est;
what his age may be it is impossible to judge. As his voice gathers
strength, the hearers begin to feel the influence of a terrible
earnestness. He does not rant, he does not weigh his phrases; the
stream of bitter prophecy flows on smooth and dark. He is supplying the
omission in Mutimer's harangue, is bidding his class know itself and
chasten itself, as an indispensable preliminary to any great change in
the order of things. He cries vanity upon all these detailed schemes of
social reconstruction. Are we ready for it? he wails. Could we bear it,
if they granted it to us? It is all good and right, but hadn't we
better first make ourselves worthy of such freedom? He begins a terrible
arraignment of the People,--then, of a sudden, his voice has ceased. You
could hear a pin drop. It is seen that the man has fallen to the ground;
there arises a low moaning; people press about him.

They carry him into the coffee-shop. It was a fit. In five minutes he is
restored, but does not come back to finish his speech.

There is an interval of disorder. But surely we are not going to let the
meeting end in this way. The chairman calls for the next speaker, and
he stands forth in the person of a rather smug little shopkeeper, who
declares that he knows of no single particular in which the working
class needs correction. The speech undeniably falls fiat. Will no one
restore the tone of the meeting?

Mr. Kitshaw is the man! Now we shall have broad grins. Mr. Kitshaw
enjoys a reputation for mimicry; he takes off music-hall singers in the
bar-parlour of a Saturday night. Observe, he rises, hems, pulls down
his waistcoat; there is bubbling laughter. Mr. Kitshaw brings back the
debate to its original subject; he talks of the Land. He is a little
haphazard at first, but presently hits the mark in a fancy picture of
a country still in the hands of aborigines, as yet unannexed by the
capitalist nations, knowing not the meaning of the verb 'exploit.'

'Imagine such a happy land, my friends; a land, I say, which nobody
hasn't ever thought of "developing the resources" of,--that's the
proper phrase, I believe. There are the people, with clothing enough for
comfort and--ahem!--good manners, but, mark you, no more. No manufacture
of luxurious skirts and hulsters and togs o' that kind by the exploited
classes. No, for no exploited classes don't exist! All are equal, my
friends. Up an' down the fields they goes, all day long, arm-in-arm,
Jack