His wove and corruggated [sic] face held a satin mien so soft as to appeal to the very heart shuddering within the breast of this boy; and yet it done hid a sternness as I had never seen outside the noose. The other stable boys and me set out to remove the ladies present away from this braided golem, though we hardly needed for to plead with the better womenfolk. I dispatched the younger boys to chase off the most infatuated harlots, and I myself come back to quiet the horses: kicking as they were, it seemed like to alarm Henequen.

The Twiners of the 1890s still stand as an object lesson in hubris for today's ultra-modern scientific community. In 1891, impressed by recent advances in textiles, a splinter group of Masons headed by the towering doctor Saul Henequen relocated to a Georgia retreat and began to convert themselves into twine. It was their belief that twine embodied the essence of what was most puissant and honorable in man, and to them it was inevitable that all men would one day be comprised of twine.The Twiners began as a humanitarian movement, intent on pacifism and tolerance, but during the Sisal Lash Incident of 1894 its members became fractious. The militant voices among them, as is sadly still too often the case, held sway. By this time most members were already achieving compositions of 70 and even 80 percent twine, and the heady rush of triumph imparted grandiose notions of superiority and a perverse sense of civil duty to lead and entwine others. Subsequent clashes with nearby cotton farmers over the virtues of jute led to angry citizen protests, and from within the group new factions argued over the future of coir.Exasperated with dissent and keen to continue the conversion of man into twine, in March of 1896 Saul Henequen ordered the group to pack its looms and relocate by rail to Oregon, where they founded the city of Cordings and resumed their studies in relative peace. Little was heard from the Twiners for the next three years, but in 1899 a figure appeared outside the young city of Medford. A man entered the town, dressed in robes and comprised entirely of twine. It was Saul Henequen.Henequen was a changed man. His bearing struck many as regal, but one account written years later by Woody Lathison (then a livery hand) read:Accounts vary, but all witnesses agree that as the panicked citizenry fanned out to discover the whereabouts of the drunken sheriff, Henequen executed a perfectly embroidered gesture toward a nearby copse wherefrom strode ten men in a disciplined line, each barking out his name and thread count as he emerged.At this sight, even the ever-curious whores (and have they since changed, gentle reader?) abandoned the brothel windows and fled screaming; the Twiners paid them no mind. Stopping only for a mysteriously brief foray into the barber's empty shop, the column marched through a fusillade of hurled stones and perhaps a few bullets (accounts are inconsistent) in a grim procession toward their final destination: the shed of tanner Epid Peltis.