It is the noise the attempt would make in the world that would breed
the subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety minds of men who envy the
criminal his vast notoriety -- his obscure name tongued by stupendous Kings
& Emperors -- his picture printed everywhere, the trivialest details of
his movements, what he eats, where he drinks, how he sleeps, what he says, cabled
abroad over the whole globe at cost of fifty thousand dollars a day -- &
him only a lowly shoemaker yesterday! . . . Nothing will check the lynchings
& Ruler-murders but absolute silence -- the absence of pow-pow about them.
How are you going to manage that? By gagging every witness & jamming him
into a dungeon for life; by abolishing all newspapers; by exterminating all
newspaper men; & by extinguishing God's most elegant invention, the Human
Race. It is quite simple, quite easy, & I hope you will take a day off &
attend to it, Joe.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 10 September 1901
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