proletariat was confined mainly to occasional and unobtrusive visits to the London democratic clubs, and contributing to their funds. Now he has begun addressing public meetings, and it is announced that he has designed a card of membership for the Democratic Federation, and has written "A Chant for Socialists." Like Mazzini, Mr. Morris evidently believes it to be his duty, despite all other considerations, to "hold aloft his banner and boldly promulgate his faith."
'Glasgow, October 27, 1883.'
That paragraph summed up all the knowledge I then had of Morris. I can remember picturing to myself, when writing it, the wonderful world (as it seemed to me) of poetry and art in which he and his companions, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Swinburne, lived their Arcadian lives, and from which, like a prince in a fairy story, he appeared to be stepping down chivalrously into the dreary region of working-class agitation.
There was at that period no Socialist group in Glasgow, and although I had been giving lectures on Socialism during the past two or three years to Young Men's Debating Societies, Radical Associations, and Irish Land League branches, I did not know of anyone who was inclined to take part in forming a Socialist society. My friend, Shaw Maxwell, however, then an ardent Land Restorationist and sympathetic towards the new Socialist ideas, was as eager as myself to see and hear Morris, and he wrote him, inviting him to lecture in Glasgow under the auspices of the Sunday Lectures Society, of which he was the secretary. Morris to our delight agreed to come; and about a year later, Sunday, December 14, 1884, came and gave his lecture on 'Art and Labour' in the St. Andrews Hall. It was in connection with this visit that I first met Morris.
Meanwhile, before the date of Morris' coming, a few of us had at last got together in Glasgow and had formed
