every misstep, for every sign of disobedience a whipping was due.
If one of us refused to kneel in prayer before the crucifix; if one
of us refused to eat pork; if one of us was caught mumbling a Hebrew
prayer or speaking Yiddish, he was sure to get a flogging. Twenty,
thirty, forty, or even full fifty lashes were the punishment. But,
then, is it conceivable that they could have treated us any other
way? Why, hundreds of Jewish children that did not understand a
word of Russian had been delivered into the hands of a Russian
official that did not understand a word of Yiddish. He would say,
Take off my boots, and the boy would wash his hands. He would say,
Sit down, and the boy would stand up. Were we not like dumb cattle?
It was only the rod that we understood well. And the rod taught us
to understand our master's orders by the mere expression of his
eyes.

Then many of the ex-Cantonists still remember with horror the
steam-bath they were compelled to take. "The chamber of hell," they
called the bath. At first blush, it would really seem to have been
an awful thing. They would pick out all the Cantonists that had so
much as a scratch on their bodies or the smallest sign of an
eruption, paint the wounds with tar, and put the boys, stripped, on
the highest shelf in the steam-bath. And below was a row of
attendants armed with birch-rods. The kettle was boiling fiercely,
the stones were red-hot, and the attendants emptied jars of boiling
water ceaselessly upon the stones. The steam would rise, penetrate
every pore of the skin, and--sting! sting!--enter into the very
flesh. The pain was horrible; it pricked, and pricked, and there
was no air to breathe. It was simply choking. If the boy happened
to roll down, those below stood ready to meet him with the rods.