inistered to respectable Battersea later in the evening.
An earnest young lady asked the company for counsel as to the best
way of arranging her solitary maid's evening out. "I'm so afraid,"
ended the appeal, "of her going to the Red Lion."

"Best place she could go," said Gilbert. And occasionally he would
add example to precept, for society and Fleet Street were not the
only places for human intercourse. "At present," commented a
journalist, "he is cultivating the local politics of Battersea; in
secluded ale houses he drinks with the frequenters and learns their
opinions on municipal milk and on Mr. John Burns."

"Good friends and very gay companions," Gilbert calls the Christian
Social Union group of whom, beside Conrad Noel, were Charles
Masterman, Bishop Gore, Percy Dearmer, and above all Canon Scott
Holland. Known as "Scotty" and adored by many generations of young
men, he was "a man with a natural surge of laughter within him, so
that his broad mouth seemed always to be shut down on it in a grimace
of restraint."* Like Gilbert, he suffered from the effect of urging
his most serious views with apparent flippancy and fantastic
illustrations. In the course of a speech to a respectable Nottingham
audience he remarked, "I dare say several of you here have never been
in prison."

[* _Autobiography_, p. 169.]

"A ghastly stare," says Gilbert, describing this speech, "was fixed
on all the faces of the audience; and I have ever since seen it in my
own dreams; for it has constituted a considerable part of my own
problem."

Gilbert's verses, summarizing the meeting as it must have sounded to
a worthy Nottingham tradesman, are quoted in the _Autobiography_ and
completed in _Father Brown on Chesterton_. I have put them together
here for they show how merrily these men were working to change the
world.

The Christian Social Union here
Was very much annoyed;
It seems there is some duty
Which we never should avoid,
And so they sang a lot of hymns
To help the Unemployed.

Upon a platform at the end
The speakers were displayed
And Bishop Hoskins stood in front
And hit a bell and said
That Mr. Carter was to pray,
And Mr. Carter prayed.

Then Bishop Gore of Birmingham
He stood upon one leg
And said he would be happier
If beggars didn't beg,
And that if they pinched his palace
It would take him down a peg.

He said that Unemployment
Was a horror and a b