Sometimes the visitation came from oversea; in one case we unwittingly brought it on ourselves, by sending to the Madrid papers an account of a scandalous scene that had taken place with the Royal Buckhounds, our object being to show that British deer-hunting and Spanish bull-baiting came of the same stock. We did not know with what zest the Spanish papers had taken to the subject, till one day there arrived in Chancery Lane an infuriated American, who told us that his work in the Canary Islands had been blasted and ruined by our action. For years, he said, he had preached kindness to animals, making England his exemplar, and now at one fell swoop all his labours had been demolished, for the story of the British stag-bait had gone like wild-fire through the Spanish papers, and thence to the Canaries. We expressed our sincere regret to him for this mishap, but tried to make him see that it was no fault of ours if he had based his propaganda on a false principle, viz. the superiority of Anglo-Saxon ethics, instead of on the universal obligation of humaneness. It was useless. He consumed much time in excited talk, and went away unappeased. This incident should be classed, I feel, not with our diversions, but with our tribulations; but having no chapter on the latter theme, I must let it remain where it stands. But here some of my readers may be wondering why the office of the Humanitarian League should have been so open to attack: they imagine it perhaps as a luxurious suite of apartments, one within the other, with a hall-porter in the outer premises, skilled in the art of the sending the undesirable visitor into space. In reality, the circumstances of the League were very humble, and its housing was in accord with its income; some of our friends, in fact, used to be pleased to chaff us by quoting that well-known verse in Lowell’s stanzas to Lloyd Garrison: In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o’er his types one poor unlearn’d young man; The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean; Yet there the freedom of a race began. Thus it was that, with an ante-room of very diminutive size, we were almost at the mercy of any one who opened the outer door; for though the secretary of the League, Miss Whitaker, would rush forward most devotedly to bear the brunt of the charge, not a few of our assailants were through the front lines, and well in our midst, before we were aware of it. To this I owe my not inconsiderable knowledge of the time-devouring Bore.