Moreover, it was more merciful to launch the condemned man into eternity twenty-four hours after he was sentenced than to keep him shivering on the brink of that dread gulf for nearly three weeks. 14Hanging is an atrociously archaic way of killing a human being and the self-satisfied modernity of the electric chair is just as atrocious. The administration of a strong sleeping draught to the condemned man every night from which one night he does hot awake, seems a more civilized alternative to our present barbarous procedure, if capital punishment through the influence of backward minds be retained.