ALFRED STILL HOLDS THE REIN OF GOVERNMENT.
I will relate another transaction wherein I, M. Swan, was a great sufferer, and lest the reader may think me a trespasser, I will state it was not for what I had done, but for what I could not do.
Early one morning J. P. Bacon, Scott, Fitzgerald, Clingstain and others, six or eight in number, were brought in my room and seated on a bench in a line, then Alfred began to clip their hair one by one, giving them the State prison clip, so called. He then says to me, "sit down." I knew most of them to be wicked men, and to sit down with them and receive the mark, I could not, and disobeyed his command by saying, "I can't."
I believe the spirit is the moving cause or mainspring of the mind, and the mind is the man, or in other words, "that which suffers or enjoys."
Reader, can you rise from your seat until your mind is changed? Can a mistaken person change his or her ways till the mind is changed? Could the blind man whose eyes Jesus opened see until there was a cure wrought by the Divine Redeemer? Could Saul of Tarsus, desist in persecuting the church till his mind was changed, for he said he "verily thought he was doing God service?" And so like Paul I labored under the mistaken notion in my weakness, that I should be lost forever, yet I was a firm believer in the truth; I believed others could be saved. I was afraid to do anything wrong, and no person saw me smile during my captivity for more than ten years.
But to my story. I said, "I can't," when he told me to sit down to have my hair sheared. The attendant then removed all others from the room, locking me in. Presently he returned with patient Sears. Sears was a great, stout, robust-looking man, having in his hand two of the straps BB, buckled together with a noose made in the same. They both rushed toward me. I backed into the corner, and Sears tried to lasso me by throwing the noose or running-knot over my head. In the meantime, I raised my hands, warding off the noose. Sears being tired of this, then tried to persuade me to be bound, asking me to put on cuffs A, which I refused. He plead like the devil transformed into an angel of light, saying, "put them on, they won't hurt you," and then tried to encourage me by saying, he had had them on a hundred times. Oh, the devil let loose in the person of Sears and attendant Alfred.
This moment a boy came along near the window. Attendant raised the window and told him to send up a man from the other house to bind a man (meaning me), and the cowards left, and cowards they were, for the boy, not more than twelve years old, could have floored me at that time in a moment.
I watched their return in fear and trembling. Presently the two cowards, encouraged by David Hicks, a child of the devil Isabel, for he often called her mother for the sake of gain. Hicks was a strong person, of more than medium size. The three rushed up to me, Hicks grabbed me around my body and arms, hurling me to the floor in a moment, placing his heavy knee upon my left side. "Oh," said I, "You will break my ribs." "It is of little consequence," says Hicks. Holding me fast, whilst the two cowards bound me with the accursed harness. The attendant then raised me upon my feet; the three ruffians then kicked me into another room to a chair that was ironed to the floor, when seated, my hands being bound as seen in the engraving; the attendant ran strap B and B between my body and arms, on either side, then below to the rounds of the chair; then drawing strap F, which was fast to my feet, by cuff D and D, strap F was locked to the back round of the chair. In this suffering condition, in pain from my wounded side and ribs, all day long I sit, nothing to eat, not even a cup of cold water. I was much fatigued and faint when the sun set in the west. But, says the reader, as many others have said, who have listened to the rehearsal of this transaction, did the attendant cut your hair off, he did not, he loosed me in the evening, told me he would never bind me again, and he kept his word as to that.