Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE
to encourage, support, and bring to light the deep
disapproval of lynching hidden in the secret places
of its heart-for it is there, beyond question. Then
those communities will find something better to
imitate-of course, being human, they must imitate
something. Where shall these brave men be found?
That is indeed a difficulty; there are not three
hundred of them in the earth. If merely physically
brave men would do, then it were easy; they could
be furnished by the cargo. When Hobson called for
seven volunteers to go with him to what promised to
be certain death, four thousand men respondedthe whole fleet, in fact. Because all the world would
approve. They knew that; but if Hobson's project
had been charged with the scoffs and jeers of the
friends and associates, whose good opinion and
approval the sailors valued, he could not have got
his seven.
No, upon reflection, the scheme will not work.
There are not enough morally brave men in stock.
We are out of moral-courage material; we are in a
condition of profound poverty. We have those two
sheriffs down South who-but never mind, it is not
enough to go around; they have to stay and take
care of their own communities.
But if we only could have three or four more
sheriffs of that great breed! Would it help? I
think so. For we are all imitators: other brave
sheriffs would follow; to be a dauntless sheriff
would come to be recognized as the correct and only
thing, and the dreaded disapproval would fall to the
share of the other kind; courage in this office would
246