I have asked them to come up and see the place and I'll tell them something about it." Maxwell was ashamed to say how uneasy he felt at being asked to speak a few words to a company of working men.

How could he speak without notes, or to such a crowd?
He was honestly in a condition of genuine fright over the prospect.

He actually felt afraid of facing those men.

He shrank from the ordeal of confronting such a crowd, so different from the Sunday audiences he was familiar with.
There were a dozen rude benches and tables in the room, and when the noon whistle sounded the men poured upstairs from the machine shops below and, seating themselves at the tables, began to cat their lunch.

There were present about three hundred of them.