TAR AND FEATHERS.

Press, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5542, 23 June 1883, Page 5

TAR AND FEATHERS.

"Most people," said a prominent Benoite to a reporter, " don't know what a terrible punishment tarring and feathering really is. They suppose that it is nothing worse than a badge of infamy, rather uncomfortable, perhaps, but not painful unless the tar gets into the eyes. This is a great mistake. I helped to daub Jones. He was a disgxace to humanity, and he deserved what he got. But I had no idea until I saw that fellow plastered what a tough deal the process is. We painted htm all over pretty thick with a broom, and some -enthusiastic vigilante poured a'few gallons of tar on his head. Then the feathers, taken from a big pillow, were dusted en him, and he 3tood out, white and fluffy, in the Btarlight, like some huge and grotesque-looking bird. He had to put his clothes on over the whole mass, and then he was ridden on a rail for fifty yards or bo, and we put him on a westbound train at midnight, with instructions not to come back on pain of being hanged, I saw him on the train. He was sitting with his head on his arms on the back of the seat in front of him. The tar was so. thick on his head that it covered the hair out of sight, and his poll shone in the light cf the car lamps like a black rubber ball just dipped in the water. The poor fellow was moaning, and I could not help feeling mean at having taken a hand in the job. You see the body is covered with short hair, and when the tar hardens a little tbe slightest movement causes acute pain, as if one's beard were being pulled out by pincers, hair by hair. Then there is the stoppage of all perspiration, which would soon kill a man if he did not make lively time in getting scrubbed. Besides, the smell of the tar turn 3 the stomach, and about half an hour after a man is coated he must feel mighty sorry he was not hanged. Then comes the scrubbing with oil. It took two Chinamen a_d a darkey three days in Truckee to reduce Jones to a mild brown. The rubbing makes the skin tender, and the body must be sore for weeks.''—Virginia " Chronicle."