They also shoot considerably, evincing a peculiar fondness for shooting people in the back with a remarkably bad aim, and then finishing them with a shot in the ear at close quarters, or a dagger under the fifth rib.
It was in this way they disposed of William Walker, “the grey-eyed man of destiny,” at Truxillo, in 1860. The French weakness for the guillotine, an aggravated edition of the domestic bread or meat chopper, has disposed of many multitudes of kings, queens, nobles, ragamuffins, petroleuses, and others, with business-like rapidity and cleanliness.
The baskets, sawdust, and brightly-polished cheese-knife employed are familiar, and almost inviting in comparison with the gallows adhered to by Anglo-Saxons.
Hanging nowadays seems a “lost art.” The Americans have improved the machinery with patent drops and weights warranted to jerk up the hanged with satisfactory promptitude.
But the education of the hangman has been sadly neglected. The knot is rarely tied with scientific accuracy, or the rope in as good condition as it might be.
The consequence is, but a small proportion of the sufferers enjoy the sudden death they would prefer, if they must die in so hasty a manner, and instead of their necks being broken they are slowly strangled, if the rope does not break and necessitate a repetition of the performance.
Physicians and anatomists say this slow strangulation must be exquisitely painful.
Humanitarians have accordingly suggested “painless extinction.” Chloroform applied long enough would soothe the slumberer to wake no more here below, with absolutely no pain.
An overdose of laudanum might be an improvement, as bestowing positive pleasure before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Both these and other plans are warmly recommended, and discussed with some heat by their respective advocates. Some gentlemen have even hinted at the possibility of doing good at the same time by dissecting the brain of the living but unconscious subject, during the calm retreat from the sins and follies of his life.