ess, they began screwing these pieces of iron
together. A great many men, when they commenced, would say, "I
recant." I expect I would have been one of them. I would have said,
"Now you just stop that; I will admit anything on earth that you want.
I will admit there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit
yourselves, but stop that." But I want to say, the thumbscrew having
got out of the way, I am going to have my say.

There was now and then some man who wouldn't turn Judas Iscariot to his
own soul; there was now and then a man willing to die for his
conviction, and if it were not for such men we would be savages
tonight. Had it not been for a few brave and heroic souls in every age,
we would have been naked savages this moment, with pictures of wild
beasts tattooed upon our naked breasts, dancing around a dried snake
fetish; and I tonight thank every good and noble man who stood up in
the face of opposition, and hatred, and death for what he believed to
be right. And then they screwed this thumbscrew down as far as they
could and threw him into some dungeon, where, in throbbing misery and
the darkness of night, he dreams of the damned; but that was done in
the name of universal love.

I saw there at the same time what they called the "collar of torture."
Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside of that more than a hundred
points as sharp as needles. This being fastened upon the throat, the
sufferer could not sit down, he could not walk, he could not stir
without being punctured by those needles, and in a little while the
throat would begin to swell, and finally suffocation would end the
agonies of that man, when may be the only crime he had committed was to
say, with tears upon his sublime cheeks, "I do not believe that God,
the father of us all, will damn to eternal punishment any of the
children of men." Think of it! And I saw there at the same time
another instrument, called "the scavenger's daughter," which resembles
a pair of shears, with handles where handles ought to be, but at the
points as well. And just above the pivot that fastens the blades, a
circle of iron through which the hands would be placed, into the lower
circles the feet, and into the center circle the head would be pushed,
and in that position he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and kept
there until the strain upon the muscles produced such agony that
insanity and death would end his pain. And that was done in the