TORTURE BEYOND DESCRIPTION

Words to describe the awful torture inflicted upon Smith cannot be found.
The Negro, for a long time after starting on the journey to Paris, did not
realize his plight. At last when he was told that he must die by slow
torture he begged for protection. His agony was awful. He pleaded and
writhed in bodily and mental pain. Scarcely had the train reached Paris
than this torture commenced. His clothes were torn off piecemeal and
scattered in the crowd, people catching the shreds and putting them away
as mementos. The child's father, her brother, and two uncles then gathered
about the Negro as he lay fastened to the torture platform and thrust hot
irons into his quivering flesh. It was horrible--the man dying by slow
torture in the midst of smoke from his own burning flesh. Every groan from
the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed
crowd of 10,000 persons. The mass of beings 600 yards in diameter, the
scaffold being the center. After burning the feet and legs, the hot
irons--plenty of fresh ones being at hand--were rolled up and down Smith's
stomach, back, and arms. Then the eyes were burned out and irons were
thrust down his throat.

The men of the Vance family having wreaked vengeance, the crowd piled all
kinds of combustible stuff around the scaffold, poured oil on it and set
it afire. The Negro rolled and tossed out of the mass, only to be pushed
back by the people nearest him. He tossed out again, and was roped and
pulled back. Hundreds of people turned away, but the vast crowd still
looked calmly on. People were here from every part of this section. They
came from Dallas, Fort Worth, Sherman, Denison, Bonham, Texarkana, Fort
Smith, Ark., and a party of fifteen came from Hempstead county, Arkansas,
where he was captured. Every train that came in was loaded to its utmost
capacity, and there were demands at many points for special trains to