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Bradlaugh’s reach and height saved him, and the motto, “Wherever you see a head, hit it,” did not disturb him, since his headpiece was well above high-water mark.

Regular food, regular work and regular sleep did Bradlaugh a world of good. He never much believed in war, but the idea of the Government giving her male citizens a little compulsory physical training always appealed to him.

Three years of soldier life did not supply Bradlaugh any bad habits, and whether he influenced Tommy Atkins in following the straight and narrow path is still a problem.

On pleasant Sundays it was the rule that the regiment should be marched to church. On one occasion a certain clergyman had excused himself from explaining a passage of Scripture on the ground that soldiers could not understand it, anyway. This brought a letter from Private Bradlaugh, wherein he explained that particular passage to the pastor, and also revealed the fact that a soldier might know quite as much as a preacher.

The next Sunday, when the clergyman referred to the letter and in scathing tones rebuked the sender, three hundred soldiers unhooked their sabers and dropped them on the stone floor. The din broke up the service. Very shortly after, as punishment, the regiment was sent to a barracks in a region that lacked religious advantages.

In the absence of a chaplain Private Bradlaugh was allowed each Sunday to address the men “on some moral theme.”

This continued until complaint was made to the home office, when there came a curt order forbidding “any public talk by Private Bradlaugh or others on the subject of politics or religion.”

Bradlaugh’s three years of army life held back his mental processes and allowed his body to develop. On the other hand, he had been exiled from society, so he idealized things, seeing them with the eye of imagination rather than beholding them as they actually were.

Sometimes this is well, and sometimes not. When Charles Bradlaugh, aged twenty, married Susannah Hooper, some people said it was a “lovely wedding.” Miss Hooper had social station, while Bradlaugh only had prospects. The bride was handsome, vivacious, witty, pink and twenty-one.

Never was a man more beset by unkind Fate than Bradlaugh. His wife’s intellect was merely a surface indication; she cared nothing for his ideals, and all of his love for truth was for her a mockery. She sought to lead him into conventional lines, to have him renounce his peculiar views and join the church. His fond dreams of educating her slid into disarrangement, and inside of a year he found himself mentally absolutely alone. Five years went by and three children had been born to them.

Bradlaugh was still preaching temperance in the parks; and as if to defy his precepts, his wife took to strong drink, so that when he returned home he often found her cared for by the neighbors, who in pity had come in to protect the children.

That peculiar English custom of women drinking at public bars helped along the work of undoing. It is a sorry tale, save for the devotion of the two girls and their brother for their father and his love for them. The mother was only a mother in name. She became a confirmed and helpless victim of alcoholism, and lingered on for some years, existing in a sanitarium or cared for by a special attendant.

* * * * *

After his marriage Bradlaugh entered a lawyer’s office. He soon became head clerk to the firm. His natural ability for public speaking made him a good trial advocate, and then he had a physical ability that rendered him especially valuable where seizures were to be made or evictions effected.

The practise of law then, it seems, was not at a very high mark. Wise men nowadays try to keep out of court. They know that in a lawsuit both sides lose, also that a bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit. But forty years ago, to “have the law on him” was quite the common way of dealing with your enemy, instead of forgetting the wrong that had been done you, and leaving the man to Nemesis.