wisp at the
brazier and then passed the blazing mass across his chest and body and
over his arms and face. This was but a preliminary, and presently he
began to sway backward and forward until one grew dazed with watching
him. The drums grew noisier and noisier and the chant louder and
wilder. The man himself had become maudlin, his tongue hung from his
mouth, and now and then he ejaculated a sound like the inarticulate cry
of an animal. He could only totter to the fire, out of which he
snatched the balled instrument already described, which he thereupon
thrust with a vicious stab into the pit of his stomach, where it was
left to hang. A moment after he pulled it out again, and, picking up
the piece of stone used before, he drove it with a series of resounding
blows into a new place, where it hung, drawing the skin downward with
its weight, until a companion pulled it out and the man fell in a heap
on the floor."

To-day it is only through the intervention of the United States troops
that some of the barbarous ceremonies of the North American Indians are
suppressed. The episode of the "Ghost-dance" is fresh in every mind.
Instances of self-mutilation, although illustrating this subject, will
be discussed at length in Chapter XIV.

Malingerers often endure without flinching the most arduous tests.
Supraorbital pressure is generally of little avail, and pinching,
pricking, and even incision are useless with these hospital impostors.
It is reported that in the City Hospital of St. Louis a negro submitted
to the ammonia-test, inhaling this vapor for several hours without
showing any signs of sensibility, and made his escape the moment his
guard was absent. A contemporary journal says:--

"The obstinacy of resolute impostors seems, indeed, capable of
emulating the torture-proof perseverance of religious enthusiasts and
such martyrs of patriotism as Mueius Scaevola or Grand Master Ruediger
of the Teutonic Knights, who refused to reveal the hiding place of his
companion even when his captors belabored him with red-hot irons.

"One Basil Rohatzek, suspected of fraudulent enlistment
(bounty-jumping, as our volunteers called it), pretended to have been
thrown by his horse and to have been permanently disabled by a
paralysis of the lower extremities. He dragged himself along in a
pitiful manner, and his knees looked somewhat bruised, but he was known
to have boasted his ability to procure his discharge somehow or other.
One