friends taking the remainder. The arrangement proved a very comfortable
one, and it continued until my improved means enabled me, in 1876, to
take a house of my own.

In January, 1875, I made up my mind to lecture regularly, and in the
_National Reformer_ for January 17th I find the announcement that "Mrs.
Annie Besant (Ajax) will lecture at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on
'Civil and religious liberty'", Mr. Conway took the chair at this first
identification of "Ajax" with myself, and sent a very kindly notice of
the lecture to the _Cincinnati Commercial_. Mr. Charles Watts wrote a
report in the _National Reformer_ of January 24th. Dr. Maurice Davies
also wrote a very favorable article in a London journal, but
unfortunately he knew Mr. Walter Besant, who persuaded him to suppress my
name, so that although the notice appeared it did me no service. My
struggle to gain my livelihood was for some time rendered considerably
more difficult by this kind of ungenerous and underhand antagonism. A
woman's road to the earning of her own living, especially when she is
weighted with the care of a young child, is always fairly thorny at the
outset, and does not need to be rendered yet more difficult by secret
attempts to injure, on the part of those who trust that suffering and
poverty may avail to bend pride to submission.

My next lecture was given in the Theatre Royal, Northampton, and in the
_National Reformer_ of February 14th appears for the first time my list
of lecturing engagements, so that in February next I shall complete my
first decade of lecturing for the Freethought and Republican Cause.
Never, since first I stood on the Freethought platform, have I felt one
hour's regret for the resolution taken in solitude in January, 1875, to
devote to that sacred Cause every power of brain and tongue that I
possessed. Not lightly was that resolution taken, for I know no task of