The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels inside.

They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world has ever seen_.
These two men talked.

They were not fools, they were merely old.

And, naturally, their guts a-reek with pavement offal, they talked of bloody revolution.

They talked as anarchists, fanatics, and madmen would talk.
And who shall blame them?
In spite of my three good meals that day, and the snug bed I could occupy if I wished, and my social philosophy, and my evolutionary belief in the slow development and metamorphosis of things--in spite of all this, I say, I felt impelled to talk rot with them or hold my tongue.