In the morning, after the prisoners had gone to their tasks, a guard came and took me to a room in another part of the building where we found the prison physician waiting. He examined me, pronounced me “fit,” and told me to take off my shirt. The room was bare, except for a bench along one wall, and an arrangement in the center of the room that resembled a photographer’s tripod, only it was higher and stronger. Its three legs were secured to the floor. A short, thick man in uniform, with a bristly brown beard and cold blue eyes, came in with a strap very much like a barber’s strop, except it was longer and heavier and had a different handhold. He sat on the bench, eyeing me speculatively. The deputy warden now appeared and gave an order. The physician sat down beside the man with the strap. Two guards led me to the triangle. My wrists were strapped to the top of the tripod where the three pieces joined and my ankles lashed to the tripod’s legs, leaving me with my arms up in the air and my legs far apart, helpless as any sheep in the shambles. “Now, Mr. Burr,” said the deputy warden. The man with the strap got up off the bench and stepped behind me a little to my left. Out of the tail of my eye I saw him “winding up” like a ball pitcher. Then came the “woosh” of his strap as it cut the air. It would not be fair to the reader for me to attempt a detailed description of this flogging. In writing these chronicles I have tried to be fair, reasonable, and rational, and rather than chance misleading anybody by overstating the case I will touch only the high points and leave out the details. No hangman can describe an execution where he has officiated. The best he can do is to describe his end of it, and you have but a one-sided case. The man at a whipping post or tripod can’t relate all the details of his beating fully and fairly. He can’t see what’s going on behind him, and that’s where most of the goings-on are. Furthermore, he does not approach the subject with that impersonal, detached mental attitude so necessary to correct observing and reporting. Mentally he is out of focus, and his perspective is blurred. If I could go away to some lonely, desolate spot and concentrate deeply enough I might manage to put myself in the flogging master’s place and make a better job of reporting the matter. But that would entail a mental strain I hesitate to accept, and I doubt if the result would justify the effort.