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 strong guard and safely
conveyed to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of
the mob to get hold of him. The reader will have begun to
perceive that this Methodist minister was a prompt man; a prompt
man, with active hands and a good headpiece. Williams was his
name–Damon Williams; Damon Williams in public, Damnation Williams
in private, because he was so powerful on that theme and so frequent.
The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first
man who had ever been killed in the town. The event was by long
odds the most imposing in the town’s history. It lifted the
humble village into sudden importance; its name was in
everybody’s mouth for twenty miles around. 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 unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how
small had been their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two
or three who had really been on a sort of familiar footing with
him found themselves objects of admiring interest with the public
and of envy with their shopmates.
The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands.
The new man was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of
the tragedy. He issued an extra. Then he put up posters
promising to devote his whole paper to matters connected with 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 look at. It made a great
commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever
contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of
the paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet
every copy was sold.
When the trial came on, people came from all the farms
around, and from Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and
the court-house could hold only a fraction of the crowd that
applied for admission. The trial was published in the village
paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused.
Hardy was convicted, and hanged–a mistake. People came
from miles around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and
cider, also the women and children, and made a picnic of the
matter. It was the largest crowd the village had ever seen. The
rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples,
for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable event.
Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations.
Within one week afterward four young lightweights in the village
proclaimed themselves abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been
able to make a convert; everybody laughed at him; but nobody
could laugh at his legacy. The four swaggered around with their
slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly at
awful possibilities. The people were troubled and afraid, 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 recited three thousand
Bible verses without making a break. Dick Savage, twenty, the
baker’s apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeyman
blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer–were
the other three. They were all of a sentimental cast; they were