Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 6

My idea," he continued, "is this: As long as I wrote most everything in the publication myself it was strictly a one-man paper; and if anything should have happened to me it would have been worth nothing to my wife and family. What I am trying to do now is to organize a corps of contributors who can keep it up if I should be taken away."

Had he any suspicion of the prophecy that lurked in these words? Perhaps he had; for when I suggested to him the advisability of leaving Waco, with its petty local dissensions and the personal dangers incident to them, he shook his head.

"I got together $11,000 not long ago," he said, "and put it into a house. It is the first money worth talking about that I ever had, and I feel that the investment ties me, more or less, to Waco. But aside from that," he went on to say, "I am a little afraid that the ICONOCLAST would lose its characteristic flavor if I moved it to one of the big Eastern cities. You will remember that that experiment was tried with the Arkansas Traveller, which was moved from Little Rock to Chicago, and promptly fell flat. The same thing happened to the Texas Siftings, when it was taken from Austin to New York. I am inclined to believe that a publication acquires a savor of the soil in which it springs, and it is a mighty risky business to try to transplant it."

He told me of Col. Gerald, who had killed the Harris brothers only a few weeks before. "Gerald is a wonderful old man," he said. "He is over sixty, but he is as straight as a pine. He has a light mustache and chin beard, and eyes the color of the blue you see in old china. He don't know what fear is. He thinks it is some kind of a disease like smallpox or appendicitis, and only know that he has never had it." Between talk we ate oysters and drank a little beer. Brann impressed me as being a very temperate man.

The conversation drifted frequently to his plans for the future. "I've been roasted a good deal for the go-as-you- please style of the ICONOCLAST," he said, "and, between ourselves, wish I could have refined its style a trifle. But if I had done so we would never have gone over the 100,000 mark as we did last week. However, I'm tired of it," he said slowly, "most infernally tired. I am anxious next year to devote myself to a higher cla.s.s of work. I have a novel about half done, and also a play, and I am very hopeful that they may both succeed."

It was long after midnight when we parted. He said that he expected to be back "one of these days."

Poor Brann! It sickens one's soul to think of the value of such a life as his as against that of his slayer. Good G.o.d! His little finger was worth all the Texas pot-house politicians and Baylor University pharisees that could be lined up between her and Orion.--O. H. S., in the Looking Gla.s.s.

SEMPER VIVAT IN MEMORIAM.

Now that partisan hate has succeeded in hounding to his death America's most eloquent champion of humanity; has driven to the verge of insanity an adoring wife, and thrown o'er the roseate lives of two tender, clinging children the black pall of a sorrow that will forever embitter their hearts, perchance it will pause; will remember the teachings of that other "friend of humanity" who, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, was crucified for daring to fight what he believed to be wrong; whose religion may be summed up in one word--"forgiveness."

Brann's enemies were professed followers of this Christ.

With tearful eyes and uplifted, supplicating faces they besought the G.o.d of Justice to--in the beautiful language of the prayer left us by his Son--"lead us not into temptation"

and "forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive those who trespa.s.s against us"; and the next day pa.s.sed resolutions congratulating a mob of brutal ruffians for frightening a sick woman nearly to death, kidnaping her defenseless husband and forcing him--under threats of instant death--to retract what they knew to be the truth.

A few weeks later, they were "resoluting" and "sympathizing" and formulating plans for the erection of a monument to the memory of two would-be a.s.sa.s.sins who were killed while attempting to carry out their cowardly work. Oh, Christianity!--that thy cloak--pure as polar snow--must cover such infamy!

Brann's death blots from the firmament of American journalism its brightest star. He was an intellectual t.i.tan. In him was embodied the philosophy of Carlyle-- the brilliancy of Voltaire,--the withering sarcasm of Desmoulins--the poetry of Ingersoll. His genius, universal as that of Shakespeare, was ever aligned on the side of the weak and oppressed; ever, with G.o.d-like fearlessness, he stood for Right against Might--for purity against corruption. In church, in state, in society-- he tore the painted mask from the face of hypocrisy and exposed it, in all its festering hideousness, to the world's ridicule.

Brann has been d.a.m.ned as an atheist--by people who have never read, and are incapable of reading and understanding, a single paragraph from his pen. The author of "Tiens ta Foi," "Charity," "Man's Immorality"--was not an atheist. He refused to bend the knee to superst.i.tion-- to lend a patient ear to earth's self-const.i.tuted vice- gerents of Omniscience. But G.o.d spoke to him through nature. The flowers he so pa.s.sionately loved were reminders of His loving tenderness; in the divine music of Wagner, Liszt and Chopin, he recognized the voice of G.o.d.

His faith was broad as the universe--deep as infinity.

He loved purity; he hated hypocrisy; and for this he died --a martyr.

Inspiration comes from G.o.d. The children of genius needs must be the favorites of Omniscience. Yet theologians vilify Brann from the pulpit--teachers denounce him to their pupils. For nearly ten years he has been the target of vindictive spite--such spite as only a narrow, bigoted mind can be capable of. This is the greatest compliment mediocrity can pay to genius.

Brann is dead! Still forever is the pen whose wondrous alchemy transposed the English language--with all its inherent harshness--into music sweet as song of Israfil.

Stilled is the heart that stood alone, defiant, a bulwark 'gainst the wave of corruption that is engulfing our land.

Brann is dead! But when Baylor University has sunk beneath the wave of oblivion; when the very bones of the splenetic-hearted hypocrites--who goaded to his death the grandest man America has ever produced--have crumbled into the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust-- Brann's name will live--a beacon light for those who love truth for truth's sake.

Brann is dead! The blow that wrung our hearts with unavailing anguish but ushered him into the company of Shakespeare, Carlyle, Hugo and Wagner. And there, whether it be in the light that beats on G.o.d's great throne, or in the serbonian darkness of a h.e.l.l more horrible than that pictured by Dante--is the true Heaven.--Abbott Graphic.

BRANN'S BRAVE BATTLE.

With humble soul and heavy heart we take up our pen to chronicle the death, yea the murder of one of the brightest and purest n.o.blemen that G.o.d ever created--W. C. Brann.

A few years ago he, W. H. Ward and the writer each occupied desks, side by side, in the editorial rooms of The Waco Morning News. There budded a friendship between that trio that we full believe shall blossom into ripe fraternal love on a sh.o.r.e as yet unknown to Mr. Ward and the writer. Mr. Brann was editor of the ICONOCLAST, and as its name indicates it is a smasher of idols from Tadmor in the Wilderness to the mountains of Hepsedam.

Scorning the sensual, always against the vulgar, in much the same manner as Carlyle, Brann stuck the gaffles of truth deep into the sides of wrong in high places, and exposed rottenness wherever found. With rugged English, twisted into sentences more cutting than whips of scorpions' tails, he stood up and fought for right as opposed to might. He tore off the plaster of moral cancerous ulcers, now so prolific on the body politic of the world, and held high the treachery, the bigotry, the superst.i.tion, the d.a.m.nably dirty doings of a generation that accepts hidebound dogmas for the ultima thule of reasoning and truth; precept for right and in reality worships at the shrine of exploded fables and crowns, by its own acts, the parrot as its preceptor--lives and dies, having no desire to do anything that somebody has not done before! Is it any wonder that such a man as W. C. Brann should fall a victim to such a populace? He was hounded to his death--mobbed, spat upon, shot and murdered, by several thousand pin-headed obstreperous patrons and followers of a little pee-wee college, that turns young ladies out enceinte almost yearly and hires its professors for less salaries than a railroad brakeman gets.

Brann's good work will live, his fame will survive and an intellectual race yet will rise up and bless his name when the lying epitaphs of the a.s.sa.s.sin sent to the d---- by him shall have crumbled to earth ten thousand years. We cannot close this faint tribute of respect to our dead friend without acknowledging the worth of such true men as Mr.

W. H. Ward and Judge G. B. Gerald, both of whom are able, brave, high-toned gentlemen, and both of whom came near dying, and both were willing to die, or see that Mr.

Brann got fair play while he lived.--S. M. Scruggs, in the Tribune.

BRANN IS NO MORE.

On the first of April--All Fools' Day--W. C. Brann, of the ICONOCLAST, and T. M. Davis riddled each other with bullets in Waco, Texas. Both of them died the following day. The trouble between them grew out of the attack made by Brann in his paper on the Baylor University, a Baptist inst.i.tution attended by the daughter of Davis.

At the time that Brann accused the students of the college of immorality, he was a.s.saulted by them, and barely escaped lynching at their hands. He was forced to make a retraction and was ordered to leave town. Being a courageous man Brann refused to emigrate.

The Irish Standard chronicles the untimely and awful death of Mr. Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won the admiration of the American people. He was a man of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective, often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and he despised religious intolerance. As an American he loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo- American alliance. He held hypocrites in supreme contempt and lashed the pharisees unmercifully. When Catholic priests and sisters were misrepresented by sectarian bigots, he used his tongue and pen in their defense.

So ably did he vindicate the Catholic church from their aspersions that many supposed him to be a Jesuit in disguise. In the last issue of the ICONOCLAST he told a correspondent what he thought of Mrs. Shepard and ex- priest Chiniquy. Had Brann lived in a more civilized community than among the bigoted Baptists of Texas, he would have used more elegant language in his magazine than it contained for the past few months.

We entirely disagree with the Pioneer Press in its characterization of the deceased journalist when it says: "From attacking the private lives of the prominent and successful men of every quarter of the union and levying blackmail as the price of silence from those whose slips or frailties his keen hyena-like appet.i.te for filth had enabled him to scent, it was an easy step to the most scurrilous a.s.saults on men and women whose only offending lay in their uprightness and virtue."

Brann never attacked men and women for their "uprightness and virtue," and our St. Paul contemporary is guilty of calumny when it says so. Every evildoer and hypocrite feared him, while upright men and virtuous women had a champion in him. His bitterest enemies never accused him of being a blackmailer, and the editor of the Pioneer Press took care he was dead before he made the unwarrantable charge.--The Irish Standard.

BRAVE AND BRAINY BRANN

The killing of W. C. Brann in a duel at Waco, Texas, a few days ago, is but a repet.i.tion of the punishment that generally falls to newspaper men who persistently print the truth. Brann was an intellectual giant. The rarest accomplishments possible for a human mind to acquire were not too intricate for him to master. His versatility was as boundless as his originality was unique. Absolutely fearless and utterly indifferent regarding his personal safety, he dared to expose the charlatan and the trickster in whatever walk of life he chanced to meet him. Endowed with a mind that was only circ.u.mscribed by the Infinite itself and fortified with a thorough cla.s.sical education, he held the hypocrite up to contempt and public scorn and deservedly lashed him with the lash of sarcasm.

True, some of our erudite(?) members of the press have presumed to pa.s.s judgment upon him; men as incapable of rendering a just criticism of his talents as they have found it impossible to rise to his standard of excellence.

One who is especially in love with himself has said that had Brann been less soulless he might have been an ornament to his trade. Trade! When men attain Brann's intellectual standing, and they are as rare as the intellectual sloven is numerous, the TRADE evolves into a profession. It is indeed disheartening to see one devote his life and his talents to truth and justice, only to be belittled after death by those whose poverty-stricken understandings render them incapable of half-appreciating the man's genius, to say nothing of his n.o.bility of purpose in endeavoring to elevate mankind. He has been accused of blasphemy by another who has probably been as startled by Brann's truthful declarations as he himself would have been had he at some time dared to commit such a rash act. Despite these intellectual "pee-wees" Brann's writings will live long after the surf of eternity has carried the penny-a-liners out upon the sea of oblivion. In the tragic death of W. C. Brann the world has lost the most versatile pen the century has produced and it is with sincere grief that we chronicle his sudden taking away.--The Gilroy (Cal.) Telegram.

BRANN, OF THE ICONOCLAST.

W. C. Brann, the fearless editor of the ICONOCLAST, is no more. The ICONOCLAST is published at Waco, Texas, and was started but a few years ago by its gifted author with no more capital than his genius and the courage of his convictions. The ICONOCLAST a.s.sailed every form of avarice, hypocrisy and infamy; in a few months the publication gained a world-wide reputation and ama.s.sed for its editor a handsome fortune because it was bought and read by thousands of people who love truth, when boldly proclaimed, for truth's sake. Some time ago the ICONOCLAST laid bare the iniquities of some white-sepulchral hypocrites having charge of a young ladies' seminary under the auspices of a religious denomination. The pious and lecherous scoundrels, and their ilk, who felt aggrieved by the publication of the sensational facts, instead of resorting to the law and proving that they had been libeled, and vindicating themselves by the imprisonment of Brann, resorted to mob violence, and what they lacked in courage they supplied with numbers, and beat their helpless victim into insensibility. In the very next issue of the ICONOCLAST, Brann, its outraged but incomparably fearless editor, in speaking of his cowardly a.s.sailants, used the following defiant and sadly prophetic words: "Truth to tell there's not one of the whole cowardly tribe who's worth a charge of buckshot who deserve so much honor as being sent to h.e.l.l by a white man's hand! If Socrates was poisoned, and Christ was crucified, for telling unpalatable truths to the splenetic-hearted hypocrites of their time, it would ill become me to complain of martyrdom for a like offense." Brann was shot in the back by a drunken "local" politician, who doubtless had as much conception of morality and honor as did those whom Brann had a.s.sailed openly and above-board in the ICONOCLAST.

Brann, though mortally wounded, turned and shot his a.s.sa.s.sin, wounding him fatally--Brann and his a.s.sa.s.sin have both died--one, mourned as a martyr in the cause of truth; the other mourned by the "splenetic-hearted hypocrites" of Waco and elsewhere.--Charleston Enterprise.

A MARTYR TO FREE SPEECH.

Poor Brann has fallen a martyr to Baptist bigotry. The foul minded crowd who imported Slattery to Waco ran a university whose iniquities Brann exposed. The deacons of the church and the preachers combined against him and his life was attacked again and again because he was not afraid of telling the truth. The last attempt was successful and his blood is on the head of the bigots of Waco.

We have not read in any of our "American" dailies nor have we seen in any of our Evangelical weeklies a condemnation of this outrage on free speech. If the conditions had been reversed, if a Catholic had shot down the defamer of Catholic women, the country would have rung with denunciations of Catholic bigotry. But the Baptist beetle-browed can for months plan the death of a man who has exposed their hypocrisy and the a.s.sa.s.sination is taken as one of the few "occurrences" which diversify life in those monotonous Texas towns.

Brann was not a Catholic. In the eyes of the majority Baptists of Waco he was an infidel. He had no sympathy with any creed as a creed; but as far as we can judge he loved truth and justice and hated wrong and hypocrisy. It was this natural feeling for right and fair play which led him into the battle with the A.P.A., the battle in which he perished. We believe that he acted according to his lights, and to those who live by the law as it is shown to them, G.o.d will not deny grace. Many a man and woman who never saw Brann, and do not sympathize with the extreme views he held on certain religious matters, and might perhaps take exception to his style of conveying his opinions, will yet because of his manly defense of ladies slandered without cause by the vilest of the vile, breathe a silent prayer that G.o.d may have mercy on his soul. As long as ye did it unto these you did it unto Me. Even a cup of cold water shall not lose its reward.--The Monitor, San Francisco, Cal.

EDITORIAL ETCHINGS.

TO THE PUBLIC.

The editorial supervision of the May ICONOCLAST has been to me a labor of love. The stress of circ.u.mstances under which the work has been done, is too well known for either explanation or apology for its shortcomings. This issue of the paper is intended as a memorial of the man who founded it; whose genius has so long adorned its pages, and whose personality has endeared it to so many thousands of readers throughout the land.

W. H. WARD.

In the Vicksburg Dispatch of Sunday, February 13, appeared an article from the pen of Ida Clyde Gallagher, of Vicksburg, a very bright and gifted writer, in which she pays a feeling tribute to the character of W. C. Brann.

The article in question has been widely read and copied.

It was written while Mr. Brann was on his Southern lecture tour, and is peculiarly appropriate to this issue of the ICONOCLAST. I therefore reproduce it with pleasure:

"The development of all really great forces afford an interesting study for the mind capable of grasping and measuring them. The overflow of a river, the eruption of a volcano or the devastation of a storm arouse admiration even while they inspire terror and awaken awe. But it is the purely human force, with its infinite variety, which charms while it enthralls. A man born and reared, as other men, bound by the same ties, subject to the same laws, fettered by the same conventionalities, to throw off the yoke of circ.u.mstances, break through the trammels of the conventional, grapple with and overcome every obstacle that lies in his path, until he reaches the summit of Olympus and bodily fronts the G.o.ds, or towers among men, like Saul above his brethren. We may envy him, as we ever envy the truly great, or be disposed to close his lips in death, because he tells us unpalatable truths, yet admire him secretly and in our hearts exalt him. We may not confess as much while he lives and labors, but when his lips are dumb in death, his breast pulseless, we lay our hatred and envy in the dust at his feet, and rear in marble a gleaming shaft to commemorate the virtues of the dead.

The name of "Brann" has inspired this homily; Brann, of the ICONOCLAST, the man whose praises are being sung loved by half the world, by the other half condemned, whose whole life has been a battle and a march, who wars as did the t.i.tans and if he gropes blindly at times ever struggles toward the light. This is the man who began his education while rearing a family, and went from behind the smokestack of a locomotive to the tripod of a daily paper.