committee meeting will keep me rather late. Of course, I know that you have some sensible things to say, but are you going to say anything fresh—heretical, I mean? If so, I shall make an effort to come; but if you are going to keep on the beaten track, it's hardly worth my while, is it?' I replied with conventional modesty that I did not suppose that anything I had to say was likely to be either new or particularly heretical to him. 'Ah well,' he said, 'you won't mind if I postpone the pleasure of hearing your Scottish wit and wisdom till another occasion,' and with that he made off. This was the first time I had met Shaw, and the bluntness of his civility was a novel experience. As a matter of fact, he was the only person besides Morris likely to be at the meeting whose opinion on the argument of my lecture I should specially have liked to hear. His announcement, therefore, that he would not be present, was a disappointment to me, none the less so because he had made me unwittingly accessory to his absence.
In the evening Morris accompanied us to Walham Green, where he, Catterson Smith, Bullock, and myself addressed a fair-sized crowd of people of the artisan type, who seemed to take quite an intelligent interest in the speeches. Here, as at Hammersmith Bridge, Morris vigorously pushed the sale of literature while the other speakers were holding forth, going round the ring with a bundle of Commonweals and pamphlets under his arm, and inviting the listeners in a brotherly way to sample some of his wares. Sometimes a listener would seem to hesitate about parting with a penny for a purchase, whereupon Morris would say, 'Well, my friend, never mind about payment. I'll stand that if you'll promise to read the paper. You can hand it on to someone else when you're done with it.'
Morris and I hurried back early from the meeting, as I was due to lecture in the hall at eight o'clock, and he was to take the chair.
The famous meeting-room was an out-building attached
