Ouida was often described as “fanatical;” but though her views were certainly announced in rather unmeasured terms, I found her reasonable when any error or exaggeration was pointed out. Her sincerity was beyond question; again and again she lent us the aid of her pen, and as the press was eager to accept her letters, she was a valuable ally, though through all that she wrote there ran that pessimistic tone which marked her whole attitude to modern life. Whatever her place in literature, she was a friend of the oppressed and a hater of oppression, and her name deserves to be gratefully remembered for the burning words which she spoke on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves. It was always a cause of pride to the Humanitarian League that its principles were broad enough to win the support of thoughtful and feeling men, without regard to differences of character or of opinion upon other subjects. A striking instance of this catholicity was seen on an occasion when the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes was lecturing before the League on the attitude of Nonconformists towards Humanitarianism, and Mr. G. W. Foote, editor of the _Freethinker_, and President of the National Secular Society, was present in the audience; for Mr. Price Hughes and Mr. Foote had been engaged in a very bitter personal controversy concerning the alleged conversion of a certain “atheist shoemaker.” When Mr. Foote rose to take part in the discussion, I noticed a sudden look of concern on the face of the lecturer, as he whispered to me: “Is that Mr. Foote?” expecting doubtless a recrudescence of hostilities; but on the neutral, or rather the universal ground of humanitarianism, hostilities could not be; and questions bearing on the subject of the lecture were courteously asked and answered by antagonists who, however sharply at variance on other questions, were in their humanity at one. Looking back over a large period of the League’s work, I can think of no one who gave us more constant proofs of friendship than Mr. Foote; and his testimony was the more welcome because of the very high and rare intellectual powers which he wielded. Few men of his time combined in equal degree such gifts of brain and heart. I have heard no public speaker who had the faculty of going so straight to the core of a subject--of recapturing and restoring, as it were, to the attention of an audience that jewel called “the point,” on which all are supposed to be intent, but which seems so fatally liable to be mislaid. It was always an intellectual treat to hear him speak; and though, owing to religious prejudices, his public reputation as thinker and writer was absurdly below his deserts he had the regard of George Meredith and others who were qualified to judge, and the enthusiastic support of his followers. All social reformers, whether they acknowledge it or not, owe a debt of gratitude to iconoclasts like Bradlaugh and Foote, who made free speech possible where it was hardly possible before.