Then, as if to test the existing official prohibition, Booth advertised that he would lecture on postal grievances at Cowper Street Schoolrooms, and the fact was announced by the distribution of some thousands of handbills. The lecture was delivered to a crowded and enthusiastic audience, and many of the public were present. The result of this was that the lecturer was next day called up before the Controller to explain why he held a meeting outside the Post-Office building, the forbidding rule notwithstanding. Booth very adroitly won his case on a quibble, and was afterwards none the less proud of having done so. He maintained it was a lecture merely, there being no resolution of any kind discussed; and there being no prohibitive rule against lectures, of whatever nature, he submitted that he had broken no regulation. The official Solon discharged him with a caution. The agitators were by this time made aware in many unpleasant little ways that they were constantly under the surveillance of the departmental informers. Both on duty and away from it they could scarcely move with freedom. Booth especially was regarded as such a dangerous firebrand that the department felt it advisable to keep itself acquainted with his every movement while off duty, and for that purpose he was constantly shadowed to find out where he went and with whom he mixed. His house at Brixton was watched almost night and day, and several times the official touts got reprimanded by their superiors for reporting that Booth had not left the house after being seen going in, when as a matter of fact he was found to have addressed a postal meeting the same evening. For the sake of causing their discomfiture, and for the fun of the thing, he generally circumvented the watchers by getting over the back-garden wall and dodging through a neighbour’s house into a side street.