There is a famous speech by Colonel Sherburn right after this in which he ridicules the crowd that has come to lynch him. The speech is wonderful in its lordly contempt for the townspeople, but of course it is not Sherburn but Mark Twain speaking when Sherburn tells them off. The crowd admiringly watching the man in the “big white fur stovepipe hat” acting out the killing (then getting their bottles out to reward him) shows Mark Twain the artist at his best. In this terrifying scene, one of the most powerful weapons ever directed at the complacency of democracy in America, life becomes farce
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