8

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And now in a frenzied effort to distract Washington's attention from the horror in the room so near to him, we began to chant the songs of the revival and the plantation. I led one verse of "Bye and Bye, When the Morning Breaks; Bye and Bye." Just as I stopped , I heard a jar, as thought the building were being shaken to its foundations; and the whine of the dynamo announced that the electric current was coursing through the body of Johnnie Birchfield, The was against which I stood throbbed with life as the motor revolved. Beside me Washington stood with hands clenched, hadly moving, with his lips giving either a prayer or a song."

Then a peculiar odor asailed me. It burned my nostrils and lacarated with sharp and plucking fingers the roof of my mouth. My hair tingled at the roots, and I felt a great weakness. It was the faint odor of burning flesh, made doubly horrible by it distance. It was as though the passage of these malodoroous gasses through the concrete walls, so pregnant with the sighs and moans of hundred men who had passed through them to death, had taken on an added malevolence. The effect was nothing like what I had expected. I had come expecting nausea, perhaps, but not to be overpowered like this ........ Was I to pass out of consciousness in this fashion?"

"But my head leared. Through the fog of our song, I heard whine of the dynamo die down, and silence reigned in the death chamber. I cannot tell how it was, but during these fatal moments I was looking at Washington, keeping one part of my consciousness fixed on what