Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1885-10-09
|nk- SIM Prison ,ini laelli

Let TO Gan ranciscns ,Arxora III. 1
Thu ylas put ia the an1s 81 III
head keeper and ( sent The sounds.
The keeper was IN Liishman i, witll, ~
clean shsven and craft look king face.
He md IN sobssrvantt eye, and he did
not smile whils he wsas showing tho
party around, until ecame TO 8 room
which 49, fitted up with dark cells.
Areal professional dark cell is about
the BLACKLIST thing on the face 81 the
earth when you arc ID it and the door
Is closed. The party played q pleas
ant, and agreeable little trick on the
oldast member. He said he had heard
q grsat deal about tho exaggerated
notions men had Of time spent in 8
dark room, and he asked the keeper 4
he would not lock him in there for FIVE
minutes by the watch, and let him
have the experience; 50 he was locked
up in a little whitewashed cell, in which
he could scarcely turn around. Not q
particle Of light was admitted, and 3
man might yell himself hoarse forever
without being heard outside. Having
locked him in securely, his kind friends
went cheerfvlly off and investigated
the irOn-foundry, shoe-shOps, saw
mills, and docks. Nearly an hour
elapsed, and then they returned and
released him.
lit seemed q pretty long five min
utes, didn't it, colonel?" asked the
youngest man, hippantly.
IN mo-" said the colonel, who hada
strained, round -shouldered, hollow
eyed, nervous, melancholy, and unnat-
ural air; 'no, / shouldn't think was
there more than five minutes. You
see it's q great thing to. have a strong
hold on your imagination and not let
it run away with you, STILL" YEARLY,
II must say that that three-legged
stool was rather uncomfortable"
At this moment the attention OF
everybody was attracted by the keep.
er, who was actually smiling. 1t was
the first time his features had relaxed
during the day, and the crowd gath.
cred around him.
f'I'm going to show you little in
vention of my own,' he said, pleas
antly, (Which has been adopted all
over the country. suppose you
know that the criminals often get ugly.
The place that harbors more than
fifteen hundred of New York's worst
scum must necessarily have a number
of hard characters to deal with. Men
here get rebellious, ill-tempered, and
unmanageablep pretty often. Informer
years they used the lash, the paddle,
the douche, and often Gained men by
putting them into the black-roons.
The fiercest spirits are quelled by im-
prisonment in a, dungeon. The Wild
est case we ever had turned to a lamb
after twenty-five days Imprisonment,
without a gleam of light, in black
cell. All that is settled now, however,
by my little invention. Wedon't have
to use the black-cells, Or anything
else, and the men are SO thoroughly
scared by what I call my weighing
machine that they no longer fight and
rebel" He then showed it to us. If
81 convict becomes desperate at ill
treatment, over-work, or arealiZation
ofthe awful duration Of a twenty years
sentence, he is dragged into the keepers
room and a pair OF iron handouts are
screwed tightly around his wrists. Then
the chain which connects thetwo hand
cuffs is hooked to a pully, and the
mans hands are drawn up until he is
almost lifted from the floor. Here he
hangs against the wall until his spirit
is subdued. The wall was snleared
with the stains Of blood from the
wrists of the poor, wretches who had
hung there.
otis a daisy" said the keeper, ra-
dainty; f'the toughest man in the
whole Jail has never been able to stand
it more than three-quarters OF min
ute. 1t cures rheumatism. blindness,
and all the other ills that criminals
ore heir TO-"
at must be torture"
"Well, rather, 1t stops the circula-
ton Of the blood, you know"
And he still smiled as he stood with
his bands on the pully, while the crowd
wandered away. It's great thing to
have clear idea Of the humorous.