mates of Mississippi river steamers--a class which seems carefully
selected from ruffians most proficient in profanity, obscenity and
swift-handed violence; I have seen negro-drivers in the slave marts of
St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, and overseers on the plantations of
Mississippi and Louisiana; as a police reporter in one of the largest
cities in America, I have come in contact with thousands of the
brutalized scoundrels--the thugs of the brothel, bar-room and alley--who
form the dangerous classes of a metropolis. I knew Captain Wirz. But in
all this exceptionally extensive and varied experience, I never met a man
who seemed to love cruelty for its own sake as well as Lieutenant
Barrett. He took such pleasure in inflicting pain as those Indians who
slice off their prisoners' eyelids, ears, noses and hands, before burning
them at the stake.

That a thing hurt some one else was always ample reason for his doing it.
The starving, freezing prisoners used to collect in considerable numbers
before the gate, and stand there for hours gazing vacantly at it. There
was no special object in doing this, only that it was a central point,
the rations came in there, and occasionally an officer would enter, and
it was the only place where anything was likely to occur to vary the
dreary monotony of the day, and the boys went there because there was
nothing else to offer any occupation to their minds. It became a
favorite practical joke of Barrett's to slip up to the gate with an
armful of clubs, and suddenly opening the wicket, fling them one after
another, into the crowd, with all the force he possessed. Many were
knocked down, and many received hurts which resulted in fatal gangrene.
If he had left the clubs lying where thrown, there would have been some
compensation for his meanness, but he always came in and carefully
gathered up such as he could get, as ammunition for another time.