One of my favorite scenes from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is relatively unknown. It doesn't get discussed as much as the other scenes, and the very few times I've seen it discussed the viewpoints that people have of the scene are, to put it simply, wrong.
The scene must strike people in a very personal and negative sense. Sherburn's speech is about the normal cowardice of the human being. It fit's Twain's overall narrative of personal bravery and commitment to morals to confront injustice ( as Huck does to free Jim from slavery). Even so, I think people really don't like the message.
First, some backstory to the scene: In Chapter 21, a drunk named Boggs rides into town and begins insulting a local gentleman named Sherburn. The crowd thinks it's funny, but Sherburn tells Boggs that he will put up with the insults until one o'clock and after that he will kill him if Boggs doesn't STFU. Boggs, being a drunken retard, doesn't leave town and keeps running his mouth. One o'clock comes by and Sherburn is good to his word, killing Boggs. The crowd decides to lynch the good Colonel.
Now the scene...
Chapter 22, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Just then Sherburn steps out onto the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.
Sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down. The stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it.
Then he says, slow and scornful:
"The idea of you lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him.
"Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people--whereas you're just as brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark--and it's just what they would do.
"So they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man--Buck Harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd 'a' taken it out in blowing.
"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. You don't like trouble and danger. But if only half a man--like Buck Harkness, there--shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you are-- cowards--and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave--and take your half-a-man with you"--tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this.
The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap. I could 'a' stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.
The relation to my story
In Chapter 13 of Home To Texas (here - https://steemit.com/writing/@stevescoins/home-to-texas-recollections-of-a-texas-badman-part-thirteen), Wallace says he wants a crowd to try and lynch him so he can use the speech against them. Wallace was as taken by that scene as I was. He wanted to beat the crowd over the head with their own cowardice by using it.