The Restoration of Whipping. it be added to the sentence of habitual tion of the approval of the whole world in criminals, upon a third or fourth conviction. all former generations down to within a hun Nor should the cat-o'-nine tails or any dred years. similar instrument of torture be used. The Economy is also a matter worth some birch or the leather strap will be sufficient consideration. for the purpose. Eugene Smith of the New York bar, in an The country was horrified, a few weeks address before the last meeting of the Na since at the threat of the scoundrels, who tional Prison Association, estimated the kidnapped young Cudahy in Omaha, to put taxes annually imposed in the United States out his eyes unless his father gave them for the repression and punishment of crime twenty-five thousand dollars. It is doubtful at two hundred million dollars. A large if they would have been base enough to do it, part of this goes to the maintenance of jails had the ransom demanded not been paid; and prisoners. They probably cost the pub but to make such a threat deserves the lash, lic (making due allowance for interest on and to fulfil it might well justify a sentence what was laid out on buildings) not to a dozen whippings, with suitable intervals less than one dollar and a half a day for of a few weeks for reflection and anticipation each convict, over and above all he can be between. made to earn by prison work. Instead of A robber in another State recently burned spending five hundred dollars to keep some an old man's feet with a red hot poker, to kidnapper or wife-beater in jail a year, sup make him show where his little savings were pose that he were kept there but half that hid. That ruffian would be insufficiently time, and given a dozen lashes at the end of punished by a mere sentence to imprison each two months. A leather strap that costs ment. He needs the sting of something a dollar would save two hundred and fifty sharper. dollars, and I venture to say that he would Such crimes will increase as the wealth of seldom be found to come up for a second the country increases, unless the conse offence. In Connecticut, where whipping quences of conviction are made more disa was in use for two hundred years in crim greeable to the offender. The way I sug inal sentences, no white man was ever gest is one, and it comes to us with the sanc whipped twice.
KNICKERBOCKER GOLF AND OTHER FORBIDDEN SPORT OF NEW NETHERLANDS. BY LEE M. FRIEDMAN. WE think of golf as a recent importation into the United States. We never imagine that it was a pastime of the burgh ers of New Amsterdam. When we think of these ancient Dutchmen of Manhattan tak ing recreation, immediately we picture a group of portly fellows lolling at their ease, smoking long-stemmed pipes, with tankards of ale within easy reach. Perhaps, if the
"Rip Van Winkle" legend has sufficiently corrupted our imagination, we associate a slow game of ten pins with the wild dissipa tion of the younger Knickerbockers. The ancient records, however, throw a new light upon the subject and prove that these old Dutchmen were ardent golfers. In 1660 the Worshipful Commissary and Com missaries of Fort Orange and Village of
