WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

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