The boy thought a moment and then he hissed out between his teeth: "What in hell is it your business, now? We don't get any more money from you. What do you come to bother us here for? We don't want you. We have got enough of your dirty business."
"Listen," I told him: "I don't want to bother you any more, but tell me, have you bread and meat every day now?"
"Meat and candies and butter and everything, and mamma has a million in the bank and that's all, and don't come to bother us. We are no more 'charity kids.' For God's sake can't you leave us alone?"
"Good luck to you." I turned around and disappeared as quickly as possible.
THE TEST
In the boiler factories they submit the boiler to a test of resistance. The engine is subjected to a pressure three or four times stronger than the one it will have to withstand in the ordinary run of work. If successful it is sent out to the market guaranteed by the factory. If not, it is made over. The weak points are strengthened, and in most cases it is put away to be entirely recast.
For boilers and engines this may be a good system of control, though many an engineer maintains that the over-pressure weakens the machine for ordinary use.
To use such a system with men, women and children is barbarous, to say the least. The Inquisition had such a system—the Question Chamber. It is a well-known fact that persons put to the "Question" often admitted things which in reality they had never said or done. Most of the time they, the tortured ones, knew that to admit these things meant death, the hangman or the auto da fé. Still, when they confessed, the torture ceased for the moment. This they called "The Test." Not one in a thousand could maintain his will power when the test was applied. It went on in crescendo as the hours passed by and the man or woman did not "respond." It was up to the man doing the work to devise such means as would loosen the tongue, break the will. The hangman himself was punished for not getting at the truth, or was praised by his superior for his success. Torquemada called a particular man from Madrid to accompany him to Grenada, as he alone knew how to apply the "Test" to the glory of the Almighty and of Jesus Christ. This man had perfected himself in the art of torturing. I am not certain whether this is the man who is spoken of in connection with the "Question" of a certain gentleman which had to be put off because the "real one" at the bench had a terrible toothache that day.