, sheriffs and private citizens do on occasion brave the fury of
enraged mobs to rescue or to protect. Attempts to prosecute participants in
such mobs usually fail in the South as elsewhere, but occasionally a jury
convicts.

The tradition that, years ago, lynching was only invoked in punishment
of the unspeakable crime is more or less true. It is not true now. The
statistics of lynching which are frequently presented are obviously
exaggerated, as they include many cases which are simply the results of
the sort of personal encounters which might and do occur anywhere. There
is a tendency to class every case of homicide in which a negro is the
victim as a lynching, which is manifestly unfair; but even though
liberal allowance be made for this error, in the total of about 3000
cases tabulated in the last thirty years, the undisputed instances of mob
violence are shamefully numerous. Rape is by no means the only crime thus
punished; sometimes the charge is so trivial that one recoils in horror at
the thought of taking human life as a punishment.

Yet it must not be forgotten that over certain parts of the South a
nameless dread is always hovering. In some sections an unaccompanied
white woman dislikes to walk through an unlighted village street at
night; she hesitates to drive along a lonely country road in broad
daylight without a pistol near her hand; and she does not dare to walk
through the woods alone. The rural districts are poorly policed and the
ears of the farmer working in the field are always alert for the sound of
the bell or the horn calling for help, perhaps from his own home.
Occasionally, in spite of all precautions some human animal, inflamed by
brooding upon the unattainable, leaves a victim outraged and dead, or
worse than dead. Granted that such a crime occurs in a district only once
in ten, or even in twenty years; that is enough. Rural folks have long
memories, and in the back of their minds persists an uncontrollable
morbid dread. The news of another victim sometimes turns men into fiends
who not only take life but even inflict torture beforehand. The mere
suspicion of intent is sometimes enough to deprive such a community of its
reason, for there are communities which have brooded over the possibility
of the commission of the inexpiable crime until the residents are not quite
sane upon this matter. Naturally calmness and forbearance in dealing with
other and less heinous forms of negro crime are not