ure
on the foot is lessened. If a man goes to jail wearing good clothes,
the jailer often exchanges his own poorer suit for the good clothes.

EXECUTION.

This is done in different ways. A prince from the royal family has
authority to behead men. Sometimes when a good friend of the king is
appointed governor, the king presents him with a knife. This is a sign
and carries with it authority to behead men. Every prince-mayor or
other governor who has been given this authority keeps two
executioners. The uniform of their office is a suit of red clothes.
These two men walk before the mayor when he goes through the streets.
When a condemned man is to be executed he is brought from the cell,
hands chained behind, and with a chain about his neck. He is surrounded
by a group of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The guilty man has been in
a dungeon for several months perhaps. His clothes are in rags, and,
having had no bath since first imprisoned, he is very dirty, his hair
and beard are long and shaggy. A few steps before him walks the
executioner, with blood-red garments and a knife in his hand. Thus they
proceed to the public square, and before the assembled crowd the
executioner steps behind the kneeling victim and with a single stroke
of the keen knife cuts his throat, and another soul takes its flight,
having completed its part in the drama of life.

A common mayor who has not the authority to behead, may kill criminals
by fastening them to the mouth of a cannon and sending a ball through
the body. Another method is to bury the condemned alive in a cask
filled with cement, leaving only the head exposed. The cement soon
hardens and the victim dies. Sometimes when their crime is not very bad
the punishment is the severing of one hand from the body. If the man
thus punished should commit a second crime the remaining hand would be
severed. If a Mohammedan becomes drunk with wine and gets loud and
abusive, he is arrested, and the executioner punctures the partition
skin between the nostrils of the drunken man, and a cord of twine,
several feet long, is passed through the opening. Then the executioner
starts down the street leading his victim. The man soon gets sober and
is very much ashamed. Shopkeepers give the executioner pennies as he
passes along the street. Men who quarrel and fight are punished by
tying their feet to a post, with the bare soles upward, and then
whipping the feet until the flesh is bruised and bleeding and