The orator was not eloquent; but he had told a human story and all
listened with respect. When he paused and looked upward it seemed to
many that a light of justice shone upon his haggard face while the tears
rolled unwiped down his ragged jerkin. His lank, unkempt hair, caught by
the draught from the open doors at the far end of the hall, streamed
behind him in grotesque profusion. His hands were clenched and his lips
compressed. That which he had told to the sea of questioning faces below
him was the story of his life. The name which he had uttered with an
oath upon his lips was the name of the man who had deprived him of
riches and of liberty. When he essayed to add a woman's name and to
speak of the wrongs which had been done her, the power of utterance left
him in an instant and he stood there gasping, his eyes toward the light
which none but he could see; a prayer of gratitude upon his lips because
he had found the man and would repay.
Look down upon this audience and you shall see a heterogeneous assembly
such as London alone of the cities can show you. The hall is a crazy
building enough, not a hundred yards from the Commercial Road at
Whitechapel. The time is the spring of the year 1903--the hour is eight
o'clock at night. Ostensibly a meeting to discuss the news which had
come that day from the chiefs of the Revolutionaries in Warsaw, the
discussion had been diverted, as such discussions invariably are, to a
recital of personal wrongs and of individual resolutions--even to mad
talk of the conquest of the world and the crowning of King Anarchy. And
to this the wild Asiatics and the sad-faced Poles listened alike with
rare murmurs and odd contortions of limbs and body. Let Paul Boriskoff
of Minsk be the orator and they knew that the red flag would fly. But
never before has Boriskoff been seen in tears and the spectacle
enchained their attention as no mere rhetoric could have done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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