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Michigan OAKLAND COUNTY
Just down the bank from where the school house stood was a low, wet piece of land, the haunt of ' countless Massasaugers, and it was industriously circulated by the scholars and teacher, too, that they made a stopping place under the floor of the house. Well, this pit was used as a place of punishment for the scholars. You will say that is a snake story. So it is, but it is true nevertheless. When but three years old I have looked on things there which I can never forget dark pictures that will hang on memory's walls until those walls are ruined by death. I have seen boys, and girls even, resist their introduction to that second Hades, with all the determination that convulsive terror could inspire, and when forced at last beneath the trap door by far superior strength, they would sink away with a wail of utter despair. Right glad am I that this relic of a barbarous inquisitorial age has passed away; that in the increasing light of the nineteenth century it has faded into a thing of the past, never more to becloud life's young day, or blot with infamy the chronicles of modern times.
Oakland Co. Michigan
Page 12
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