CHAPTER VII
DISCIPLINE
Punishments for escaping were usually severe. I was put in what was called the lockup. Each cottage possessed one. It was a narrow closet of a room about five by seven feet. There wasn’t a sign of a window in it, the door was made of several thicknesses of wood, reenforced by numerous steel plates. A narrow slit in the wall acted as a ventilator. There were no toilet facilities. There was no bed but a board, and there was no covering. My outer clothes were taken from me before entering. Can you imagine the feelings of one confined in such a place?
Each morning, about eight o’clock, the officer of the family unlocked the door, a boy placed a piece of bread about the size of a half a loaf and a cup of water inside the door, emptied the excretion of the night, and another day began. In this place I spent the next eighteen days. In all that time I was denied the privilege of exercising, of seeing the sun, of even washing myself.
On the morning of the eighteenth day I was taken to the punishment room. I was stripped naked and whipped with forty lashes. A devilish mind invented this implement of torture. A strap about fourteen inches long and about fifteen inches at its widest part was affixed to a wooden handle, to give, as I once heard an officer say, more swing to it. To give it pliability it is kept in an oil solution; this is to keep the leather soft and prevent its breaking.
I had a dumb notion in my head that my punishment was about over with, but I was sadly mistaken. That noon I was ordered “on line” for thirty days. This “on line” punishment must have been devised by one inordinately brutal. There were certain hours at the school which were regarded as recreation time. If one were “on line,” he walked in a circle about thirty feet in circumference during all that period of play. He was supposed to let his hands fall at his side, face square to the front, and in absolute silence. Of course this galled bitterly. The boy being punished by this method was in full view of the others and they of him; he saw them at their games, but could take no part in their pleasures. For myself I preferred the lockup to this.
In my later days at the school, when experience had toughened and much punishment hardened me, I refused to walk, and took the licking instead. There came a day when they even stopped licking me.
That experience, following the escape, pulled me down a little lower. I began to hate the society which maintained such an institution. I scoffed at the name “reform” and resolved to escape again. I soon did so, but the law reached out for me and brought me back. I tried again and again, but each time I was returned. The fourth time I managed to stay away for three long months. I had a unique experience after being returned this fourth time. All the other times on my return to the institution after escaping, I was subjected to the usual punishment. On my return this time, however, I was brought immediately before the head of the institution. He spoke to me kindly of the uselessness of such escapes, and asked me to promise him that I would not attempt to escape again. Of course I promised him; I would have promised anything that he asked; but the promise was worth nothing. My nature had commenced to acquire the quality of hypocrisy and I had been punished enough to lead me to promise him anything.
He sent me back to my cottage with no words of reproof or smart of punishment. He thought to teach me the right road by kindness, to bring me to my senses by a little sympathy. But those virtues were too late coming into my life at the School. My nature had fallen too low to appreciate to the full such acts on the part of this official. That they made some impression on me is shown by the fact that for the following six months I surprised the boys and officials alike by my becoming deportment. It didn’t last: I was soon deep in a plot that seemed to make my freedom assured. The fear of physical suffering had no terrors for me. The day of the final attempt for liberty came, and that midnight saw a pal and me trudging a lonely country path on our way to a railroad station and the outside world.