to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of
society, and your management is to be taken away from you. A million and
a half of the men of the working class say that they are going to get
the rest of the working class to join with them and take the management
away from you. This is the revolution, my masters. Stop it if you can."

For an appreciable lapse of time Ernest's voice continued to ring
through the great room. Then arose the throaty rumble I had heard
before, and a dozen men were on their feet clamoring for recognition
from Colonel Van Gilbert. I noticed Miss Brentwood's shoulders moving
convulsively, and for the moment I was angry, for I thought that she was
laughing at Ernest. And then I discovered that it was not laughter,
but hysteria. She was appalled by what she had done in bringing this
firebrand before her blessed Philomath Club.

Colonel Van Gilbert did not notice the dozen men, with passion-wrought
faces, who strove to get permission from him to speak. His own face
was passion-wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving his arms, and for a
moment could utter only incoherent sounds. Then speech poured from him.
But it was not the speech of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer, nor
was the rhetoric old-fashioned.

"Fallacy upon fallacy!" he cried. "Never in all my life have I heard so
many fallacies uttered in one short hour. And besides, young man, I must
tell you that you have said nothing new. I learned all that at college
before you were born. Jean Jacques Rousseau enunciated your socialistic
theory nearly two centuries ago. A return to the soil, forsooth!
Reversion! Our biology teaches the absurdity of it. It has been
truly said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and you have
exemplified it to-night with your madcap theories. Fallacy upon fallacy!