It was an incoherent enough medley, and perhaps the precocity of the youth was more exhibited in the uncanny earnestness of his manner than in the intellectual quality of the stuff he uttered. The crowd he was addressing consisted of serious artisans, night-school-educated clerks, filmy half-existent women, whose mental development at fifty would in all likehood not transcend Harry's at fifteen, to whom they listened indeed, not because they were interested in his crystal arguments, but because his wit, his adroitness, pleased them like the froth on their evening pints. They were therefore an easier prey to Philip's uncouth flood of undigested emotions. He attempted, as often as he remembered this episode, to reconstruct his speech, to examine what potent eloquence had carried himself away even more completely than the crowd. He only remembered the moment when he returned to the concluding remark of the last speaker. "Our fathers," he began, "our fathers have tried ... I say, our fathers ... our fathers ..." The crowd breathed anxiously. What was happening to the young feller? Had he seen a ghost, he was that pale? He'd been as red as a turkey cock only just now, he had! There weren't no stopping him a minute ago, and now the words were sticking in the back of his throat. It was a shame, it was! It was too much to expect of a kid! Just like these Socialist fellers to put it across a kid once they got hold of him! Couldn't be more than fifteen, or sixteen at the most, he couldn't! It wasn't good enough, don't care what you say! He'd faint if they wasn't careful.... But look, he was starting again. "Our fathers have tried for all they are worth. Your fathers and mine have tried..." The lad's eyes were starting from his head. He gulped and started again, "Have tried, I say..." It was as if some spell of physical evocation resided in his words. Whilst his lips were still shaping the first vowel of "fathers," something black and aloof and ominous had drifted from the vague towards the limit of his audience. A tall shining silk hat, familiar symbol of repressions and disaster, threw a deep gloom over against his eyes. "Our fathers have tried..."