Laughing and cursing they gather about the victim. A man steps from the crowd--a man who hates crime and loves virtue. He draws his knife, and in a spirit of merry sport cuts off one of the victim's ears. This he keeps for a trophy--a souvenir. Another gentlemen fond of a jest cuts off the other ear. Another cuts off the nose of the chained and helpless wretch. The victim suffered in silence. He uttered no groan, no word--the one man of the two thousand who had courage. Other white heroes cut and slashed his flesh. The crowd cheered. The people were intoxicated with joy. Then the fagots were lighted and the bleeding and mutilated man was clothed in flame. The people were wild with hideous delight. With greedy eyes they watched him burn; with hungry ears they listened for his shrieks--for the music of his moans and cries. He did not shriek. The festival was not quite perfect. But they had their revenge. They trampled on the charred and burning corpse. They divided among themselves the broken bones. They wanted mementos--keepsakes that they could give to their loving wives and gentle babes. These horrors were perpetrated in the name of justice. The savages who did these things belong to the superior race. They are citizens of the great Republic. And yet, it does not seem possible that such fiends are human beings. They are a disgrace to our country, our century and the human race. Ex-Governor Atkinson protested against this savagery. He was threatened with death. The good people were helpless. While these lynchers murder the blacks they will destroy their own country. No civilized man wishes to live where the mob is supreme. He does not wish to be governed by murderers. Let me say that what I have said is flattery compared with what I feel. When I think of the other lynching--of the poor man mutilated and hanged without the slightest evidence, of the negro who said that these murders would be avenged, and who was brutally murdered for the utterance of a natural feeling--I am utterly at a loss for words. Are the white people insane? Has mercy fled to beasts? Has the United States no power to protect a citizen? A nation that cannot or will not protect its citizens in time of peace has no right to ask its citizens to protect it in time of War. ***** OUR COUNTRY.--Our country is all we hope for--all we are. It is the grave of our father, of our mother, of each and every one of the sacred dead. It is every glorious memory of our race. Every heroic deed. Every act of self-sacrifice done by our blood. It is all the accomplishments of the past--all the wise things said--all the kind things done--all the poems written and all the poems lived--all the defeats sustained--all the victories won--the girls we love--the wives we adore--the children we carry in our hearts--all the firesides of home--all the quiet springs, the babbling brooks, the rushing rivers, the mountains, plains and woods--the dells and dales and vines and vales. *****