What WAS the connection?

We made a special effort with our last assembly in June, 1907. We
tried to get something like a representative collection of the
parliamentary leaders of Socialism, the various exponents of
Socialist thought and a number of Young Liberal thinkers into one
room. Dorvil came, and Horatio Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared
for ten minutes and talked charmingly to Margaret and then vanished
again; there was Wilkins the novelist and Toomer and Dr. Tumpany.
Chris Robinson stood about for a time in a new comforter, and
Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six Labour members. And on our
side we had our particular little group, Bunting Harblow, Crampton,
Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to conviction as they
possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes
almost boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to
mingle or dispute, and as an experiment in intercourse the evening
was a failure. Unexpected dissociations appeared between Socialists
one had supposed friendly. I could not have imagined it was
possible for half so many people to turn their backs on everybody
else in such small rooms as ours. But the unsaid things those backs
expressed broke out, I remarked, with refreshed virulence in the
various organs of the various sections of the party next week.

I talked, I remember, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still
larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair
hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency. We
discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at
that time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal
party. I was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed
less vividly in many others of these Socialist leaders, and which