noon
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 . They had read the superintendent 's notice which he had posted up in various places , and came largely out of curiosity . They were favorably impressed .