half-a-dozen men of various ages , between twenty and fifty , all shabbily dressed , most of them with clay pipes , were listening with a look of concentrated intelligence to a man in pepper-and-salt clothes , with blonde hair and broad forehead , who , holding his pipe in his left hand , and beating his knee with the right , was just finishing a quotation from shelley : as thought by thought is piled , till some great truth is loosened , and the nations echo round .