me to the
police and their lashes cut the flesh from my body. I lay three years in
the prison at Irkutsk and five at Saghalin. The white faces were turned
to the earth they sprang from, my son was heard at the foot of God's
throne when they bade me go and set my foot in Poland no more. This I
knew even in that island of blood and death. Letters had come to me from
my dear wife; the Committee had kept me informed even there at the end
of the earth. I knew that my home had perished; that of all my family,
my daughter Lois alone remained to me; I knew that the days of the
tyranny were numbered and that I, even I, might yet have my work to do.
Did they keep me from Poland? I tell you that I lived there three years
in spite of them, searching for the man who should answer me. Maxim
Gogol, where had he hidden himself? The tale at the mines was that he
had gone to America, sold his interest and embarked in new ventures. I
wrote to our friends in New York and they knew nothing of such a man. I
had search made for him in Berlin, in Vienna and Paris. The years were
not too swift for my patience, but the harvest went ungathered. I came
to London and bent my neck to this yoke of starvation and eternal night.
I have worked sixteen hours a day in the foul holds of ships that I
might husband my desire and repay. Friends, ten days ago in London I
passed the man I am seeking and knew him for my own. Maxim Gogol may
hide from me no more. With these eyes have I seen him--ah, God give me
strength to speak of it--with these eyes have I seen him, with these
hands have I touched him, with this voice have I accused him. He lives
and he is mine--to suffer as I have suffered, to repay as I have
paid--until the eternal justice of God shall decide between us both."

There would have been loud applause in any other assembly upon the
conclusion of such an impassioned if verbally conventional an harangue;
but these Asiatics who heard Paul Boriskoff, who watched the tears
stream down his hollowed cheeks and beheld the face uplifted as in
ecstasy, had no applause to give him. Had not they also suffered as he
had suffered? What wrong of his had not been, in some phase or other, a
wrong of theirs? How many of them had lost children well beloved, had
known starvation and the sweater's block? Such sympathy as they had to
give was rather the cold systematical pity of their order which ever
made the individual's cause its own. This unknown Maxim Gogol, if he