listeners, who kept up a running fire of interjections, particularly an Irishman, who at intervals, as if seized with a recurrent spasm, shouted unintelligible threatenings about Home Rule, King William of Orange, and Socialism. But the crowd shouldered him off.
One elderly woman, who had stood by during the greater part of the address, listening with pathetic interest to every word, remarked as she was moving away: 'He's a guid man onyway; for he looks an honest man, and he speaks the guid truth. My ain father, who was a great Radical, used to say muckle the same thing as this gentleman here; but the working folk round aboot thocht he was cracked. The working folk noo-a-days hae awfu' little gumption in their heads, and I'm sorry to think a gentleman like this should waste his pains trying to put common sense into them.'
Questions were invited, and a gentleman—for such in style he evidently was—asked permission, not to put a question, but to say a few words. Morris nodded his head in assent, and the gentleman, who we learnt later was the cashier, or some other high-placed official in the neighbouring ironworks, without moving from his place, spoke to this effect:
'You people don't, I suppose, know who the gentleman is who has been addressing you. He is one of the leading men of literature and art of our day, and it is one of the greatest surprises of my life to find myself so unexpectedly listening to him address a meeting of this kind in Coatbridge. I am not a Socialist, and don't at all share his Utopian hopes of improving society—I wish I could, but all my experience denies them—but I greatly admire his works, both his poetry and his art, and I wish to say that I am sorry I did not know of his coming, for I am sure he is entitled to a much better meeting and to much more comfortable conditions for speaking than he has here at this cinder-heap.'
Morris in a reluctant sort of way thanked the gentleman
