Wat hi-lar-i-ous

   -------- Original Message --------
   On Dec 17, 2019, 2:33 PM, Ryan Carboni < ryacko@gmail.com> wrote:

     "Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in
     the South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all
     around. The average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody
     walk
     over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit
     to
     bear it. In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage
     full
     of men in the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you
     a
     brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other
     people--whereas you're just as brave, and no braver. Why don't your
     juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will
     shoot them in the back, in the dark--and it's just what they would
     do.

     "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.