The Warner sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1885-1???, 1885-10-16

Letter to San Francisco Argonaut.

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Letter to San Francisco Argonant.
The party was put in the hands of q
head keeper and sent the rounds.
The keeper was an Irishman, with q
clean-shaven and crafty-looking face.
He had an observant eye, and he did
not smile while he was showing the
party around, until hecametoa room
which was fitted up with dark cells.
A real professional dark cell is about
the blacklist thing on the face Of the
| earth-when you are in it andthe door
is closed. The party played a pleas
ant and agreeable little trick on the
Oldest member. He said he hadheard
a great deal about the exaggerated
notions men had of time spent in a
dark room, and he asked the keeper if
he would not lock him in there for five
minutes by the watch, and let him
have the experience; SO he was locked
up in a little whitewashedc cell in which
he could scarcely turn around. Not q
particle of light was admitted, and a
man might yell himself hoarse forever
| without being heard outside. Having
locked him in securely, his kind friends
went cheerfully off and investigated
the iron-foundry, shoe-shops, saw
mills, and docks. Nearly an hour
elapsed, and then they returned and
released him.
ut seemed a pretty long five min
utes, didn't it, colonel" asked the
youngest man, fippantly,
"N-no," said the colonel, who had a
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 a 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.
Ppm going to show you a 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
unmanageable pretty often. Informer
years they used the lash, the paddle,
the douche, and often claimed men by
putting them into the b~lack-rooms.
The fiercest spirits are quelled by i'm
prisonment In a dungeon. The Wild
est case we ever had turned to a lamb
after twenty-five days Imprisonment,
witaout a gleam of light, in a 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 | call my weighing
machine that they no longer fight and
rebel" He then showed it to us. If
a convict. becomes desperate at i'll
4 IAOctbiAi5BySt vi oACAalA0uAOAA
of the awful duration of atwenty-years'
s~entence,h he is draggedinto the keepers
room and a pair OF iron handouts are
screwed tightly around his wrists. Then
the chain which connects the two 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 smeared
with the stains of blood from the
wrists Of the poor wretohes who had
hung there.
TITS a daisy" said the keeper, RAJ
dainty; "the toughest man in the
whole jail has never been athletic stand
it more THAN three-quarters of O. min
ute. 1t cures rheumatism, blindness,
and all the other ills that criminals
are 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 hands on thepully, while the crowd
wandered away. It's a great thing to
have clear idea of the humorous.