ABSTRACT
The present reviewer last saw William Morris nearly ten years ago. He drifted, as most students in London in those days drifted sooner or later, to that little conventicle in the outhouse beside Kelmscott House, at Hammersmith, and enlisted with something of the emotion of a volunteer. In those days economic reform was in the air, and Socialism was a possible force in politics. And this present reviewer, impecunious and adolescent, imagined that here hewas to meet the resolute nucleus, the little leaven of clear-headed men, that was presently to dominate the country-such as himself shouting and shoving in the yeasty tumult. And assuredly had the huge mass of feeling that social stresses had then evolved, and Henry George and Bellamy contributed to shape, found for itself a directing mind, a great Socialist party might to-day have sat inWestminster with Radicalism under its wing. But happily for the perlnanence of the existing social order, it found no directing mind. Intelligent and emotional adolescence sitting shy but earnest in the back seats slowly forgot its idea ofa council ofwar, and by the end ofthe meeting was being vastly entertained by a comedy ofpicturesque personalities. The more prominent seatswere full indeed ofpersonalities signifying the same to the most casual eye, even in their dress. And the discussion was earnest and quaint and original, and for the most part, as it seemed, irrelevant. Art was for ever straying into the talk and
denunciations of the bourgeois. T'he Chicago Anarchists, too, were inextricably interwoven with the business. There was also a disposition to restore the Thirteenth Century well in evidence. But as to a sane enterprise towards expropriating landlords ... ! And earnest adolescence, being above all things impatient, presently gave up attending these meetings.
