"After watching for a little while the soldiers pacing in front of the window, his choice fell on a very smart cavalry man, and, being of the necessary height, he determined to join his corps." [Footnote 5: Labour and Law, by Charles Bradlaugh. With Memoir by John M Robertson.] [Footnote 6: Biography of Charles Bradlaugh.] The regiment he elected to join proved to be the 7th (Princess Royal's) Dragoon Guards, and thus, through the kindly assistance of the doctor, at the age of "17-3/12 years," he found himself a "full private" belonging to Her Majesty's forces. After he enlisted he sent word, not to the father and mother who had treated him so coldly, but to the grandmother who loved him so dearly. She sent her daughter Mary to tell the parents of this new turn in their son's affairs, and the news seems to have been conveyed and received in a somewhat tragic manner. A day or so before Christmas Day she came with a face of gloomy solemnity to tell something so serious about Charles that the daughter Elizabeth, who happened to be there, was ordered out of the room. She remained weeping in the passage during the whole time of the family conclave, thinking that her brother must have done something very dreadful indeed. Then the father went to see his son at Westminster, and obtained permission for the new recruit to spend the Christmas Day with his family. It is only natural to suppose that this semi-reconciliation must have afforded them all some sort of comfort, while I have a very strong personal conviction that the whole affair preyed upon the father's mind, and that the harshness he showed his son was really foreign to his general temper. Anyhow, his character underwent a great change after he let himself come under the influence of Mr Packer. He who before never went inside a church, now never missed a Sunday; he became concentrated and, to a certain extent, morose, and at length, on the 19th August 1852, some twenty months after his son's enlistment, he was taken suddenly ill at his desk in Cloak Lane. He was brought home in a state of unconsciousness, from which he was only aroused to fall into violent delirium, and so continued without once recovering his senses until the hour of his death, which was reached on Tuesday the 24th. He was only forty-one years of age, and had always had good health previously, never ailing anything; and I feel quite convinced that the agony of mind which he must have endured from the time when his son was first denounced to him as an "Atheist" was mainly the cause of his early death. The 7th Dragoon Guards was at that time quartered in Ireland, and Mr A. S. Headingley tells at length the tragic-comic adventures the new recruit met with at sea on the three days' journey from London to Dublin:--