"John Burns is a teetotaller, they say," added Meredith. "Of such is not the kingdom of my heaven. Burns says you discovered him. What do you think of your discovery? Tell me how it came about." "Burns does not embody my idea of a modest man," said I. "As for that, there seems to be some doubt, nowadays, whether modest men should be permitted to live. What does Gilbert say: "'You must stir it, and stump it And blow your own trumpet, Or, bless me, you have n't a chance!' "Well, I came upon Burns first, in '89, when he had London scared (of course London would n't confess that it was scared but it was) and he was 'stumping it' at the dock gates, and from cart-tails on Tower Hill, and was listened to by thousands and tens of thousands of hungry men, and their wives, and youngsters--" "'Agitating the dregs of London', the newspapers put it," said Meredith. "All for sixpence an hour," said Burns. "You have the floor!" said Meredith to me. {230} "I told you he is not accurately described as a modest man. This is _my_ story," I continued, "the story as I see it. London had heard of him--when was it?--in '86, or so, when he led a crowd of East Enders to Trafalgar Square where mass meetings were not permitted, and the crowd got out of hand and smashed plate-glass windows, and Burns got his head broken, or nearly so, and went to gaol." "'Serve the brute right!' I remember the run of thoughtful British opinion," put in Meredith. "I was not in England at the time, but I remember the verdict," I said. "The trouble was," said Burns, "I hadn't been introduced to the authorities. There I touched a fundamental British prejudice. The affair secured me the introduction, and opened Trafalgar Square--" "To the mob," said Meredith. "To mass meetings," said Burns. "I am playing British chorus," was Meredith's rejoinder. "Second chapter," said I. "There came the year of the Great Dock Strike. The casual labourer swarmed out of chaos, and struck for a sane, not to say 'civilised' method of hiring, and sixpence an hour." "And the dock companies, or whatever they were, were not sane, and, also, they had n't a sixpence, they said"--thus Meredith. "Which was absurd, Mr. Meredith, as you are on the point of adding," I went on. "We don't know how many thousands of men were thrown out {231} of work. Nobody knows to this day, but here is what I am coming at; there were thousands of them, and there was great suffering in their families. Well, when I first saw Burns he was organising kitchens, and feeding women and children, and making ten speeches every twenty-four hours, and sleeping an hour or two when he could find time and a place to lie down. Some nights he did not sleep at all. The night before I met him he slept four hours in his clothes and boots. In three days he made thirty-six speeches; in three weeks he averaged ten speeches a day, out of doors. He is hoarse still, no wonder.