r witnessed any scene so
dramatic as this, and yet all was absolutely simple and unintentional.
I had been thrilled by the greatest actors, as with matchless skill they
gave rein to their genius in tragic situations; but how inconceivably
tawdry and cheap such pictures seemed in comparison with this! The
claptrap of the music, the lights, the posing, the wry faces, the gasps,
lunges, staggerings, rolling eyes--how flimsy and colorless, how mocking
and grotesque, they all appeared beside this simple, uncouth, but
genuine expression of immeasurable agony!

The stenographer held his pencil poised above the paper, and wrote no
more.

"And then the whip came down across my back. The something inside of me
twisted hard and then broke wide open, and went pouring all through me
like melted iron. It was a hard fight to keep my head clear, but I did
it. And then I said to the warden this: 'You've struck me with a whip
in cold blood. You' ve tied me up hand and foot, to whip me like a dog.
Well, whip me, then, till you fill your belly with it. You are a coward.
You are lower, and meaner, and cowardlier than the lowest and meanest
dog that ever yelped when his master kicked him. You were born a coward.
Cowards will lie and steal, and you are the same as a thief and liar.
No hound would own you for a friend. Whip me hard and long, you coward.
Whip me, I say. See how good a coward feels when he ties up a man and
whips him like a dog. Whip me till the last breath quits my body: if you
leave me alive I will kill you for this.'

"His face got white. He asked me if I meant that, and I said, 'Yes;
before God, I do.' Then he took the whip in both hands and came down
with all his might."

"That was nearly two years ago," said the chairman. "You would not kill
him now, would you?"

"Yes. I will kill him if I get a chance; and I feel it in me that the
chance will come."

"Well, proceed."

"He kept on whipping me. He whipped me with all the strength of both
hands. I could feel the broken skin curl upon my back, and when my head
got too heavy to hold it straight it hung down, and I saw the blood
on my legs and dripping off my toes into a pool of it on the floor.
Something was straining and twisting inside of me again. My back didn't
hurt much; it was the thing twisting inside of me that hurt. I counted
the lashes, and when I counted to twenty-eight the twisting got so hard
that it choked me and blinded me;... and when I woke up I was i