Yet strange as it may appear at first glance, a great number are perfectly content. Leisure, food, tobacco are theirs and they wish little more. When two-thirds of the sentence has been served, it is the custom to release the tractable prisoners. Many Turks however prefer life in prison to life outside, and refuse to leave. It is a home where they are free from care, exempt from taxes, and from military service. They avoid thus all duties of citizenship and live like parasites upon their relatives or upon any property to which they have a claim. Theoretically all forms of physical punishment are forbidden, though in every ancient prison the old fetters are preserved, rusted and stiff to be sure, but still painful. Where differences of race and religion between prisoner and keeper appear they are undoubtedly often used to make harder the lot of the “infidel” or of the suspected conspirator. While all charges of ill usage and torture made by Armenian, Jew, or Greek can not be sustained, there is a foundation of truth. Some of the handcuffs are of iron, while others are simply heavy blocks of wood with two grooves for the wrists. When the heavy blocks are nailed together, the arms are held in a most uncomfortable position, and the obstructed circulation may cause intense pain. The Reverend G. Thoumaian, an Armenian clergyman, tells of wearing these handcuffs for fifteen hours on the journey from Marsovan to Chorum, and for five days thereafter. He and his companion also wore iron collars, connected by chains, for twenty-five days while in prison at Chorum. Fetters are also worn, connected by chains, and where the guards are especially brutal or the prisoners are hated for any reason the latter may be chained to the wall by neck and feet, sometimes so closely that the irons cut into the flesh. As is the case in Spain the convict warder flourishes in Turkey. To him is sometimes confided the other forms of torture. A prisoner from whom a confession is desired may be taken to a lonely cell where the lash is plied until blood collects in a huge blister under the skin. This is punctured and intense pain results as the raw surface comes in contact with the air. Worse tales than this are told--of prisoners hanged by the feet from a beam during the beating, of naked prisoners thrust into cold cells and drenched with icy water, and even of the application of hot irons. Finally Mr. Thoumaian declares that to his own personal knowledge a severe torture was applied to an acquaintance of his, a young graduate of Anatolia College. The young man’s head was shaved, and on the bare skin in a sensitive spot was placed a nutshell filled with vermin. As they began to struggle and tore deeper and deeper into the sensitive nerves, the torture was exquisite. Sometimes prisoners to whom this test is applied lose all control of themselves and confess to participation in any plot no matter how incredible, caring only for the removal of the horrible pain.