What Is Man? and Other Essays

f June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I am in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide apart, yet today

en out of the village. Everybody in the hotel remained up until far into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror which one reads about in books which tell of night attacks by Italians and by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange plans—followed by a

ourian village half a century ago. The mistake was repeated

e spelled this name wrong. Fifty years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been passin

was simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against the holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right

d by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers and imitators may

tranger. And, being a stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person—for that has been human nature from Adam down—and of course, also, he was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other animals. Hardy was thirty yea

paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the Methodist minister made a powerful s

ion speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh. He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on th

dy crossed the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. All this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide. The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so Hardy was surrounded by a stron

And so was the name of Robert Hardy—Robert Hardy, the stranger, the despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in the region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, they found their position curiously changed—they were important people, or un

ith the great event—there would be a full and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on the back of a wooden type—and a terror it was to lo

from Keokuk; and the court-house could hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission.

er, also the women and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd the village had ever seen. T

, and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not understand it. “Abolitionist” had always been a term of shame and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they were, too—of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the printer’s apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sunday-school boy, and had once recit

grandeur, this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now. This was natural. Their company grew—grew alarmingly. They took a name. It was a secret name, and was divulged to no ou

m—on pilgrimage to the Martyr’s grave, where they went through with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters

ghtway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again. This was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. Midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly defined and welco

broken by a crashing explosion, and the town patrol saw the preacher’s house spring in a wreck of whirlin

of men who stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible one—an invisible one who sneaks in and does

ied. The coroner’s jury had brought in a verdict of “death by the visitation of God,” for no witness came forward; if any existed they prudently kept out of the way. Nobody seeme

t. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not hope to deal with successfully—vanity, thirst for notoriety. If men

cution. He gave a full account of the assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he deposited his keg of powder and laid his train—from the house to such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came alo

arful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding, with a roaring r

large portrait, with other slanderous and insane

nd fantastic and denunciatory speech on the scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in the society’s records, of the “Martyr Orator.”

new members, some of them earnest, determined men. They did not court distinction in the same way, but th

on. Then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It was bound to