, the grimy paleness of his shirt and skin
standing out in high relief against the dark stone building behind him. He
lifted up one fore-finger, and marked his emphasis with it as he spoke. His
voice was high and not strong, but Felix recognised the fluency and the method
of a habitual preacher or lecturer.
    »It's the fallacy of all monopolists,« he was saying. »We know what
monopolists are: men who want to keep a trade all to themselves, under the
pretence that they'll furnish the public with a better article. We know what
that comes to: in some countries a poor man can't afford to buy a spoonful of
salt, and yet there's salt enough in the world to pickle every living thing in
it. That's the sort of benefit monopolists do to mankind. And these are the men
who tell us we're to let politics alone; they'll govern us better without our
knowing anything about it. We must mind our business; we are ignorant; we've no
time to study great questions. But I tell them this: the greatest question in
the world is, how to give every man a man's share in what goes on in life -«
    »Hear, hear!« said Felix, in his sonorous voice, which seemed to give a new
impressiveness to what the speaker had said. Every one looked at him: the
well-washed face and its educated expression, along with a dress more careless
than that of most well-to-do workmen on a holiday, made his appearance strangely
arresting.
    »Not a pig's share,« the speaker went on, »not a horse's share, not the
share of a machine fed with oil only to make it work and nothing else. It isn't
a man's share just to mind your pin-making, or your glass-blowing, and higgle
about your own wages, and bring up your family to be ignorant sons of ignorant
fathers, and no better prospect; that's a slave's share; we want a freeman's
share, and that is to think and speak and act about what concerns us all, and
see whether these fine gentlemen who undertake to govern us are doing the best
they can for us. They've got the knowledge, say they. Very well, we've got the
wants. There's many a one who would be idle if hunger didn't pinch him; but the
stomach sets us to
