[Footnote 78: Despite the sharpness--to use no harsher term--of Mr Cooper's words and manner towards him, my father bore no malice, and showed himself quite ready to forgive and forget. A few months later, hearing that Mr Cooper was in very straitened circumstances, he expressed his desire to be allowed to join in the scheme for assisting his old opponent, for he believed him "to have been a well-intentioned, warm-hearted man, and one who, as a politician, has done good work."] I have taken this somewhat lengthy extract from the article as giving a frank avowal of a prejudgment of my father, unwarranted by the real facts as realised by a Christian auditor. And yet it was in these early years that Mr Bradlaugh is said to have been so "unnecessarily offensive" by those who during the last few years of his life were compelled to own that he was not so bad after all. These persons, lacking the generous candour of the writer in the _Christian Times_ of 1864, endeavour to excuse their earlier injustice by saying that, if not coarse and offensive now, he had been at one time, and his manners had much improved. This quotation may serve, to those who still need it, as a hostile contemporary witness in Mr Bradlaugh's favour. On September 25th and 26th, 1865, Mr Bradlaugh had yet another debate with his Swedenborgian antagonist, the Rev. Woodville Woodman. The debate was held in the theatre at Northampton, which was crowded, numbers of people being unable to obtain admission on the first night. He had arranged for a three nights' discussion six weeks later at Keighley with the Rev. Mr Porteous of Glasgow. He was to lecture at Liverpool on Sunday, October 29th, and the debate was down for the following Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On the Saturday the express train in which he was travelling to Liverpool ran into some luggage vans between Woodhouse and Sheffield, and he was very severely shaken. How severely he did not at once realise, and with his usual disregard of himself he insisted upon fulfilling his engagement at Liverpool. After the exertion of delivering three lectures he felt so much worse that the journey to Keighley, followed by three nights' discussion, seemed out of the question. He communicated with Mr Porteous and came home; I have a distinct recollection of seeing my father come into the house, looking terribly ill. The Rev. Mr Porteous refused to postpone his engagement; in fact, he never answered Mr Bradlaugh's letter, but insisted on proceeding in his absence. For the first two nights he "debated" in solitary grandeur, but on the third night Mr Bradlaugh was represented by Mr John Watts, who, "at Iconoclast's request," went to Keighley to meet Mr Porteous on one night at least. The committee of the Rev. Mr Porteous paid their champion out of the proceeds, but "_he nevertheless afterwards claimed and received from Iconoclast the further sum of £2 10s., not for expenses, but to make