Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1878-10-31
miscellaneous &eaaima.
FRENCH EXECUTIONS.

HOW THE GUILLOTINE DOES ITS TERRIBLE
WORK AT LA ROQUETTE.
The date of French execution is never
known before hand. The processes which
follow upon sentence of death take from three
to six weeks, but all is done in private, and
the convict only hears that his appeals have
been rejected, when the Governor of the pris-
on wakes him up on the morning of the exc
cution. Executions constitute one of the
sights of Paris which fast-living tourists are
expected to witness. The walters at Brebants 8
and the Caife Anglais inform joyous young
roysterers that the guillotine is to be at work
at daybreak, and opera hats, dust coats, and
the fumes of Cuban cigars will be found
miogling with blouses, flat caps, and thesmoke
of clay pipes on the Place de la Roquette at
the fatal hour. La Roquette is the Newgate
of Paris. 1t has only become 80 since 1852,
for of old, men we're taken from the Bicetre
! to be executed on the Place de Greve (now
Place de pHote de Ville) at 2 o'clock in the
afternoon, to the great hindrance of public
business. Subsequently the Place St. Jacques
was used for the fell purpose, and the hour of
execution fixed at 10; now the headman per-
! forms his work at in summer, and at about
7 in winter Five fagstones fixed in the road.
way, at some twenty PAGES from the prison
door, mark the spot where the guillotine rises.
Its tall posts are no longer red, but dark
green, and there is no scaffold platform, so
that the convict has no steps to climb. When
he has passed through the innermost line of
soldiers, who surround the instrument of death,
he finds himself suddenly opposite the bascule.
The headman's three assistants seize him and
push him against this board, which forthwith
pivots and assumes horizontal position. At
this moment the doomed man, who has been
taken, in some sense, by surprise, invariably
struggles, and has to be forced forward by the
shoulders and hair till his neck protrudes
through a semicircular aperture under the
knife. Being bound hand and foot, the man
cannot offer much resistance, but he might
roll off the bascule and so must be held with
an iron grip until second semicircle closes
upon the first, and imprisons his neck. The
instant this is done M. Roch touches spring.
and the broad triangular knife, weighted with
fifty pounds of lead, gldes down the grooves
like carriage window, slices the head from
the trunk, and rebounds with dull thud on
two India rubber cushions. One assistant,
who has held the head by the hair, drops it
into small wicker basket, half full of saw
dust; the two others seize the headless body,
from which blood is flowing in torrents, and
which kicks in nervous convulsions, and fling
it into a longer basket. Then both recepta.
ces are hoisted into close hearse which trots
off to the Cemetery of Clamart attended by
a mounted police escort, and followed by the
prison chaplain in cab; after which the ex-
ecutioner's assistants begin washing down the
"bois de justice" with mops and pailfuls of
water. Within couple Of minutes from the
time when the convict shows himself under
the archway of La Roquette the whole per-
formance is ended.
Now what preparation have French con-
victs to meet their fate? In Eogland it is
considered Just to let man know the date of
his execution, in order that he may purify his
sonl to meet his Maker; in France the mis-
taken kindness is shown of allowing convict
to hope on till the very end. He spends all
his time in cell with two other prisoners and
two wardens, and may smoke or play cards to
the top of his bent. How can the ministra-
tions of chaplain have any serious infu-
ence under such conditions2 The sight of
aces and knaves, the company of prisoners
under sentence for some piece of roguery, the
fumes of tobacco, and the buoyant talk Of
wardens, who are expressly hidden to say eve
rything that may encourage the criminal to
believe that he will be respited. These are
uot incentives to true repentance. 1t is much
to be feared that too many French convicts
20 to their doom wholly impenitent The
hasty shrift which they make on the morning
of execution cannot count for much, because
they are half insane from terror when they
make it.
Few men can stand with composure the aw-
ful announcement, coming at moment when
they are quite unprepered for it: "Your ap-
peals have been rejected, and you are to be
executed, now at once" Now at once!
There is no delay from that moment The
man who has gone to bed hoping, awakens to
be told that death is waiting outside his cell
door. A glass of brandy, hasty prayer on
the knees in cold sweat and trembling, a pause
for moment under a whitewashed vault,
where the convict's back hair and shirt collar
are cut of, and then throug the portals of
the prison, suddenly swung back, a sight of
the guilotine, with its knife cleaning in the
gray dawnlight of morning. All this takes
but twenty minutes at most, but these minutes
are the only ones during which the French
convict is allowed to feel for certain that he
is going to meet his God.
ALL ABOUT THE PULsE.-Every person
should know how to ascertain the state of the
pulse in health then by comparing it with
what it was when he was ailing, he may have
some idea of the case. Parents should know
the healthy pulse Of each child, as now and
then person is born with a remarkably slow
or fast pulse, and the very case in hand may
be of that popularity. An infants pulse is
l40; child of seven years about 80, and
from twenty to sixty years, it is 70 beats to
minute, declining to 60 at four score A
healthful grown up persons pulse beats 70
times a minute. There may be good health
down to 60 but if the pulse always exceeds
70 there is disease. The machine is working
itself out there is fever and inflammation
somewhere, and the body is feeding on itself
as in consumption, when the pulse is quick,
that is over 60, gradually increasing with
decreased chances of cure, until it reaches
ITO or 120, when death comes before many
days. When the pulse is over 70 for months,
and there is slight cough, the lungs are af
fected.
TOOTH AcHE.-A man with the toothache
doesn't care about anything else. The glories
of the world pail on his taste, the wonders of
creation seem as naught. The tooth becomes
volcano of belching fury, and the rest Of
life hidden in a cloud of its billowing smoke.
You can't borrow anything of man with the
toothache. You tell him that the world
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