the
visit of Chris Robinson. Chris Robinson was heralded by such heroic
anticipations, and he was so entirely what we had not anticipated.

Hatherleigh got him to come, arranged a sort of meeting for him at
Redmayne's rooms in King's, and was very proud and proprietorial. It
failed to stir Cambridge at all profoundly. Beyond a futile attempt
to screw up Hatherleigh made by some inexpert duffers who used nails
instead of screws and gimlets, there was no attempt to rag. Next day
Chris Robinson went and spoke at Bennett Hall in Newnham College, and
left Cambridge in the evening amidst the cheers of twenty men or so.
Socialism was at such a low ebb politically in those days that it didn't
even rouse men to opposition.

And there sat Chris under that flamboyant and heroic Worker of the
poster, a little wrinkled grey-bearded apologetic man in ready-made
clothes, with watchful innocent brown eyes and a persistent and
invincible air of being out of his element. He sat with his stout boots
tucked up under his chair, and clung to a teacup and saucer and
looked away from us into the fire, and we all sat about on tables and
chair-arms and windowsills and boxes and anywhere except upon chairs
after the manner of young men. The only other chair whose seat was
occupied was the one containing his knitted woollen comforter and his
picturesque old beach-photographer's hat. We were all shy and didn't
know how to take hold of him now we had got him, and, which was
disconcertingly unanticipated, he was manifestly having the same
difficulty with us. We had expected to be gripped.

"I'll not be knowing what to say to these Chaps," he repeated with a
north-country quality in his speech.

We made reassuring noises.

The Ambassador of the Workers stirred his tea earnestly through an
uncomfortable pause.

"I'd best tell 'em something of how things are in Lancashire, what
with the new machines and all that," he speculated at last with red
reflections in his thoughtful eyes.

We had an inexcusable dread that perhaps he would make a mess of the
meeting.

But when he was no longer in the unaccustomed meshes of refined
conversation, but speaking with an audience before him, he became a
different man. He declared he would explain to us just exactly what
socialism was, and went on at once to an impassioned contrast of social
conditions. "You young men," he said "come from homes of luxury; every
need you feel is supplied--"

We sat and stood