There was a public breakfast, at which hundreds sat down. I took a cup of tea, but ate nothing. After a long imprisonment I could not trust my stomach, and I had to make a speech. After Mr. Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant and the Rev. W. Sharman (secretary of the Society for the Repeal of the Blasphemy Laws), had made speeches, which I should blush to transcribe, I rose to respond. It was a ticklish moment. But I found I had a voice still, and the words came readily enough. Concluding my address I said: "I thank you for your greeting. I am not played out. I am thinner. The doctor told me I had lost two stone, and I believe it. But after all I do not think the ship's timbers are much injured. The rogues ran me aground, but they never made me haul down the flag. Now I am floated again I mean to let the old flag stream out on the wind as of yore. I mean to join the rest of our fleet in fighting the pirates and slavers on the high seas of thought." An hour afterwards my feet were on my own fender. I was _home_ again. What a delicious sensation after twelve months in a prison cell! Friends prescribed a rest at the seaside for me, but I felt that the best tonic was work. In less than three days I settled everything. I resumed the editorship of the _Freethinker_ at once, and began filling up my list of engagements. On meeting the Committee, who had managed our affairs in our absence, I found everything in perfect order, besides a considerable profit at the banker's. Messrs. A. Hilditch, R. O. Smith, J., Grout and G. Standring had given ungrudgingly of their time; Mr. C. Herbert, acting as treasurer, had kept the accounts with painstaking precision; and Mrs. Besant had proved how a woman could take the lead of men. Nor must I forget Mr. Robert Forder, the Secretary of the National Secular Society, who acted as shopman at our publishing office, and sustained the business by his assiduity. I had also to thank Dr. Aveling for his interim editorship of the _Freethinker_, and the admirable manner in which he had conducted _Progress_. The first number of the _Freethinker_ under my fresh editorship appeared on the following Thursday. In concluding my introductory address I said: "I promise the readers of the _Freethinker_ that they shall, so far as my powers avail, find no diminution in the vigor and vivacity of its attacks on the shams and superstitions of our age. Not only the writer's pen, but the artist's pencil, shall be busy in this good work; and the absurdities of faith shall, if possible, be slain with laughter. Priests and fools are, as Goldsmith said, the two classes who dread ridicule, and we are pledged to an implacable war with both."