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Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn22. CHAPTER XXII. (continued)"Do I know you? I know you clear through 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. This is page 169 of 332. [Mark this Page] Mark any page to add this title to Your Bookshelf. (0 / 10 books on shelf) Buy a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at Amazon.com
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