as I have subsequently found in talking with
him, has no very distinct recollection of the events of that Wednesday
evening. If not out of his mind, he was certainly not fully possessed of
it.

In the evening, after his failure to get the doctor, Lavinsky created
some disturbance by calling out remarks which violated the quiet of the
cell-block. I understand that the form this took was something of this
sort: "If you want to kill me, why don't you do it at once, and not
torture me to death?" He seemed to be possessed with the idea that his
life was in danger. I do not know in what condition he was when first
placed in jail, but I do know that the time he spent down in that
hellhole, five days, was quite sufficient to account for his mental
condition when he came out.

Now here was a young man, hardly more than a lad, in a sick and nervous
condition that had produced temporary derangement of mind. What course did
the System take in dealing with that suffering human being? Two keepers
opened his cell, made a rush for him, and knocked him down. One
eye-witness says that they black-jacked him, that is, rendered him
unconscious by striking him on the head with the instrument of that name.
During the brief scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the bucket were
overturned. Then, after being handcuffed, the unresisting if not
unconscious youth was flung out of his cell with such violence that, if it
had not been for a convict trusty who stood by, he would have slipped
under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the stone floor of the
corridor four stories below, and been either killed or crippled for life.

Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their victim
roughly downstairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him on the way,
and carried him before the Principal Keeper, who promptly sent him down to
the jail again.

Let it be remembered that this poor fellow is a slight, undersized,
feeble specimen of humanity, whom one able-bodied man ought to have had
little trouble in handling--even if any use of force were necessary.

This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed; and the loud protests and
outcries of the prisoners whose cells were near by, as they heard and saw
the treatment accorded to their helpless comrade, were the sounds I heard
far away in my cell. One of the trusties who, having the freedom of the
corridors, was enabled to see most of the occurrence, so far forgot his
position as to ven