While serving with his regiment Mr Bradlaugh was a most active advocate of temperance; he began, within a day or so of his arrival in Ireland, upon the quarter-master's daughters. He had been ordered to do some whitewashing for the quarter-master, and that officer's daughters saw him while he was at work, and took pity on him. I have told how he looked; and it is little wonder that his appearance aroused compassion. They brought him a glass of port wine, but this my father majestically refused, and delivered to the amused girls a lecture upon the dangers of intemperance, emphasising his remarks by waves of the whitewash brush. He has often laughed at the queer figure he must have presented, tall and thin, with arms and legs protruding from his clothes, and raised up near to the ceiling on a board, above the two girls, who listened to the lecture, wineglass in hand. Later on, when he had gained a certain amount of popularity amongst his comrades, he used to be let out of the barrack-room windows when he could not get leave of absence, by means of blankets knotted together, in order to attend and speak at temperance meetings in Kildare. But the difficulty was not so much in getting out of barracks as in getting in again; and sometimes this last was not accomplished without paying the penalty of arrest. The men of his troop gave him the nickname of "Leaves," because of his predilection for tea and books; his soldier's knapsack contained a Greek lexicon, an Arabic vocabulary, and a Euclid, the beginnings of the library which at last numbered over 7000 volumes. Mr Bradlaugh remained a total abstainer for several years--until 1861. At that time he was in bad health, and was told by his physician that he was drinking too much tea; he drank tea in those days for breakfast, dinner, and tea, and whenever he felt thirsty in between. From that time until 1886 he took milk regularly for breakfast, and in 1886 he varied this regimen by adding a little coffee to his milk, with a little claret or hock for dinner or supper, and a cup of tea after dinner and at teatime. It has been said that he had a "passion for tea," but that is a mere absurdity. If he had been out, he would ask on coming in for a cup of tea, as another man would ask for a glass of beer or a brandy and soda, but he would take it as weak as you liked to give it him. The stories of the energetic comment of the 300 dragoons upon the sermon of the Rev. Mr Halpin at Rathmines Church, and the assertion of a right of way by "Private Charles Bradlaugh, C. 52, VII D. G.," have both been graphically told by Mr Headingley[7] and by Mrs Besant.[8] [Footnote 7: Biography of Charles Bradlaugh.] [Footnote 8: Review of Reviews, March 1891.]