One day, not long before Christmas, and after I had been nearly a year in the movement, when all London was lost in a heavy fog and the air seemed solid as a brick wall, there landed at the _Tocsin_ a small batch of three Italians fresh from their native country. It was the year of the coercion laws in Italy, of the "domicilio coatto" (forced domicile), and the Anarchists and Socialists were fleeing in large numbers from the clutches of the law. None of these Southerners had ever been in England before, and having heard grim tales of the lack of sunshine and light in London, they took this fog to be the normal condition of the atmosphere. Stumbling into the lighted office from the blind stifling darkness outside, the leader of the party, a remarkably tall handsome man well known to me by reputation and correspondence, gave vent to a tremendous sigh of relief and exclaimed in his native tongue: "Thank Heaven, friends, we have overcome the greatest danger of all and we are here at last, and still alive!" They then advanced towards me and Avvocato Guglielmo Gnecco held out his hand. "You are Isabel Meredith?" he said in a sonorous voice, and I gave an affirmative nod. "I am very glad to meet you at last, Comrade," and we all shook hands. "So this is London! I had heard grim enough tales of your climate, but never had I conceived anything like this. It is truly terrible! But how do you live here? How do you get through your work?... How do you find your way about the streets? Why, we've been wandering about the streets ever since eleven o'clock this morning, walking round and round ourselves, stumbling over kerb-stones, appealing to policemen and passers-by, getting half run over by carts and omnibuses and cabs. Giannoli here sees badly enough at all times, but to-day he has only escaped by the skin of his teeth from the most horrid series of deaths. Is it not so, Giacomo?" Giannoli, who had been engaged in enthusiastic greetings with Kosinski, who was evidently an old friend, looked up at this. "Oh, I've had too much of London already," he exclaimed fervently. "We must leave here for some other country to-night or to-morrow at the latest. We should be better off in prison in Italy than at liberty here. You see, Comrade," he said, turning to me with a smile, "we Anarchists all belong to one nationality, so I have no fear of wounding your patriotic sentiments." "But London is not always like this, I assure you," I began. "Oh, make no attempt to palliate it," Gnecco interrupted. "I have heard English people before now defending your climate. But I see now only too well that my compatriots were right in calling it impossible, and saying that you never saw the sun here," and all attempts to argue them out of this conviction proved futile.