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How were crimes like these to be visited upon the transgressor? Was it by reprimand, fine, imprisonment, banishment, or by branding on the forehead, by the cropping of the ears or the slitting of nostrils, as was practised upon the Puritan fathers of New England for their nonconformity? It was by a sharper chastisement than any of these methods.
So much sentimental nonsense has been talked of the cruelty of branding and slitting calves that it is worth while here, perhaps, to state positively that the branding irons do not penetrate the skin and serve simply to burn the roots of the hair so that the bald marks will show to which ranch the calf belongs.
I soon remarked that the railings again set themselves in motion; but I had no time to consider, nor could I get a footing so as to fly. I feared every instant to be pierced; for the partisans and lances, which had lifted themselves up, were already slitting my clothes.
For the doctor had raised the leg, and, after taking off the handkerchief, roughly tied round just above the knee, made no scruple about slitting up the lad's trousers with an ugly-looking knife, having a hooky kind of blade. "Bad?" said Mr Reardon anxiously. "Oh dear, no," replied the doctor. "Nice clean cut. Sponge and water, youngster.
He was at high sport with the terrier round the big sweet-brier bush, when he saw his old master slitting the seams of his weather-beaten coat in the haste with which he plucked crimson clove carnations as if they had been dandelions, and presented them, not ungracefully, to the parson's daughter. Jack knew why she had come, and strained his ears to catch his own name.
Not over their estates: for they claim no secular power at all over men's estates, by fines, penalties, forfeitures, or confiscations. Not over their bodies, for they inflict no corporal punishment, by banishment, imprisonment, branding, slitting, cropping, striking, whipping, dismembering, or killing.
Moreover, I see a little yard, with posts in it, where prisoners were scourged, and a small and horrible room, furnished with a kind of wooden bed, to which they were bound for the punishment of the putting out of their eyes and the slitting of their tongues. In front of this room was a block where those condemned to death were sometimes executed.
One of them, who seemed to be the leader, went away and quickly returned bringing with him an enormous pair of rollers fixed in an iron frame, such as are used in iron-mills for the purpose of rolling out and slitting bars of iron, except instead of being turned by machinery, each roller was turned by an immense crank.
He struggled with surprising strength, but he was helpless in the hands of his assailants. His musket had been torn from his hands, and he seemed to feel something slitting and tearing his clothing. Once he was struck or kicked with great violence. After a few moments of this treatment, Davis managed to get his head clear of the enfolding blanket and shout for help.
If one had committed a crime so heinous that he was unfit to live, he was forthwith put beyond the power of doing mischief; but if the offence were of a less atrocious character, modes of punishment were usually resorted to which did not involve the necessity of supporting him at public charge such, for instance, as whipping, cutting off the ears, slitting the nose, and like improvements of the human form divine.
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