
to beg them, which he did in the following letter:--

 "23rd October '73.

 "DEAR SIR,--The 'Theodore Parker Fraternity'--all the Church
 he allowed--hold a Fair, beginning October 27. At Mrs Parker's table
 she sells autographs--and wants some of yours. Now please write
 your name on the enclosed cards--a motto or sentiment also if you
 choose--and re-mail them to me, then I'll thank you, and earn their
 thanks also--and forgive you that you gave Mrs Sargent a photograph of
 yourself and forgot me!

 "I hope you find crowds everywhere as cordial as those you gathered
 here--and where, as at Cambridge, if you don't happen on a crowd, I
 trust you may have one such hearer as you had there--Henry James,
 equal to about 1800 common folk--who was wholly carried away.--

 Yours,
 WENDELL PHILLIPS.

 "Mr C. Bradlaugh."

Wendell Philips also presided at Mr Bradlaugh's second lecture in
Boston, and again the audience was said to include some of the
brightest intellects in New England. Amongst the visitors who came the
next day to congratulate him on his success was William Lloyd Garrison,
who, like Sumner, was one of my father's "great men." These Boston
lectures produced an even greater sensation, and a revulsion of feeling
in his favour more complete, than those delivered in New York.

After lecturing in the New England States, where I gather that many of
the lectures originally contemplated had to be cut out in consequence
of the distress occasioned by the financial panic, Mr Bradlaugh went
west. He visited amongst other places Buffalo, Cincinnati (where the
Roman Catholic Archbishop Purcell was amongst his auditors), St Louis,
and Kansas, and at each place the newspapers waged fierce warfare
after his departure. He reached Kansas in December, two days after
the suspension of the chief bank in that city, and here he met with
a somewhat serious accident. In passing along one of the inclines of
the city, he slipped backwards on the frozen ground, and throwing out
his right hand to save his back, he tore a piece out of the palm,
and deeply gashed his wrist. [184] He was unable to get the wound
properly dressed in Kansas, and as he had to be continually travelling
and lecturing in the severe cold (about 6°), the injury was greatly
aggravated, and it was many months before the wound was properly healed
and without pain. While lecturing he suffered intensely, and when,
as sometimes happened, some gesture or movement would set the wound
bleeding afresh, it was, in addition, extremely inconvenient. The pain,
at times exceedingly acute, rendered him abnormally irritable, and he
afterwards told us one or two amusing stories of his trials and his
temper at this time. At one place amongst his audience were a young
lady, an elderly lady, whom he set down as the maiden aunt of the
younger, and a young gentlemen, whom he assumed to be the young lady's
lover. The young people kept up a continual flow of conversation,
until, almost frantic with pain from his wound (which was also bleeding
so freely that he was obliged to keep his hand raised all the evening),
he stopped short in his lecture,

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