ONE:"I could go on with a long account of the tortures in China, but they are not very pleasant reading, and, besides, some of them are too horrible for belief. I will stop with the torture known as 'the hot-water snake,' which consists of a coil of thin tubing of tin or pewter in the form of a serpent. One of these coils is twisted around each arm of the victim, and another around his body, in such a way that the head of the snake is higher than any other part. Then they pour boiling water into the mouth of the snake, and the flesh of the prisoner is burned and scalded in the most terrible manner. This punishment is said to be used rarely, and only[Pg 374] on persons accused of crimes against the government. It is too horrible to be popular, even among the most cold-blooded people in the world.
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ONE:"One of the interesting places we have visited is the office of the Board of Punishments, which corresponds pretty nearly to our courts of justice. But one great point of difference between their mode of administering justice and ours is that they employ torture, while we do not. Not only is the prisoner tortured after condemnation, but he is tortured before trial, in order to make him tell the truth; and even the witnesses, under certain circumstances, are submitted to the same treatment. We saw some of the instruments that they use, and there was not the least attempt to keep us from seeing them. It is customary to have them piled or hung up at the doors of the courts, so that culprits may know what to expect, and honest persons may be deterred from wickedness through fear. It is the same principle that is followed by some of the school-teachers in America when they hang up in full view the stick with which they intend to punish unruly boys.This imaginative flight into the future fatigued{176} her, or at any rate demanded an effort on the part of her brain, and very naturally she went back to the blessings that she found it easier to call to mind since they already existed. Quite high among these, a little lower perhaps than the pleasure of being Lady Mayoress, but higher than the fact that Alice was distinctly better this morning, was the sensible way in which her husband had behaved about those odd evening visits of Miss Propert when she worked at his library catalogue. Faint was the remembrance of that unpleasant moment when she had suddenly appeared among all the guests at the close of dinner, and was subsequently introduced into the drawing-room. But after that those visits had ceased altogether, and instead Miss Propert came in the middle of the morning when her husband was at his office. That was perfectly in accordance with the rules of correct behaviour, and when she chanced to meet Norah going into the library or leaving it at the conclusion of her work, she always had a civil and condescending word for her. She had no doubt whatever that the girl was a very decent young woman in her station of life, which was as much as could be said about anybody.
