W'en he sets his jaw that air way
I don' keer to git in his way, big ez I be. He'll dew it ef he doos it
with his own hands. He's pison proud, Perez is, an I guess the idee
they wuz callatin tew hev him licked, hez kinder riled him."
As the people talked, their hearts began to burn. The more they
thought of it, the more the idea fascinated them. Jests and hilarious
comments, which betrayed a temper of delighted expectancy, soon began
to be bandied about.
In ten minutes more, this very crowd which had received in shocked
silence the first suggestion of whipping the gentlemen, had so set
their fancy on that diversion that it would have been hard balking
them. It must be remembered that this was a hundred years ago. The
weekly spectacle of the cruel punishment of the lash, and the scarcely
less painful and disgraceful infliction of the stocks and the pillory
left in their minds no possibility for any revolt of mere humane
sentiment against the proposed doings, such as a modern assembly would
experience. To men and women who had learned from childhood to find a
certain brutish titillation in beholding the public humiliation and
physical anguish of their acquaintances and fellow-townsmen, the
prospect of seeing the scourge actually applied to the backs of envied
and hated social superiors, could not be otherwise than delightfully
agitating.
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