"Well?" Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. "Proofs to the
contrary?"

And in the silence he asked again, "Well?" Then he added, "Still well,
but not so well, that argument of yours."

But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged on in
new directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged the ministers.
When they affirmed that they knew the working class, he told them
fundamental truths about the working class that they did not know, and
challenged them for disproofs. He gave them facts, always facts, checked
their excursions into the air, and brought them back to the solid earth
and its facts.

How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that war-note
in his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact a lash that stung
and stung again. And he was merciless. He took no quarter,* and gave
none. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at the end:

* This figure arises from the customs of the times. When,
among men fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a
beaten man threw down his weapons, it was at the option of
the victor to slay him or spare him.

"You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorant
statement, that you do not know the working class. But you are not to be
blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class? You
do not live in the same locality with the working class. You herd
with the capitalist class in another locality. And why not? It is the