"So they always acquit; and then a MAN goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought PART of a man--Buck Harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing.

     "You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. YOU don't like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a man--like Buck Harkness, there--shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you are--COWARDS--and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN along. Now LEAVE--and take your half-a-man with you"--tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this.