Sarah Whitman [antikvár]

One There was to be another public thrashing in the Hall. Throughout the morning an air of taut, overstrung hysteria had been growing steadily in the classroom beginning—when Sammy Alexander had been sent for by the headmistress at playtime, and had failed to return—^with a stillness compounded of sheer terror and progressing rapidly—as Sammy's desk remained oppressively empty—to nervous fidgeting and occasional bouts of laughter. Sarah, who had been miserable enough when Sammy had first disappeared into the gloom of Miss Bennett's room, found the atmosphere in the classroom contagious. She began to catch from the children a feeling of mob fear and unruliness. To be thrashed by Miss Beimett was terrible enough, but a public thrashing meant that one's crime transcended the normal sins. Public thrashings were reserved for such depravities as stealing, bad language, misuse of the lavatories, or other crimes which generally came under the heading "filth." The thrashings took on some of the sanctity of capital punishment, and the boys who had suffered it were treated with a kind of awed reverence by their classmates for several days after the ordeal. It was felt that the victims had looked into the nether regions, and had survived. Sarah, in company with every other teacher in the school, would do anything to prevent a public thrashing. The children became unbalanced and hysterical and the teacher miserably aware of his or her own