eight
o'clock at night
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 .