“They say Jack London is Socialistically inclined, Doctor,” said the youthful president of the Yale Union.

“Yes, he is, rather,” I answered.

“Well,” he added, “I suppose we will have to take our chances.”  The chances seemed small then; they loomed up larger later.

He hoped President Hadley would not interfere with him.

“Will you introduce him, Doctor?”

“Certainly.”

“What’s his topic?”

“He calls it ‘The Coming Crisis.’”

“Social, I suppose, eh?”

“Yes, it’s a suggested remedy for a lot of our troubles.”

The Socialist student had a few rounds with Lee McClung, the Yale treasurer.  “Mac” didn’t know Irvine from a gate-post but took Billy Phelps’s word for it that London was a literary man and let it go at that—­let the hall go, I mean.

“Yale,” said the brilliant Phelps, “is a university, and not a monastery; besides, Jack London is one of the most distinguished men in America.”

When it was decided we could have the hall the advertising began.  Streets, shops and factories were bombarded with printed announcements.  Next morning—­the morning after securing the hall—­Yale official and unofficial awoke to find tacked to every tree on the campus the inscription, “Jack London at Woolsey Hall.”

Max Dellfant painted a flaming poster that gripped men by the eyes.  In it London appeared in a red sweater and in the background the lurid glare of a great conflagration.  Yale and New Haven had never been so thoroughly informed on such short notice.  The information was in red letters.

The first thing done was to run down the officers of the Yale Union.  They had previously run each other down.  The boys were thoroughly scared, explanations were in order all around.

The wiseacres of Yale got busy and the new Yale took a hand also.  Professor Charles Foster Kent—­the Henry Drummond of Yale—­and Professor William Lyon Phelps counselled a square deal and fair play.

The Yale Union had a stormy meeting.  A real sensation was on their hands; there was possible censure and probable glory and every man in the Union went after his share.

It was indignantly moved and carried that the president of the Union introduce the speaker.

“Irvine is a Socialist,” the mover said, “and would spoil the show before it began.”

[Illustration:  Alexander Irvine and Jack London, 1906]

They next discussed the topic.  One boy suggested that London be asked to cut out all mention of Socialism.  That was tabooed because no one knew that he would mention it anyway.