Such is the story that with necessary differences of situation and detail has disgraced our country for forty years. Within eight months recently the state of Tennessee has been distinguished by three separate burnings. At Dyersburg a red-hot poker was rammed down the throat of the victim, and he was further mutilated in ways indecent and unmentionable. At Estill Springs all the colored people in the vicinity were made to walk around the scene of the burning as an object-lesson. Of Henry Smith in Texas some years ago we are told that "he was taken from his guards, red-hot irons were thrust into his eyes, down his throat, and on his abdomen, and he was then burned." In the case of Jesse Washington, a Negro boy of seventeen, in Waco, Texas, in May, 1916, we read: "On the way to the scene of the burning, people on every hand took a hand in showing their feelings in the matter by striking the Negro with anything obtainable; some struck him with shovels, bricks, clubs, and others stabbed him and cut him until when he was strung up his body was a solid color of red." It was estimated that the boy had twenty-five stab wounds. "Fingers, ears, pieces of clothing, toes and other parts of the Negro's body were cut off by members of the mob." It will be argued, however, that only in extreme cases is burning resorted to; but to this it might be replied that sometimes there is a burning when rape is not even alleged, as in the case of the man and woman in Mississippi. Indeed, it may be remarked in passing that in only a third or a fourth of the cases enumerated each year is rape even alleged as a cause. The theft of seventy-five cents, a small debt, a fight, relationship to an offender, have all been considered sufficient cause for lynching within recent years. Moreover, even where there is not a burning, but a hanging, the circumstances are often such as to disgrace our civilization. Thus, early in 1915, at Monticello, Ga., because an officer was resisted, a father, his young son, and his two grown daughters were all lynched. What must inevitably be the result of all this? Such an incident as the following: Very recently, at Gadsden, Ala., four little white boys at play, all twelve or thirteen years of age, decided that they would play "lynching." One of the four accordingly had a rope tied around his neck and was slowly strangling to death when a passer-by relieved him. The result of the incident was that the three playmates of the boy were all placed in jail under the charge of assault such as might have resulted in murder.