THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS
GIFT OF
FREDERICK L. GRIFFIN
NET:
BRANN
THE ICONOCLAST
A COLLECTION
OF THE
WRITINGS OF W. C BRANN
IN TWO VOLUMES
WITH BIOGRAPHY BY J. D. SHAW
VOLUME ONE
Published by
HERZ BROTHERS
Waco, Texas, U. S. A.
WJ
TY OF CALIFOUMEX
DAVIS
COPYRIGHTID, 1898,
BY
HERZ BROTHERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
PAGE
WILLIAM COWPER BRANN 5
WOMAN'S WICKEDNESS 9
A FINANCIAL FETISH 16
THE BEAUTEOUS REBECCA 22
THE BUCK NEGRO 24
A VISION OF HEAVEN 29
APOSTLE vs. PAGAN 33
FAITH AND FOLLY 37
THE AGE OF CONSENT 39
JONAH'S GOURD 42
A CARNIVAL OF CRIME 46
THE APOSTLE'S BIOGRAPHY . 48
BLUE AND GRAY 50
A MAID'S MISTAKE 55
OPTIMISM vs. PESSIMISM 58
BALAAM'S Ass 62
A TOUCH OF HIGH LIFE 75
EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION 81
SPEAKING OF GALL . 87
INCOME TAX DECISION 108
SANCTIFICATION AND THE SWORD 109
No CROSS-EYED CLERGYMEN 114
THE MONROE DOCTRINE 116
THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 119
BRANN vs. SLATTERY . 124
TRILBY AND THE TRILBYITES 138
THE AMERICAN DRUMMER 146
CASH vs. COIN .- . 155
TEXAS AND INTOLERANCE 164
A DAMNABLE DECISION . 170
A BIBLICAL BEAR STORY 173
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 176
PUGILISM vs. HYPOCRISY 184
ANTONIA TEIXEIRA 187
DANCING TO THE DEVIL 192
THE A. P. A. IDIOCY 201
GROVER'S NEW GIRL . . . . 207
BAYLOR IN BAD BUSINESS 212
THE JURY SYSTEM 216
POLITICIANS AND PENSIONERS 220
CONTENTS
PAGE
TRUE LOVE'S TRIALS 222
JINGOES AND JOHN BULL 226
THE SINGLE TAXERS 230
THE GRAMMAR SHARP 244
HEAVEN AND HELL . . . ....... 247
ISRAEL As IT Is . 249
THE CURSE OF KISSING . .'. . . . . . . . 256
THE MAN IN THE MOON . . . . . . . . . 259
THE NEW WOMAN. . - . . . . . . . . . 268
SLAVE OR SOVEREIGN . , . . . .\ . . . 272
MARLBOROUGH-VANDERBILT MARRIAGE . . - . . .' . 292
HUMBUGS AND HUMBUGGERY . 297
THE TEIXEIRA-MORRIS CASE . . . . . . . . 320
BEANS AND BLOOD . . . . . . .... 325
THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER . . . . . . . . . 332
MARRIAGE AND MISERY . . . . . . . . . 336
WAR OR WIND ...... . . . . . .340
THE COMMON COURTESAN . . . . . . . . 348
THE "COUNTESS" CASTELLANE . . . . . , . . 353
THE MORMONS IN MEXICO . ... ... . 356
POTIPHAR'S WIFE . . . . . . . . . . . 360
BRO. EARLY'S BAZOO . . . ... .. . . 371
GOLD, SILVER AND GAB . , . . . . ' . . . 375
WOMAN IN JOURNALISM . . . . . . . . . 381
ADAM AND EVE . ..-...-. . . . . 383
THE LOCAL OPTION LUNACY . ...... . 388
OLD GLORY . . . ... ... : . . 398
OUR AMERICAN CZARS . . ... . . . . 403
AN OLD MAID'S AUCTION . . . . . . . " . . 413
"THE WEDDING OF THE SEASON" . . . . . . . 417
LOVE As AN INTOXICANT . . y . . .... 423
A NATIONAL POEM . _ . . . .... . i 426
BRANN ON HUMBUGS . . . / . ; . . .... 428
A NEW YORK SAWCIETY SHEET . . . . ... 435
GODY'S MAGAZINE FOR MOKES . . . r/ . . . : . . 438
DEAN HART OF DENVER . . . ' . . . .. . . 441
"UNCLE WILLIAM" CAMERON . . . .. ... . 445
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT . . 448
"Quo VADIS" . . . . . . - 457
WILLY WALLY TO WED . .... 461
WILLIAM COWPER BRANN
William Cowper Brann was born in Htimboldt Township,
Coles County, Illinois, January 4, 1855. He was not raised
in the home of his parents, though his father, Rev. Noble
Brann, survived him, and is still living. His mother having
died when he was two and a half years old, he was within
the next six months placed in the care of Mr. William Haw-
kins, a Coles County farmer, with whom he lived about ten
years. As to his childhood experiences on the Hawkins'
farm nothing is now known. They were probably such as
are common to children raised in the country. Of Mr.
Hawkins he always spoke kindly, referring to him as "Pa
Hawkins." His nature was not suited to farm life, however,
and he finally made up his mind to see more of the world,
hence without ever having disclosed his resolution to any
one, he quietly walked away one dark and cheerless night,
carrying in a small box under his arm all that he then pos-
sessed, and leaving behind him the friends of his childhood
in the only place he had ever known as his home, thus enter-
ing upon the active struggle of life at thirteen years of age,
without friends, destitute of means, and almost entirely un-
educated.
The first position he obtained was that of bell boy in a
hotel. Later on he learned to be a painter and grainer, then
a printer, a reporter, and finally an editorial writer. He was
energetic, industrious and painstaking in whatever he un-
dertook to do, therefore always employed. Early in his
struggle he realized the need of an education, in the acquire-
ment of which he applied himself with eager diligence. Na-
ture had endowed him with keen perceptive powers, a reten-
tive memory and great mental vigor, by means of which he
soon accumulated considerable knowledge. Every moment
that could be spared from his daily toil was spent in reading
6 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
books of science, philosophy, history, biography and general
literature. In this way he became thoroughly informed on
almost every important subject, as will be seen by the con-
tents of this volume.
On March 3. 1877, at Rochelle, Illinois, he was married to
Miss. Carrie Martin, who, with their two children, Grace
Gertrude and William Carlyle, is now living in the beautiful
home, here at Waco, from which he was buried April 3,
1898.
During all the years, from the time he left the hospitable
home of Mr. Hawkins, in 1868, until after he had success-
fully launched "Brann's Iconoclast," he suffered the harass-
ing annoyances of extreme poverty, in the endurance of
which he was cheerful, hopeful and diligent in the equip-
ment of his mind preparatory to the work he always be-
lieved he would some day be able to accomplish.
Beginning his literary career as a reporter, he was soon
made an editorial writer, in which capacity he became well-
known throughout Illinois, Missouri and Texas. As such
he was versatile, forceful and direct. There was no needless
repetition or tiresome circumlocution in his composition.
He possessed an inexhaustible vocabulary, from which he
could always find the words best fitted to convey his mean-
ing at the moment they were most needed, and every sen-
tence was resplendent with an order of wit, humor and satire
peculiar to a style original with himself.
In July, 1891, he issued at Austin, Texas, the first number
of "Brann's Iconoclast." Only a few numbers appeared,
when it was suspended and he resumed his editorial work,
then on the "Globe-Democrat," of St. Louis, Missouri, and
later on the "Express" of San Antonio, Texas. It was in
connection with his first attempt to establish the "Icono-
clast" that he delivered a few lectures that were well re-
ceived. In later years he went upon the platform again
with every prospect of a successful career in the lecture
field.
In the summer of 1894 he settled here in Waco, and, in
February of the following year, revived the "Iconoclast,"
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 7
which was successful from the first issue, having reached,
at the time of his death, a circulation of ninety thousand
copies. It was through the "Iconoclast" that his genius
found full scope for development, and that he became best
known to the public. In its columns he dared to be himself.
There was now no restraint imposed upon him by timorous
publishers. It belonged to him, and in it he gave full wing
to his own thought. It was this intellectual freedom, sus-
tained by the magic power and personality of a real genius,
that gave to it such widespread popularity.
Mr. Brann has been classed as a humorist. This he was,
and of a type peculiar to himself, but he was not content
with merely having amused or entertained the people, he
aspired to arouse public sentiment in the interest of certain
reforms. He was a hater of shams and defied every form
of fraud, hypocrisy and deceit. He made of his humor a
whip with which to scourge from the temple of social purity
every intruder there. He joined in no partisan schemes for
place or power, but, confident of his own ground, he would
stand alone in the defiance of popular humbugs and frauds.
This heroic independence, while admired by many, made
him a mark for the envy and hatred of such as feared him,
and in the end proved to be the cause of his death.
But with all his uncompromising hatred of shams, there
beat in the bosom of W. C. Brann a warm and generous
heart for the world at large, and no man was ever a more
devoted friend to the poor and needy. No beggar was ever
turned away from his door empty handed, and no worthy
cause ever asked his help in vain. His religion was to do
whatever he believed to be right, and to defy the wrong
even though it should be found parading in the garb and liv-
ery of righteousness.
Mr. Brann was fond of nature. He loved the mountains,
the lakes, the rivers and the billowy sea. He loved to walk
amid forest trees and watch the birds fly from bough to
bough and warble their songs of love, but in all the wide,
wide world, his home life was the most sacred object of his
devotion, and when prosperity gave him the means to do so
8 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
he found great delight in making it beautiful and pleasant.
He was fond of his friends, but the love he bore his wife and
children was sublimely beautiful, tender and affectionate.
His sudden death was a shock not only to his immediate
friends, but to the hundreds of thousands who knew him
through the "Iconoclast." Walking quietly along the street,
talking with a friend, the bullet of an assassin pierced his
body, entering through the back, and, although he had the
courage, with strength enough, to turn and fatally wound
his antagonist, he lived but a few hours, when all that re-
mained of one of the most brilliant journalists on the Ameri-
can continent was followed to Oakwood Cemetery by prob-
ably the largest funeral procession ever witnessed in this
city. There he was tenderly laid to rest in the embrace of
our common mother earth, and under a mound of floral of-
ferings, which though profuse and costly were but a feeble
expression of the sincere grief that struck dumb with awe
the thousands upon thousands who had learned to love him
with an affection accorded to few men.
J. W. SHAW.
Waco, Texas, Sept, loth, 1898.
WOMAN'S WICKEDNESS.
By the "social evil" is commonly understood illicit inter-
course of the sexes, a violation of law or custom intended
to regulate the procreative passion. .
The "evil" is probably as old as society, coeval with man-
kind. History tradition itself goes not back to a time
when statutes, confessedly human, or professedly divine,
were capable of controlling the fierce fires that blaze within
the blood when all-consuming Love was cold Reason's
humble slave and Passion yielded blind obedience unto Pre-
cept. Although the heavens have been ever peopled with
threatening gods and the great inane filled with gaping
hells; although kings and courts have thundered their inhi-
bitions forth, and society turned upon illicit love Medusa's
awful frown, the Paphian Venus has flourished in every
age and clime, and still flaunts her scarlet flag in the face
of heaven.
The history of humanity its poetry, its romance, its
very religion is little more than a Joseph's coat, woven of
Love's celestial warp and Passion's infernal woof in the
loom of Time. For sensuous Cleopatra's smiles Mark
Antony thought the world well lost ; for false Helen's favors
proud Dion's temples blazed, and the world is strewn with
broken altars and ruined fanes, with empty crowns and
crumbling thrones blasted by the selfsame curse.
In many cities of every land abandoned women are so
numerous, despite all these centuries of law-making and
moralizing, that they find it impossible to earn a livelihood
by their nefarious trade are driven by sheer necessity to
seek more respectable employment. The supply of public
prostitutes is apparently limited only by the demand, while
the number of "kept women" is constantly increasing, and
society becoming day by day more lenient to those favor-
ites of fortune who have indulged in little escapades not in
strict accord with the Seventh Commandment. It is now
a common occurrence for a female member of the "Four
Hundred" who has confessedly gone astray, to be received
back on an equality with her most virtuous sisters. In
ancient Sparta theft was considered proper, but getting
10 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
caught a crime. Modern society has improved upon that
peculiar moral code. Adultery if the debauchee have
wealth is but a venial fault, and to be found out a trifling
misfortune, calling for condolence rather than condemnation.
It is not so much the number of professed prostitutes that
alarms the student of sociology, as the brutal indifference to
even the semblance of sexual purity which is taking posses-
sion of our social aristocracy, and which poison, percolating
through the underlying strata, threatens to eliminate wom-
anly continence from the world.
If, despite all our safeguards of law and the restraining
force of religion, society becomes more hopelessly corrupt ;
if, with our advancing civilization, courtesans increase in
number; if, with our boasted progress in education and the
arts, women of alleged respectability grow less chary of
{heir charms if the necessities of poverty and the luxury
of wealth alike breed brazen bawds and multiply cuckolds
it is a fair inference that there is something radically
wrong with our social system.
It might be well, perhaps, for priests and publicists to
cease launching foolish anathemas and useless statutes at
prostitution long enough to inquire what is driving so
many bright young women into dens of infamy, for those
good souls who are laboriously striving to drag their fallen
sisters out of the depths, to study the causes of the disease
before attempting a cure. I say disease, for I cannot agree
with those utilitarians who profess to regard prostitution
as a "necessary evil ;" who protest that the brute passions
of man must be sated, that but for the Scarlet Woman he
would debauch the Vestal Virgin. I do not believe that
Almighty God decreed that one-half the women of this
world should be sacrificed upon the unclean altar of Lust
that the. others might be saved. It is an infamous, a re-
volting doctrine, a damning libel of the Diety. All the
.courtesans beneath heaven's blue concave never caused a
single son of Adam's miserv to refrain from tempting, so
far as he possessed the power, one virtuous woman.
Never.
Governor Fishback, of Arkansas, recently declared that
"houses of ill-fame are necessary to city life," and added:
"If you close these sewers of men's animal passions you
overflow the home and spread disaster."
This theory has been adopted by many municipalities,
courtesans duly licensed, their business legitimatized and
accorded the protection of the law. If houses of ill-fame
be "necessary to city life;" if they prevent tne overflow of
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 11
the home of bestial lust and the spread of disaster, it fol-
lows as a natural sequence that the prostitute is a public
benefactor, to be encouraged rather than condemned, de-
serving of civic honor rather than social infamy. Will
Governor Fishback and his fellow utilitarians be kind
enough to make a careful examination of the quasi-respect-
able element of society and inform us how large an army
of courtesans will be necessary to enable it to pass a baking
powder puritv test?
Governor Fishback does not appear to have profited by
Pope's suggestion that "The proper study of mankind is
man," or he would know full well that the presence in a
city of prostitutes but serves to accentuate the dangers
that environ pure womanhood. He would know that they
add fuel to Lust's unholy fires, that thousands of them are
procuresses as well as prostitutes, and that one bad woman
can do more to corrupt her sex than can any libertine since
the days of Sir Launcelot. He would likewise know that
so perverse is the nature of man that he would leave a
harem filled with desirous houris more beautiful than ever
danced through Mohammedan dream of Paradise, to dig
pitfalls for the unwary feet of some misshapen country
wench who was striving to lead an honest life. As a muley
cow will turn from a manger filled with new-mown hay,
and wear out her thievish tongue trying to coax a wisp of
rotten straw through a crack in a neighbor's barn, so will
man turn from consenting Venus' matchless charms to
solicit scornful Dian.
What is it that is railroading so large a portion of the
young women to hell? What causes so many to forsake
the ''straight and narrow path" that is supposed to lead to
everlasting life, and seek the irremediable way of eternal
death? What mad phantasy is it that leads so many wives
to sacrifice the honor of their husbands and shame their chil-
dren? Is it evil inherent in the daughters of Eve them-
selves? Is it lawless lust or force of circumstances that
adds legion after legion to the cohorts of shame? Or has
our boasted progress brought with it a suspicion that
female chastity is, after all, an overprized bauble that
what is no crime against nature should be tolerated by this
eminently practical age? We have cast behind us the
myths and miracles, proven the absurdity of our ancestors'
most cherished traditions and brought their idols beneath
the iconoclastic hammer. In this general social and intel-
lectual house-cleaning have we consigned virtue to the
rubbish heap or at best relegated it to the garret with
12 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the spinning-wheel, hand-loom and other out of date
trumpery? Time was when a woman branded as a bawd
hid her face for shame, or consorted only with her kind;
now, if she can but become sufficiently notorious she goes
upon the stage, and men take their wives and daughters to
see her play "Camille" and kindred characters. This may
signify much; among other things that the courtesan is
creeping into social favor even that a new code of morals
'is now abuilding, in which she will be the grand exemplar.
As change is the order of the day, and what one age damns
its successor ofttimes deifies, who knows but an up-to-date
religion may yet be evolved with Bacchic revels for sacred
rites and a favorite prostitute for high priestess?
Were I called upon to diagnose the social disease; did
any duly ordained committee from the numerous "Re-
form" societies, Ministerial Associations, secular legisla-
tures or other bodies that are taking unto themselves great
credit for assiduously making a bad matter worse call
upon me for advice anent the proper method of restoring
to healthy life the world's moribund morality, I would
probably shock the souls out of them by stating a few plain
facts without troubling myself to provide polite trimmings.
You cannot reform society from the bottom; you must
begin at the top.
Man, physically considered, is merely an a.nimal, and the
law of his life is identical with that of the brute creation.
Continence in man or woman is a violation of nature's
edicts, a sacrifice made by the individual to the necessities
of civilization.
Like the beast of the field, man formerly took unto him-
self a mate, and with his rude strength defended her from
the advances of other males. Such, reduced to the last
analysis, is the basis of marriage, of female chastity and
family honor. Rape and adultery were prohibited under
pains and penalties, and behind the sword of the criminal
law grew up the moral code. As wealth increased man
multiplied his wives and added concubines ; but woman
was taught that while polygamy was pleasing to the gods
polyandry was the reverse that while the husband was
privileged to seek sexual pleasure in a foreign bed, the
wife who looked with desiring eyes upon other than her
rightful lord merited the scorn of earth and provoked the
wrath of heaven.
For long ages woman was but the creature of man's
caprice, the drudge or ornament of his home, mistress of
neither her body nor her mind. But as the world advanced
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 13
and matter was made more subject unto mind as divine
Reason wrested the sceptre from brute Force woman
began to assume her proper place in the world's economy.
She is stepping forth into the garish light of freedom, is
realizing for the first time in the history of the human race
that she is a moral entity that even she, and not another,
is the arbiter of her fate. And, as ever before, new-found
freedom is manifesting itself in criminal folly liberty has
become a synonym for license.
The "progressive" woman the woman who is not only
well "up-to-date," but skirmishing with the future is ask-
ing her brother: "If thou, why not I? If man is forgiven
a score of mistresses must woman, blessed with like reason
and cursed with kindred passions, be damned for one
lover?" And while the question grates upon her ear, the
answer comes not trippingly to the tongue. I do not mean
that all women who imagine themselves progressive are
eager to assume the same easy morals that from time imme-
morial have characterized the sterner sex; but this line of
argument, peculiar to their class, while not likely to make
men better, is well calculated to make foolish women worse.
The sooner they realize that he-Dians are scarce in the
country as brains in the head of a chrysanthemum dude;
that such sexual purity as the world is to be blessed withal
must be furnished by the softer sex, the better for all con-
cerned. That they will eventually cease their altogether
useless clamor that bearded men become as modest as
blushing maids, and agree with the poet that "Whatever is,
is right," the lessons of history bid us hope. When the
French people threw off the yoke of the royalist and aris-
tocrat they likewise loudly clamored for equality, fraternity
and other apparently reasonable but utterly impossible
things, until the bitter school of experience taught them
better. The progressive women have not yet set up la Belle
Guillotine in Washington or elsewhere for the decapita-
tion of male incorrigibles ; which significant fact confirms
our old faith that the ladies rather like a man who would not
deliberately overdo the part of Joseph.
But the female "reformer," with her social board of
equalization theories, is but a small factor in that mighty
force which is filling the land with unfaithful wives and the
potter's field with degraded prostitutes.
When the people of a nation are almost universally poor,
sexual purity is the general rule. Simple living and severe
toil keep in check the passions and make it possible to
mould the mind with moral precepts. But when a nation
14 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
becomes divided into the very rich and the extremely poor;
when wilful Waste and woful Want go hand in hand;
when luxury renders abnormal the passions of the one;
and cupidity, born of envy, blunts the moral perceptions of
the other, then indeed is that nation delivered over to the
world, the flesh and the devil. When all alike are poor,
contentment reigns. The son grows up a useful, self-
reliant man, the daughter an industrious virtuous woman.
From this class comes nearly every benefactor of mankind.
It has ever been the great repository of morality, the bal-
ance-wheel of society, the brain and brawn of the majestic
world. Divided into millionaires and mendicants, the poor
man's son becomes feverish to make a showy fortune by
fair means or by foul, while his daughter looks with en-
vious eye upon m'lady, follows her fashions and too often
apes her morals. The real life is supplanted by the artifi-
cial, and people are judged, not by what thev are, but by
what they have. The ''true-love match" becomes but a
reminiscence the blind god's bow is manipulated by
brutish Mammon. Men and women make "marriages of
convenience," consult their fortunes rather than their affec-
tions seek first a lawful companion with a well-filled purse,
and then a congenial paramour.
The working girl soon learns that beyond a few stale
platitudes fired off much as a hungry man says grace
she gets no more credit for wearing honest rags than
flaunting dishonest silks; that good name, however pre-
cious it may be to her, is really going out of fashion that
when the world pretends to prize it above rubies it is lying
is indulging in the luxury of hypocrisy. She likewise
learns that the young men really worth marrying, knowing
that a family means a continual striving to be fully as fash-
ionable and artificial as those better able to play the fool,
seek mistresses rather than wives. She becomes discour-
aged, desperate, and drifts into the vortex.
Much is said by self-constituted reformers of the lach-
rymose school anent trusting maids "betrayed" by base-
hearted scoundrels, and loving wives led astray by de-
signing villains ; but I could never work my sympathies up
to the slopping over stage for these pathetic victims of
man's perfidy. It may be that my tear-gflands lack a hair-
trigger attachment, and my sob-machine is not of the most
approved pattern. Perchance woman is fully as big a fool
as these reformers paint her that she has no better sense
than a blind horse that has been taught to yield a ready
obedience to any master to submit itself without question
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 15
to the guidance of any hand. Will the "progressive" wo-
man who is just now busy boycotting Col. Breckinridge
and spilling her salt tears over his discarded drab kindly
take a day off and tell us what is to become of this glorious
country when such incorrigible she-idiots get control of it?
It is well enough to protect the honor of children with
severe laws and a double-shotted gun; but the average
young woman is amply able to guard her virtue if she
really values it, while the married woman who becomes so
intimate with a male friend that he dares assail her con-
tinence, deserves no sympathy. She is the tempter, not
the victim. True it is that maids, and matrons too, as pure
as the white rose that blooms above the green glacier, have
been swept too far by the fierce whirlwind of love and pas-
sion; but of these the world doth seldom hear. The wo-
man whose sin is sanctified by love who staked her name
and fame upon a cowardly lie masquerading in the garb
of eternal truth never yet rushed into court with her tale
of woe or aired her grievance in the public prints. The
world thenceforth can give but one thing she wants, and
that's an unmarked grave. May God in his mercy shield
all such from the parrot criticisms and brutal insults of the
fish-blooded, pharisaical female, whose heart never thrilled
to love's wild melody, yet who marries for money puts
her frozen charms up at auction for the highest bidder, and
having obtained a fair price by false pretenses, imagines
herself pre-eminently respectable ! In the name of all the
gods at once, which is the fouler crime, the greater "social
evil :" For a woman to deliberately barter her person for
gold and lands, for gew-gaws, social position and a pre-
ferred pew in a fashionable church even though the sale
be in accordance with law, have the benediction of a stupid
priest and the sanction of a corrupt and canting world or,
in defiance of custom and forgetful of cold precept, to cast
the priceless jewel of a woman's honor upon the altar of
illicit love?
Give the latter woman a chance, forget her fault, and
she will become a blessing to society, an ornament to
heaven; the former is fit inhabitant only for a hell of ice.
She has deliberately dishonored herself, her sex and the
man whose name she bears, and Custom can no more ab-
solve her than the pope can pardon sin. She is the most
dreadful product of the "Social Evil," of unhallowed sex-
ual commerce is the child of Mammon and Medusa, the
blue-ribbon abortion of this monster-bearing age.
16 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
A FINANIAL FETICH.
CLEVELAND AND THE CURRENCY.
The gold reserve is at present making life a burden to
the powers that be. No African tribe deprived of its
stuffed snake, or maid forlorn despoiled of her virginity,
ever rilled the circumambient ether with clamor more dol-
orous than that with which the Cleveland administration is
rending heaven's imperial concave because its blessed finan-
cial fetich is endangered. Its doleful jeremiads mount
heavenward night and day, while its piteous appeals to
Congress to come to the rescue of its god of gold and thereby
save the country from its impending doom, are sufficient to
melt a heart of adamant. The round earth reels beneath its
burden of agony and the tom-tom wildly beats to frighten
from its sacrilegious feast the omnivorous demon that is
devouring the great monetary <noon which regulates the
commercial tides and sometimes afflicts with lunar mad-
ness those politicians who repose beneath its horizontal
rays. Perhaps ere these mournful lines are committed to
cold type by the deft fingers of a fair compositor the dread-
ful danger will have passed, and Cleveland's wild alarums
and Carlisle's sad lament disturb our dreams no more.
Perhaps even a Democratic Congress can be prevailed upon
to come to the rescue of its imperilled country, and thereby
relieve the agonized President of the awful alternative of
letting it go to Hades, or appealing to his political foes for
saving grace throwing the Goddess of Liberty into the
arms of Reed, who is supposed to have played Sextus Tar-
quinus to the old dame's Lucrece.
The Cleveland administration has already increased the
nation's interest-bearing debt $100,000,000 to galvanize
the moribund Gold Reserve, and now admits that it might
as well have poured a Houston Post editorial into a sieve,
or stored its watermelon crop in the vicinity of a nigger
camp-meeting. Perhaps in the fullness of time the idea
will worm itself even into the President's nice fat head that
when a brick block can be built on the point of a ten-penny
nail, $100,000,000 of gold will form a sufficient "basis" for
a two-billion dollar currency that the Gold Reserve "pro-
tects the credit of our circulating media" much as a rabbit's
foot wards off headless hobgoblins, or compels the reluct-
ant smiles of Fortune.
Think of $100,000,000 of gold going "security" for more
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 17
than $1,600,000,000 of paper and silver; that were a "16 to
i" ratio worth considering! There is not $600,000,000 of
gold coin in the entire country; yet we are expected to
believe a paper dollar isn't worth a whoop in Hades unless
"backed by the yellow metal," that but for the "guar-
antee" of gold, silver would be discredited and lie down in
the middle of the road. Think of a bank with but $1,000
in ready cash, and whose entire assets amount to less than
$6,000 enjoying the entire confidence of an intelligent com-
munity that has more than $16,600 on deposit! Yet that
is the position of Uncle Sam to-day if gold be. in very
truth, "the basis of our currency." Turn Cheops upside
down and you get a fair idea of the present monetary situa-
tion as seen by those financiers whom God in his inscru-
table wisdom has suffered to take charge of our affairs.
Suppose the theory of Cleveland and Carlisle be correct
that the Gold Reserve is really the bulwark of our cur-
rency, and that should it be exhausted we would plunge to
the dreaded "silver basis" like Lucifer hurled headlong out
of heaven, and all our cartwheel and paper currency lose
half its purchasing power : Who, then, is most interested in
maintaining it unimpaired? Is it not the capitalistic, the
creditor class the very men who are assiduously assault-
ing it and who have twice "forced" the administration to
issue bonds to replenish it? If the purchasing power of
the dollar be reduced one-half, the debtor is not damaged,
but the creditor is despoiled. The price of the farmer's
products and the wage of labor quickly adjust themselves
to the new conditions ; but the man who has -money loaned,
or corded up awaiting investment, finds half of it turned to
ashes and has absolutely no recourse. If the Reserve be of
so much importance to the capitalist why is he constantly
encroaching upon it even locking up gold lest the govern-
ment get hold of it, and with it ward off his impending
ruin? If the financial Samsons insist on pulling the mon-
etary temple down about their ears why should Messrs.
Cleveland and Carlisle tearfully appeal to Congress to head
'em off? Why should we poor but honest Democrats who
are struggling and not always successfully to discharge
our debts, be expected to sit up o'nights and lament because
our creditors insist on forgiving half our obligations? Why
bribe the capitalist with interest-bearing bonds to refrain
from hoisting himself with his own petard. Let the
damphool but kerosene his coat-tails and apply a match be-
fore ascending, and he will make a very respectable sky-
rocket.
18 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Does not every man with sufficient intelligence to avoid
standing under a waterspout like an inept gosling till he
drowns, know that if the Gold Reserve were really neces-
sary to the credit of our currency, capitalists would no
more make war upon it than they would scratch a match in
a powder house or gaily bestride a buzz-saw making a
million revolutions a minute? Cannot even the most ir-
remediable monetary mutton-head understand that if the
integrity of our circulating media depended on the preserv-
ation of the Gold Reserve, Carlisle could gather into the
treasury half the yellow coin of the country in a single
week without issuing a single interest-bearing bond that
it would be forced upon him whenever there was the slight-
est suspicion that "the basis of our currency" was in dan-
ger? Cannot Secretary Carlisle himself understand that if
his theory be correct Wall Street would even now Be eager
to exchange gold for paper instead of vice versa would
lend to the government without interest all the gold it could
scrape together?
The very fact that it is possible for a few men to exhaust
the Gold Reserve in a single day proves conclusively that
it is not and cannot possibly be the "basis" of our cur-
rency's credit that it is a ridiculous as well as an expensive
nuisance. A security that may be destroyed any day, and
which is at all times notoriously insufficient, is utterly use-
less so far as establishing confidence is concerned. If the
government had possession of every gold coin in the coun-
try it could redeem but little more than one-half the out-
standing paper currency. The people know full well that
should they become fearful of their paper money and de-
mand gold for it they could not get it, to-day, to-morrow or
next year that to redeem it dollar for dollar is a physical
impossibility. Isn't that a fine "basis of credit?" And yet
nobody appears to be seriously alarmed except the Cleve-
land administration, a few "cuckoo" newspapers and
those capitalists who bought the $100,000,000 worth of
bonds !
The bulk of our currency consists of irredeemable paper
irredeemable because it exceeds all the gold and silver
coin in the country! And yet it is accepted even more
readily than gold itself is "money current with the mer-
chant" in every State of the American Union.
If all the gold and silver mined and minted since the
days of King Solomon were sunk beneath the waters of the
sea, our paper currency would continue to circulate and en-
joy the same respect that it does to-day. Why? Because
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 19
it serves the purpose for which it was created; because
commerce does not care whether it will exchange for any
other kind of money or not so long as it will expeditiously
effect the exchange of pork and potatoes, soap and sad-
irons ; because it constitutes a claim on the entire wealth
of this mighty Yankee nation a lien upon every bale of
cotton and bushel of corn, a claim upon every waving
wheat-field and ounce of ore a mortgage on every acre of
sunny soil upon which falls the shadow of our flag.
What a man wants to know is that he can purchase with
the dollar as much of the world's wealth as he gives there-
for. Assured of that, he slips it into his jeans and goes on
his way rejoicing. But, it will be asked what imparts this
virtue to a piece of paper? We have already shown that
it is not the Gold Reserve that does it that a bank whose
liabilities are known to be double its total assets cannot
possibly command public confidence. If the creditors of a
concern should demand their money it would be compelled
to close its doors and the very day that our paper cur-
rency is discredited by commerce that day redemption will
cease.
Upon what is confidence in our currency grounded if not
on gold? Upon confidence in the stability of the American
Government, upon experience, credit, necessity! Upon oc-
ular demonstration that it is an efficient exchange medium,
an effective tool of trade.
The fear that our paper currency will depreciate in pur-
chasing power if not redeemed in gold on demand can exist
only in the minds of those who are ignorant both of the les-
sons of history and the maxims of the foremost financiers
of the last two centuries. The currency of a country, no
matter of what it be made, only depreciates in purchasing
power when there is more money than business, more
trade-tools than trade when the supply of the exchange
media exceeds the demand. Expansion of the currency re-
duces, contraction increases the purchasing power of the
dollar, whether it be made of paper or metal just as the
scarcity of labor raises the wage-rate and a surplus reduces
it. Eliminate all our gold and silver coin, leaving to do the
money-work of the country only the paper currency now
extant, and instead of destroying its credit you enhance its
value. The money-work must be done; if not by one
agent, then by another.
But this line of reasoning or rather these statements of
fact do not necessarily lead into the "Greenback" camp.
It is one thing to point out that the credit of our paper
20 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
trade-tool is not dependent upon the precious metals, and
quite another to conclude from this premise that it were ad-
visable to entrust the currency of the country to a paper-
mill, a job-press and an omnium gatherum of political odds
and ends who draw their financial inspiration from the
Forks-of-the-creek. The man who imagines that adding
to our exchange media necessarily increases our wealth
would double the grocer's stock by multiplying his gallon
measures.
As the volume of currency dominates the standard of
value, the most important of all our multifarious tools of
trade, it should be controlled by commerce instead of by a
partisan Congress. And such is, to a great extent, the case
to-day. Not to exceed 6 per cent, of the exchange media
employed by the commerce of this country bears the gov-
ernment stamp, and the amount is steadily decreasing.
Commerce has practically taken the "Money Question" out
of the hands of the politicians. While partisan polemics
have perorated, and political conventions resoluted; while
able editors have poured forth columns of foolish advice
and obfuscated Presidents looked into leather spectacles
and sagely shook their heads ; while the gold age and the
silver age have struggled for their innings and the "wild-
cat" and "red dog" have plaintively meowed or assiduously
bayed the moon, commerce has quietly cut the Gordian knot
has provided itself, without the adventitious aid of the pol-
itico-economic "reformer," with that great desideratum of
industry, a flexible exchange medium which automatically
adjusts itself to the requirements of trade. The develop-
ment of our banking business, of our system of credits of
what has been not inaptly termed a "deposit currency"
renders it possible to transact nearly the entire business of
the country without the use of actual money. Nearly 95
per cent, of all exchanges of goods are effected to-day with-
out the shifting of a single dollar. Except in trifling trans-
actions money is now used, not as a medium of exchange,
but only as a measure of value. And it is worthy of remark
that all our monetary troubles are caused by the 5 or 6 per
cent, of political money we still employ.
Mr. Cleveland imagines that he is confronted with a
frightful condition, when he is only harassed by a foolish
theory. He has not kept pace with the progress of mone-
tary science is pounding along in the dust far in the rear
and imploring the procession to chase itself and catch up.
We transformed the metal dollar into paper, and supposed
it to represent so much coin that did not exist. We just
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 21
imagined it a dollar, and that, by some thaumaturgic feat or
alchemistic process, the government might give us for it the
gold it did not have and which we did not want, and found
it served as well as tho' it weighed a pound as tho' re-
demption were easy at any time instead of impossible at all
times. Then we went further, and instead of a dollar
"based on (non-extant) coin/' we imagined a dollar without
even a green-coated paper ghost, and "based," not upon sup-
posititious gold, but on commercial credit. And it, too,
worked well is, in fact, doing nearly all our monetary work,
to-day, and doing it better and cheaper than metal ever did.
And yet President Cleveland professes to believe that if he
once permits that Gold Reserve to get away, a people pos-
sessing such a monetary imagination would be unable to
exchange a keg of sauer-kraut for a calico shirt, a mugwump
vote for a mixed- drink jag. He doesn't understand the
capabilities of this country. Why, if worst came to worst,
we could imagine that on Mars or the Moon there was
located so much gold, and with that as "basis" for a paper
currency, continue in business at the old stand continue to
exchange commodities. And we would have the sweet satis-
faction of knowing that our Gold Reserve was safe that we
wouldn't have to bribe Wall Street with all the 5 per cent,
bonds it could carry to let our sacred hoodoo alone.
We sincerely trust that Mr. Cleveland will cease to worry
about "the credit of our currency" will not wear himself to
a skeleton trying to protect the Gold Reserve. The cur-
rency will take care of itself if the politicians will but re-
strain themselves until a plan can be devised for placing it
altogether under the control of commerce; and as for the
Gold Reserve, he might as well let it go to join Symrne's
Hole, or the long exploded fallacy that the government can
make a currency of any kind that is "good the world over."
The commerce of this country gives coin the cold-shoulder,
as being both costly and clumsy; and we have never yet
been able to build a gold eagle that didn't lose its tail-feath-
ers and become simply a commodity like pork and potatoes
the moment it crossed our frontiers worth so much a pound
in the country to which it was carried. There is no more
reason why the government should provide commerce with
minted gold for export than that it should put hot-house
bouquets on the beeves we send abroad.
The Iconoclast would suggest that instead of increasing
the excise taxes to enhance the public revenues during the
present business depression, the Gold Reserve be applied to
defraying the legitimate expenses of the government. If
22 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
there is anything calculated to discredit our paper and silver
dollars it is the action of the government itself in discrimi-
nating against them in the sale of its bonds in persistently
advertising that unless it can do what now appears doubt-
ful, they must infallibly depreciate 50 per cent. Confidence
is the basis of all currency ; hence persistent calamity-clacking
predictions by those high in authority that it would depre-
ciate in purchasing power were sufficient to make the peo-
ple distrustful even of gold itself.
THE BEAUTEOUS REBECCA.
A BILLET D'AMOUR.
Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, Care Post, Houston, Tex.
My Erstwhile Own : Pardon me, Merlindy, dear, for ad-
dressing you thro' the columns of a great religious journal,
instead of slipping my tender billy-doo under your back
gate by the melancholy light of the gibbous moon. Condi-
tions have arisen in this unkind and captious age which make
it necessary that I should hang my torn heart upon my
sleeve for daws to peck at, instead of following the lead of
my soulful longings and enclosing my viscera in an antique
envelope, perfumed with frangipanna, and firing it at my
Merlindy thro' the mails. You know or I will grant you
do the poet says, ''What great ones do the less will prat-
tle of." They are prattling of you and I Merlindy. In the
first flush of our fond affections we did forget that fixed upon
us was the curious gaze of the hoi polloi, and ere we were
aware Dame Rumor had donned her Sunday gown and
sailed abroad to pour into the prurient public ear another
tale of a trusting maid undone by selfish man had even
hinted that you were playing Madeline to my Willie. 'Twas
all my fault. You were so pure and unsuspecting, so little
versed in the ways of this wicked world, and I should have
guarded you with the thoughtful solicitude of a careful shep-
herd shielding from a sneaping frost the fresh-dropped fe-
male lamb. I should not have permitted you to patter about
the public streets in male attire and call yourself Rienzi Mil-
tiades I should have bade you beware those cute little
breeches and that bob-tail coat.
Heaven forfend that I should be the unhappy cause of
your spotless character being called in question. God wot-
teth well that your fair name and fame are dearer to me
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 23
than the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart. (See Don-
nelly's Cryptogram.) But you are not bearing yourself
toward me in a manner to allay suspicion. The public is
quick to see the similitude of your treatment of the Apostle
and Miss Pollard's haughty scorn of her former paramour,
and is hinting that like causes produce like effects is even
putting its tongue in its larboard cheek and suggesting that
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." But don't you
believe, Merlindy, that the Apostle scorns you. He knows
your worth, and will stick to you, thro' good and evil report,
like a dead game sport to loaded dice.
"My pen is pore, my ink is pail,
But love for you shall never fale."
Tho' you have ceased to love me, and decline to be even
a sister to me, I cannot forget those dear old days that are
dead, before "Pinkie" of the Hill tribes crept into our am-
brosial Eden like the odor of Buffalo Bayou into the boudoir
of a Houston belle. You should be more cautious, Mer-
lindy. You should remember that the public is watching
you as intently as a nigger preacher eyes the plug hat cir-
culated for the capture of small coin. Tho' your heart may
break to-morrow you must be all smiles to-night. If you
desire to spill your fond affections on a blond vacuum
chained to an Aurora Borealis you should do it unostenta-
tiously, and thereby dodge the damning suspicion that your
life is wrecked and that you are throwing away the frag-
ments in a lit of hilarious desperation. You should not ad-
vertise the fact that you turn the hose on me when I seek
to warble some pathetic roundelay or work off an Ella
Wheeler yearn under your dormer window. You should
not bruit it abroad that you whistle on your lily-white rin-
gers for the police when I attempt to unbosom my pent-up
agony to the sympathetic moon in your back yard.
Rebecca Merlindy, my soulful bird of Paradise, if you
have really soured on me if our ecstatic yum-yum was too
intoxicatingly sweet for a steady diet I shall not upbraid
you ; but you should not with your dainty tootsie-wootsies,
trample on a true heart, nor play fast and loose with a pure
affection that has unwittingly warped itself about your lovely
diaphragm like a boa-constrictor encircling a yearling calf.
You have a right to discard me, Rebecca; but no right to
drive me to drink by turning up your patrician gold-cure
nose as I pass humbly by, then filling the white horse mous-
tache of Epictetus Paregoric Hill with hyblaean honey.
But I will not complain. 'Twere better to have loved and
24 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
lost than ne'er to have loved at all. Instead of hanging my
harp on the willows I will attune it to the soul-sob key and
pour forth my sad lament like the bulbul warbling to the
red, red rose, while she presses the cruel thorn ever deeper
into her wounded heart. I will return good for evil, because
I am built that way. Instead of answering scorn with scorn,
as little souls would do, I will bend all my poor talents and
wobbly energies to the holy task of making you immortal.
And I will succeed, or burst a suspender in the sacred enter-
prise. I will dramatize our tale of true love turned awry,
and "Pinkie" shall play the heavy villain shall hypnotize
you with the splendor of his sunset hair and make you err
against your better judgment. I will weave you into song
and story like a thread of burnished gold in a somber carpet
of rags, or a clean cuspidore in a Populist sanctum. The
ages yet to be shall remember you as the Apostle's sweet-
heart, even as the present recalls the Laura of Petrarch, the
Heloise of Abelard and the Dulcinea of Don Quixote. Tho'
parted in life we will be united in death. Posterity will at-
tend to that will scoop together our pathetic dust and plant
it in some romantic spot, where the shadow of the quiver-
ing aspen falls and the bull-frog's melancholy croak makes
life not worth the living. And every lover throughout the
wide, wide world whose affection has slipped its trolley-pole,
will come apilgriming as to some sacred shrine, pull off an
unpainted picket and drop upon our lowly mound the sym-
pathetic sob and scalding tear.
Ah, Merlindy, you may not be so beautiful as Ida Wells,
nor so intellectual as Mrs. Lease ; but my soulful song shall
so gloss your imperfections o'er that in the unborn ages yet
to be you'll loom up on the sensuous cigarette or soothing
''hardware" sign a very Hebe, and no living picture exhibit
will be complete without some counterfeit presentment of
your personal pulchritude, attired in hand-me-down pants.
Adios, but not farewell.
"THE APOSTLE."
THE BUCK NEGRO.
I once severly shocked the pseudo-philanthropists by sug-
gesting that if the South is ever to rid herself of the negro
rape-fiend she must take a day off and kill every member
of the accursed race that declines to leave the country. I
am not wedded to my plan ; but, like the Populists, I do in-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 25
sist that those who object to it are in duty bound to offer
something better.
We have tried the restraining influence of religion and the
elevating forces of education upon the negro without avail.
We have employed moral suasion and legal penalties ; have
incarcerated the offenders for life at hard labor, and hanged
them by the neck in accordance with statutory law. We
have hunted the black rape-fiend to death with hounds, bored
him with buckshot ; fricasseed him over slow fires and flayed
him alive; but the despoilment of white women by these
brutal imps of darkness and the devil is still of daily occur-
ence. The baleful shadow of the black man hangs over
every Southern home like the sword of Damocles, like the
blight of death an avatar of infamy, a decree of damna-
tion.
There is not to-day in all this land of Christ an aged
mother who is safe one single hour unless guarded by watch-
ful sons, a wife who may rest secure beyond the reach of her
husband's rifle, a female infant but may be sacrificed to feed
some black monster's lust the moment it leaves its father's
breast.
In the name of Israel's God, what shall we do?
This condition of affairs is becoming intolerable. A
man's first duty is not to an alien and inferior race, but to
his family. It is much better to shoot a negro before he
commits an irreparable crime against the honor of a family
than to hang him afterwards.
Drive out the "nigger" young and old, male and female
or drive him into the earth! It may be urged that the
"good negro" would suffer with the bad. It is impossible to
distinguish the one from the other until it is too late. It
were better that a thousand "good negroes" if so many
there be should suffer death or banishment than that one
good white woman should be debauched. We must con-
sider ourselves first, others afterwards. The rights of the
white man are paramount, and if we do not maintain them
at any cost we deserve only dishonor.
During the slavery regime the negro kept his place like
any other beast of the field. He no more dreamed of co-
habitation with white women than does the monkey of mat-
ing with the swan ; but when his shackles were stricken off
and he was accorded political equality with his old-time mas-
ter he became presumptuous, insolent actually imagined
that the foolish attempt of fanatics to humanize him had
been successful that a law of nature had been repealed by
act of Congress ! If we could but restore the negro to his
26 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
old ante-bellum condition of involuntary servitude and give
him time to forget the social fallacies with which he has
been inoculated by misguided theorists, all might be well
with Sambo ; but that is out of the question. We do not
want to re-enslave him he is not worth it. And if we de-
sired to do so, the world, which is crazed with its own fool-
ish cackle of "equality and fraternity/' would not permit it.
No, we could not revive old customs if we would. There
are too many long-haired men and short-haired women pick-
ing up a more or less honest livelihood by experimenting
with Sambo at our expense, his wonderful "progress," his
divine "rights" and his devilish "wrongs," to permit serious
consideration of what is really best for him.
The negro is to the American social organism what a
pound of putty would be in the stomach of a dypseptic. The
sooner we realize this fact and spew him out, the better. It
were as wise to make the eagle and the crow tenants of the
same eyre as the white and black man of the same territory ;
as sensible to yoke Pegasus and a plow-horse as to make the
Caucasian and the African co-rulers of the same country.
The attempts of sociologists to "harmonize the races" are
as absurd as trying to bring into the same diapason the
twanging of a jewsharp and the music of the spheres the
effort to make the negro an element of strength to the na-
tion's energy as misdirected as the labors of Gulliver's scien-
tists at the academy of Lagado. The American nation would
be billions of dollars better off to-day had Ham failed to get
into the ark. The negro has been the immediate cause of
more bitterness and bloodshed than his entire race, from its
genesis to the present, is worth, and he will continue the
fruitful cause of trouble so long as he is permitted to remain.
The XlVth amendment to the Constitution is a flagrant
violation of natural law of the law that the greater and less
cannot be equal, that matter must be subject unto mind, that
wisdom was born to rule and ignorance to obey. To deny
that the greater shall govern the lesser intellect is to abro-
gate man's right to rule the beast and God's authority over
Adam's sons.
The greatest injury ever done the people of the South
was self-inflicted the introduction of negro slavery. The
next greatest was the act of the Federal Government in mak-
ing the black man co-ordinate sovereign of the State. It
would have been a thousand times better for the Southern
people had they adopted paganism or polygamy instead of
negro slavery a thousand times better for them and the
nation at large had the Federal Government confiscated
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 27
every foot of soil in the insurgent States, put the torch to
every dwelling, destroyed every factory and filled every har-
bor with the wreck of railroads and the debris of business
blocks instead of putting the ballot in the hands of the black.
The ruin wrought by torch and torpedo could have been
quickly repaired; the damage done by the XlVth amend-
ment is well-nigh irreparable. Burning with the accursed
lust for political power, the Republican party, like another
shameless Tarquin, held the knife at the throat of the South-
ern Lucrece while it robbed her of her honor, made her an
object of contempt, her name a byword and a reproach.
Pitifullest blunder of all the ages! Most damning infamy
ever perpetrated since the dawn of Time ! Fearfullest pen-
alty brave men ever paid for daring death for conscience's
sake!
This is a republic. The supreme power is, ostensibly at
least, vested in the people. The voter is the sovereign. Sup-
pose that it were an absolute monarchy : Would it not be a
mistake unparalleled, a crime unspeakable to take from an
ignorant, brutal slave his shackles and place upon his stupid
head a crown? The Republican party did even worse. A
sovereign cannot long oppress a brave and spirited people.
Let him issue an edict that meets with general disapproval
and it is laughed to scorn. Should he attempt to enforce it
he is dragged from the throne. But the Republican party
corrupted a sovereign from whose edict there is no appeal.
It has debased the great army of voters, poisoned the politi-
cal organism by injecting into it a vast mass of ignorance
destitute of even the saving grace of virtue.
Had the negro been naturally the intellectual peer of the
white man, it would have been a grievous blunder to give
him the ballot, to force political responsibility upon him un-
til at least a generation after his emancipation. He was an
untutored savage in his native land, making no appreciable
progress. He was captured, like any other wild beast,
brought to America and sold into slavery. Here he was
taught, not how to wisely rule, but to servilely obey. It
required a thousand years of education to fit the thoughtful
Saxon and the quick-witted Celt for the duties and responsi-
bilities of American sovereignty; the stupid Ethiopian was
fitted for them by the scratch of a pen and a partisan vote !
Transformed from semi-savagery to super-civilization by the
power of a political fiat! From slave to sovereign by the
magic wand of genie! Fitted for American sovereignty!
He was not fitted for it. Ten thousand years of civilization
and education could no more qualify the negro for self-gov-
28 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ernment than it could raise to the intellectual level of a lousy
ape the piebald jackass who presides over the destinies of
the Houston Post. True, it is that there are some negroes
with a suggestion of intellect ; but they are usually negroes
only in name mongrels in whose veins flows the blood of
some depraved Caucasian bum. The pure blood blacks who
have exhibited intellectual and moral qualities superior to
those of the monkey, are few and far between. And yet
the pure-blood Ethiop is generally a much better and safer
member of society than the "yaller nigger," who appears to
inherit the vices of both races and the virtues of neither.
The negro vote is dangerous because of its ignorance,
doubly so because of its venality. It is utterly irresponsible,
altogether reckless, knows little of principle, cares less, and
will follow wherever the most blatant demagogue or the
most liberal purse will lead. Is it any wonder that, there is
occasional "bulldozing" at the polls in the Black Belt that
men whose ancestors wrung Magna Charta from King John
and recognition of American independence from King
George, should decline to be dominated by the bastard spawn
of white bummers and black bawds ?
The presence of the negro in the South has kept this sec-
tion a century in arrears of what it would otherwise be. It
has prevented white immigration ; it has kept out capital ; it
has bred a contempt among the Southern whites for labor;
it has fomented strife between sections and is still fostering
provincial prejudice, fanning the fires of sectional hate. The
South could afford to give the negro, black and "yaller," a
hundred millions of money to leave the country and never
return. The negro is, for a verity, the bete-noire of the
South, a millstone about her neck, tending ever to drag her
down into the depths of social and political degradation.
Every Southern man, every man of whatever clime, long
resident here, and not sans eyes, ears and understanding,
knows this to be true.
Does the Southern press proclaim it? Not at all. The
Southern press, believing the black man a fixture that the
disease is incurable with a burst of optimism that discounts
that of the man who thanked God for the itch because of the
luxury of scratching, proclaims his presence an inestimable
boon, a transcendent blessing. Every day we are told that
the negro is "the natural laborer of the cotton, cane and rice
field" whatever that novel economic theorem may mean.
If it meant thereby that white labor is not adapted to those
industries, it needs no further refutation than a glance at ex-
isting conditions. In every Southern State and county
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 29
white men are performing identically the same kind of labor
as the black, and performing it better. There is not a spot
within the broad confines of the United States where the
African can live and labor that the Caucasian cannot live as
well and labor with more effect.
Remove the negro from the South and this section will
quickly become the most populous, prosperous and progres-
sive portion of the American Union. But will the negro be
removed? Not at all. The two great political parties need
him in their manufacturing industry the making of politi-
cal "issues."
The negro will remain right where he is, wear the cast-off
clothes of the white man, steal his fowls, black his boots and
rape his daughters, while the syphilitic "yaller gal" corrupts
his sons. Yes, the negro will stay, stay until he is faded
out by fornication until he is absorbed by the stronger race,
as it has absorbed many a foul thing heretofore.
A VISION OF HEAVEN.
It was in the year of our Lord 1893, the seventh day of
the ninth month, hour midnight. The editor had toiled all
day trying to harmonize the two wings of the Texas Dem-
ocracy had held out the olive branch of peace until his arm
ached. He was now reclining on a pile of exchanges in the
sanctum, listening to the dreamy rhythm of the music that
floated in from an adjacent beer garden, the monotonous
clickety-click of the Mergenthalers and the impromptu ob-
servations of the office cat to a visiting Thomas feline on
the back gallery. The music of the beer garden orchestra
gradually swelled into a mighty anthem, and the office cat's
sad complaint became a paean of praise, the rat-tat-tat of
the Mergenthalers, the click of golden slippers, keeping time
to celestial music on the ballroom floor of a house riot built
with hands, and the fitful gleam of an arc light, filtering
through the dust and grime of an uncurtained window a
Jacob's ladder, on the top rung of which a seraph poised
with outstretched wings, like a blue jay on the top twig of
a Washingtonian cherry tree.
"Ascend/' he commanded, and the editor complied.
"What's the matter now ?" he asked the seraph, as the
latter gave him a lift and pulled in. the ladder like a country
belle taking the cube-root of a yard of gum. "Has another
rebellion broken out in Heaven?"
30 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
"Naw," said the seraph with a shrug of his wings; "I
thought perhaps you'd like to write up our town. Of course,
if you do so it must be for its news features. We are not
placing any advertising at present. Times are too hard, and
corner lots in the New Jerusalem are not what they were
in the city's boom days. Immigration has fallen off to such
an extent that St. Peter says the entrance fees don't pay for
greasing the hinges of the gate, and he's thinking of pad-
locking it and applying for a new job. The committee on
ways and means say we'll have to pave the streets with silver
and set the throne with stage jewels if business doesn't im-
prove pretty soon."
"What's the matter?"
"Too much hide-bound orthodoxy and too little Christian-
ity. Now, were you to suggest that St. John had a bad case
of the jim jams when he saw all those funny things, the peo-
ple down below would probably mob you. The preachers
would thunder against you from the pulpit, and Deacon
Twogood pronounce you a blasphemous atheist. Of course,
every man's an atheist who doesn't see God through Deacon
Twogood's telescope, and every man a blasphemer who ap-
plies historical criticism to the Bible who attempts to sep-
arate the word of God from the folly of the redacteurs.
Still, these good people continue to build palatial churches in
which to practice hypocrisy, while men with families to sup-
port are glad of a chance to toil from sun to sun three times
a week for a dollar a day ! A man in that condition natur-
ally becomes an anarchist, if not a criminal, and if his chil-
dren do not turn out thieves and his wife a prostitute it is
no fault of either society or the Church. I think the Al-
mighty is getting tired of lending His name to such religious
layouts, and I don't blame Him. If He ever asks my advice
I'll tell Him to smash with His thunderbolts every church
on earth that costs more than $5,000 and start the fool-killer
on the trail of every preacher who prattles about blasphemy
while children are begging bread and women are dying of
want. What the old world needs is a religion of humanity
one broad enough and liberal enough to take up into its
bosom every creature created in the image of God."
By this time the editor and the other seraph had reached
a narrow gate, over which was inscribed in golden capitals :
'Orthodox Heaven." The seraph pulled the bell and St.
Peter peeped out through the wicket. Seeing that it was
a newspaper man he threw wide the gate and removed his
crown as a mark of respect.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 31
"I'd best give you a return check," he said. "You're from
Texas, and you'll want to go back in an hour or two."
"Where's Judas Iscariot?" asked the traveler.
"Oh," said the man on the door, "Judas has been in hell
nearly 2,000 years. You see, he sold his Saviour for thirty
pieces of
"Yes, yes; but he had the decency to go hang himself.
Now there was another disciple who went back on his Mas-
ter because he feared the rabble would ride him on a rail,
then sat down and bawled like a spanked baby because he
was a born coward and "
But St. Peter was pointing out to a Populist the shortest
road to Perdition and evidently did not hear. A man of
majestic mien and carrying a golden harp came forward and
grasped the wanderer's hand.
"Do they still read my poetry down below?" he asked
eagerly. "What do the modern critics say of it?"
"Permit me to introduce King David," said the seraph.
"Davy, this is the editor of the Great Religious." The
psalmist was delighted and wanted to present the pilgrim to
Mrs. David, No. 923, but the editor checked him. He didn't
care to make female acquaintances in a strange city.
"Let's see; aren't you the party who despoiled Uriah's
wife, then had that gentleman murdered to conceal your
crime ?"
"Oh, please don't put that in the papers," pleaded Saul's
successor. "Of course, on earth little things like that are
charged up to a fellow, but they make no difference in the
orthodox heaven. If a man is only pious and strictly ortho-
dox, all things are forgiven him. Ah, here is my distin-
guished ancestor, Father Abraham. Allow me to present
you."
"Come nestle in this bosom with Lazarus," said the patri-
arch ; but the pilgrim, being somewhat choice of his bed-
fellows, dodged the embrace.
"Are you the party who gave up his wife to the lustful
Orientals, saying, 'She is my sister?' Are you the party who
preferred the life of a cuckold to the death of a gentleman?"
But he had already seized a harp and joined in the serpen-
tine dance about the throne, crying with his cracked voice,
"Holy, holy, holy."
Lot and his two daughters came tripping by to the sound
of timbrel. The seraph beckoned the husband of the pillar
of salt and he came to a standstill.
"You are the party whose righteousness saved him when
Sodom and Gomorrah did the Herculaneum act?" He
32 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
nodded. "Well, I'd just like to ask you, for the information
of a medical fraternity, how a man who is dead drunk can
accomplish what you did in the cave at "
"Don't mention it," pleaded the beloved of the Lord, and
he blew a blast on a golden trumpet, pulled his crown about
his ears and joined in the sacred dance with his youngest
daughter for partner.
"Who are those people bearing down upon us with crash-
ing cymbals and loud hosannahs ?" asked the scribe.
"That," replied the seraph, "is Murderers' Band. Those
people were all hanged for infamous crimes ; but when they
found they were in for it that they could not get a com-
mutation of sentence to life imprisonment repented and
were jerked to Jesus. That fellow who leads the procession
and whose hallelujah is particularly unctuous, murdered his
mistress, a sweet little girl whom he had debauched, and
whom he compelled to enter a house of infamy to supply him
with whisky money. The papers printed an account of the
crime and his execution some time ago."
"Catch the celestial bird and give him to me," pleaded the
scribe. "I long to hear him warble." He came with his
ambrosial locks streaming wide on the celestial air, a song in
his mouth, an instrument of melody in his hand.
"Hello, Jim! How did you break in here? Where's
Julia?"
"Oh, Julia's in hell," said Jim gaily, as he swept the
strings of his instrument and cried, "Glory, glory, glory !"
"You see, she didn't have time to repent. She tried to
shake me and I brained her with a hatchet. I got religion,
and here I am, with two pair of reversible wings came di-
rect from the scaffold. But Julia's frizzling in everlasting
fire. Strike the timbrel, blow the trumpet and let there be
a joyful noise unto the "
"Whoa! Shut off that sanctified Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-aye
and tell me about Julia. She was a child pure as a lily,
sweet as the incense that rises from Buddha's altar. You
led her astray. You dragged her down to the lowest depths
ever touched by womankind. You beat her. You brought
Chinamen to visit her, took the price of her shame, bought
whisky, and murdered her because she dared plead with you
not to further humiliate her. You say that she is in hell.
Do you ever go to see her? Do you ever carry a cup of cold
water to cool her parched lips ? Does her agony haunt you ?
Does it cause the anthem to die on your lips and the hot tears
to scald your cheeks? Do you pray God to allow you to
change places with her?"
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 33
"What are you giving me ? T'ink I'm a chump ? We 'uns
up here don't worry about der lost. That's their biz ; see ?"
And he was gone chanting Solomon's assignation song.
Just then John Calvin came along. "Where's Servetus?"
asked the scribe. "Where should he be but in hell?" re-
torted John. "He was a heretic and I burned him. Of
course, he was an honest, truthful, kindly-hearted man, with
more brains in his little finger than I had in my head ; but
he got wrong in his scriptural views, and, as in duty bound,
I made a bonfire of him. Praise the Lord God Almighty,
who is a merciful God !" And he drifted on to meet Henry
VIII, who was gaily whistling, "Catharine, my Catharine."
"Have you any respectable people up here?" asked the
scribe pulling the seraph aside by one of his pin-feathers.
"Well," said he, glancing about apprehensively, "to give
you a straight deal, I think the respectable people are all in
hell. And to tell you truly, I believe they are far happier
down there than this job-lot of pious murderers and sancti-
fied hypocrites up here. Of course, the climatic conditions
are not conducive of ecstasy, but the society is infinitely
more select, and there's such a thing as human sympathy and
love among the lost. Of course, I don't want you to give
me away, but "
"Nine columns short wires all flat two machines ker-
flummixed news editor tearing his hair foreman cussin'
a blue streak what'n Helen Blazes we goin' o' do ? Say ?"
It was the "devil.'' The "Vision of Heaven" vanished,
and the weary editor cried out in agony, "This is hell !"
APOSTLE VS. PAGAN.
Col. R. G. Ingersoll :
My Dear Colonel : I have not picked up my pen for the
express purpose of annihilating you at one fell swoop. Even
were such the case, I do not flatter myself that your impend-
ing doom would cause you to miss meals or lose sleep, for
you have become somewhat used to being knocked off the
Christmas tree by theological disputants from the back dis-
tricts. At least once each lunar month for long years past
your quivering diaphragm has been slammed up against the
shrinking face of nature by mental microbes, or walked on
by ambitious doodle-bugs, who wondered next day to learn
that you were absorbing your rations with clock-work regu-
larity and doing business at the same old stand. I once saw
34 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
an egotistical brindle-pup joyfully bestride the collar of an
adult wild-cat, and the woeful result convinced me that Am-
bition and Judgment should blithely foot it hand in hand.
That is why, my dear Colonel, I approach you by siege and
parallel, instead of capering gaily down your right- o'-way
like a youthful William goat seeking a head-end collision
with a runaway freight train.
Without any view of paving the way for a future loan, I
tell you frankly that I admire you very much. Your public
record and private life prove you to be one of God's noblest
and rarest works, an honest man. That you are the
equal morally and the superior mentally of any man who
has presumed to criticise you must be conceded. The preju-
dices of honesty are entitled to consideration and the judg-
ment of genius to respect bordering on reverence; but in
this age of almost universal inquiry we cannot accept any
man, however wise, as infallible pope in the realm of intell-
lect and declare that from his ipse di.rit there shall be no
appeal. That were intellectual slavery, the most degrading
species of bondage, and it is your greatest glory that you
have ever been the apostle of liberty liberty of the hand
and liberty of the brain. More than all other men of your
generation you have fostered independence of thought and
the search for new truth ; hence you cannot complain if the
fierce light which you have taught the world to turn full and
fair upon cults and creeds, should be employed to discern
the false logic of the great critic himself.
In your warfare upon hypocrisy and humbuggery I am
with you heart and soul. I will set my foot as far as who
goes farthest in the exposure of frauds and fakes of every
class and kind, tho' hedged about with the superstitions of
a thousand centuries and licensed by prescriptive right to
perpetrate a brutal wrong; but it does not follow because
some church communicants are hypocrites that all religion
is a humbug ; that because the Bible winks at incest and rob-
bery, murder and slavery, the book is but a tissue of foolish
falsehoods ; that because Almighty God has not seen proper
to reveal himself in all his supernal splendor to Messrs.
Hume and Voltaire, Pan and Ingersoll the world has no good
reason for belief in his existence that because the dead do
not come back to us with a diagram of the New Jerusalem it
were folly to believe the soul of man immortal.
My dear Colonel, your mighty intellect has not yet com-
prehended the philosophy of religion. Oratorically you soar
like the condor when its shadow falls upon the highest peaks
of the Andes, but logically you grope among the pestilential
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 35
shadows of an intellectual Dismal Swamp, ever mistaking
shadow for substance. You are frittering away your mighty
intellectual strength with the idiosynciasies of creeds and the
clumsy detail of cults, instead of considering the psychologi-
cal phenomena of religion in its entirety. You descend from
the realm of philosophy to assume the role of scholastic to
dispute with little men anent points of doctrine, to wrangle
with dogmatists regarding their conception to the Deity.
An ignoramus believes the Bible because of the miracles,
and because of the miracles an Ingersoll disbelieves it and
both are equally blind. A cult is simply an expression, more
or less crude, of the religious sentiment of a people, the poor
garment with which finite man clothes Infinity. Would you
quarrel with Science because it is not yet made perfect?
Would you condemn music because of an occasional discord ?
Would you reject history altogether because amid a world of
truth there are preserved some fables such as tempted the
satire of Cervantes ? Would you banish the sun from heaven
because of its spots or declare Love a monster because born
of Passion?
The real question at issue is not whether the miracles be
fact or fable ; Mahomet, the duly ordained prophet of Allah,
or an ignorant adventurer ; Jonah a delegate of the Deity or
the father of Populism whether Christ was born of an
earthly father or drew his vigor direct from the loins of om-
nipotent God. Let us leave these details to the dogmatists,
these non-essentials to the sectarians. Let us consider the
religion of the world in its entirety, with the full under-
standing that all sects are essentially the same.
The core of all religion is the worship of a Supreme
Power, and the belief in man's immortality. That is the cen-
tral idea, around which the imagination of man has woven
many a complicated web, some beautiful as Arachne's robe,
some barbaric and repulsive, but all of little worth. The
wise man, the true philosopher, will not mistake the machin-
ery of a religion for the religious idea, the garment which
ignorance weaves for Omniscience, for God himself.
Even if we grant that the Creator never yet communicated
directly with the creature ; that man has not seen with mortal
eyes beyond the veil that shrouds the two eternities, it does
not follow that religious faith is but arrant folly, that God is
non-extant and man but the pitiful creature of blind force.
The dumb brute knows many things it was never taught,
and might not man, the greatest of the animal creation, be
gifted with a knowledge not based upon experience? So far
as observation goes, there is provision for the satisfaction
36 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of every passion, and the most powerful of all passions is the
dread of annihilation the longing for continual life. If
death ends all then here is a violation of "natural law" a
miracle ! And you, my dear Colonel, do not believe in mira-
cles. If we discard Revelation and take Reason for our su-
preme guide, we must infallibly conclude that the devotional
instinct implanted in the heart of the entire human race has
its correlative that the longing for immortal life which
burns in the breast of man was not a brutal mistake, else con-
cede Nature a poor blunderer and all this prattle anent her
''immutable laws" mere nonsense.
Before ridiculing Revelation and mocking at Inspiration
were it not well to determine their true definition ? What is
genius but inspiration? and a new truth bodied forth to the
world but a revelation ? Were it not possible for a genius
an inspired man to trace the finger of God in the sunset's
splendor as easily as upon tables of stone ? to hear the voice
of Omnipotence in the murmur of the majestic sea as well
as in the thunders of Sinai ? to read a divine message of un-
dying love in a mother's lullaby as readily as in the death and
resurrection of a Deity ? If God can teach the very insects
wisdom and gift even the oyster with instinct, can He com-
municate with man only by word of mouth or the engraver's
burin ? Examine the most beautiful woman imaginable with
a powerful microscope and you will turn from her with a
disgust similar to that of Gulliver when the Brobdingnagian
maid placed him astride the nipple of her bosom. Her skin,
so fair to the natural eye and velvety to the touch, becomes
beneath the microscope suggestive of the hide of a hairless
Mexican dog. Religion is a beautiful, an enchanting thing
if you do but look at it with the natural eye ; but when you
employ the adventitious aid of the skeptic's microscope you
find flaws enough. It were doubtful if even our boasted
American Government, of which you are so proud, could
stand such an examination and retain your confidence.
No, my dear Colonel ; you will never banish worship from
the world by warring upon non-essentials. You may demon-
strate that every recorded miracle is a myth that the found-
ers of the various cults were but mortal men and the writers
of every sacred book but scheming priests. You may make
it gross to sense that the Creator has never held direct com-
munication with the creature, and you have but stripped re-
ligion of its tattered vestments have not laid the weight of
your hand upon the impregnable citadel, the universal Fath-
erhood of God and Brotherhood of Man. You have never
yet talked to the real question. You reject religion because
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 37
Moses and Mahomet, Luther and Calvin entertained crude
ideas of the plans and attributes of the Creator. You pose
as an agnostic a religious Knownothing because the Al-
mighty has not taken you completely into his confidence. Be-
cause the blind have sometimes led the blind and both have
fallen into the foul ditch of fanaticism and cruelty, you infer
that not one gleam of supernal glory has pierced the dark
vale of human life. While posing as the apostle of light, you
will obscure the scintillations of the stars because the sun is
hid ; while apotheosizing Happiness you would banish Hope,
that mother of which it is born.
But your labors have borne good as well as evil fruit.
While your siren eloquence has led some doubting Thomases
into the barren desert of Atheism, you have driven others to
seek a better reason for their religious faith than barbarous
tradition and the vote of ecumenical councils. Bigotry has
quailed beneath the ringing blows of your iconoclastic ham-
mer, dogmatism become more humble and the priesthood
well-nigh forgotten to prate of a hell of fire in which the
souls of unbaptized babes forever burn. Without intending
it, perhaps, you have done more to promote the cause of true
religion, more to intellectualize and humanize man's concep-
tion of Almighty God, than any other reformer since the
days of Christ.
FAITH AND FOLLY.
"LET Us HAVE PEACE."
In sixty centuries of earnest toil, with infinite pain and
tearful prayer, what knowledge have we gained of God, oh
brother mine, that we should quarrel about his plans or at-
tributes? As yet we can but touch the hem of Divinity's
robe ; we can but hear His voice in dreams or catch in fleeting
visions glimpses of His glory.
Why quarrel about our faiths, and declare that this is right
or that is wrong, when all religions are, and must of neces-
sity ever be, fundamentally one and the same the worship
of a Superior Power, the great
'Father of all, in every age, in ev'ry clime adored,
By saint, by savage and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!"
Cult wars with cult, and sect with sect, while all unite to
damn the independent worshipper ; yet every man who bows
the knee or breathes a prayer to any God of whatsoever
38 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST.
name ; every Egyptian bending at Isis' fanes and every Phe-
nician sacrificing unto Baal ; every Gueber worshipping his
god of fire, and every Catholic following the sacred cross ;
every Peruvian adoring the rising sun and every Methodist
agonizing at the mourner's bench, is a member of the same
great church. They may accredit their God with different
attributes and worship him in diverse ways ; but their faiths,
when stripped of non-essentials, are one and the same their
Deities are identical.
Men of our day, who from the dizzy heights of modern
learning, hurl their logical thunderbolts at Mahomet's inco-
herent mouthirigs and Moses' solemn confabs with the Al-
mighty anent matters of no possible moment ; who sneer at
Guatama's four-fold path to a Celestial Nowhere and de-
nounce the worship of an illiterate carpenter as foolish blas-
phemy, forget that all things must have a beginning that
e'en proud Science sprang from the womb of stupid Igno-
rance, and stumbled, awkwardly enough, through long ages
of Folly before she could firmly plant her feet upon the eter-
nal rock of Fact.
I have no word of condemnation for any religious faith,
however fatuous it may appear to me, that has cast one
gleam of supernal glory into the dark vale of human life;
but I regard with unspeakable contempt the man of these
modern days who decries all religious progress and brands
as blasphemers those who would take one step beyond the
crude faiths of former days insists that religion is too
sacred to be handled by human reason, that mother of which
it was born ! It were folly to expect a people whose wisest
men believed this world the centre of the universe and the
stars mere ornaments of the night, to evolve a perfect re-
ligion, or form an intelligent conception of the great First
Cause.
The Sacred Books of all the centuries are essentially the
same the half articulate voice of the world crying for light,
the frantic efforts of man to learn whence he came and
whither he goes, to lift the veil that shrouds the two eterni-
ties to see and know! I gather them together the Old
Testament and the New, the Koran and the sacred Vedas,
the northern Sagas and the southern Mythologies ; I search
them through, not to scoff, but to gather, with reverent soul,
every gleam of light that since the birth of Time has been
vouchsafed to man. I read the Revelations and ponder the
Prophecies ; I listen once again to the voice in the burning
bush and the mystic whisperings of the Dodona Oak ; I de-
scend into the Delphic cave, or stand with uncovered head
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 39
to hear the voice of Memnon answer to the rosy ringers of
the morn. I sit with Siddartha beneath the Bodhi tree and
follow the prophet of Islam in all his pilgrimings ; I stand
with Moses on Sinai's flaming crest and listen to the prayer
of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, then I go forth be-
neath the eternal stars each silently pouring its stream of
sidereal fire into the great realm of Darkness and they seem
like the eyes of pitying angels, watching man work out, little
by little, thro' the long ages, the mystery of his life.
THE AGE OF CONSENT.
Are the various legislatures of this alleged land of Christ
composed chiefly of "chippy chasers," of lecherous libertines
eager to despoil little school-girls of unclean creatures who
would violate the very cradle to feed lust's unholy fires ?
No? Then why is it they persistently decline to give the
little girls legal protection from moral destruction ? Why is
it that they deliberately disregard public opinion and turn a
deaf ear to the pleading of ten thousand mothers, if thev
have not formed "a league with death and a covenant with
hell?"
I will be told that our law-builders, like Brutus and his
brother conspirators, are ''honorable men." Did an honor-
able man ever yet decline to protect youth and innocence to
the utmost of his power ?
What is the record of the American legislatures anent this
important matter ? Most of them fixed the age of consent at
ten years. Think of it, ye men with daughters completing
their first decade ! The men chosen by popular vote to make
laws for a people boasting of their enlightenment, declared
that a girl scarce old enough to prepare her trundle-bed or
dress her dolls, was amply qualified to pass upon the most
momentous question that can confront her between the
cradle and the grave ! One state actually fixed seven years
as the age at which a girl may legally "consent" to carnal in-
tercourse, her ravisher, tho' a full-grown man, not being lia-
ble to punishment for rape. And this is the country that is
building laws to shield from desecration the "Christian Sab-
bath," sending missionaries to the antipodes to carry prayer-
books and Bibles to barbarians tithing itself to build pala-
tial churches and provide legislative bodies with perfunctory
prayer !
God of Israel, what a gall !
40 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
I lay it down as an 'impregnable proposition that the men
who enacted these laws were knaves or they were fools.
They were either corrupt to the heart's core, or it were ful-
some flattery to brand them as burros. If fools they should
have been caged, if knaves they should have been hanged.
Their infamous legislation has left a foul blot on American
civilization which centuries cannot erase. When the anti-
quarian of the future finds those revolting statutes in the
ruins of our marble capitols he will decline to dignify us by
calling us barbarians he will brand us brutes !
A decade ago the age of consent in England was thirteen
years. A careful investigation resulted in the disclosure of
crimes against children that appalled the civilized world.
Parliament promptly raised to sixteen the age at which a fe-
male may legally part with that priceless jewel of her soul,
her chastity. Gladstone insisted on eighteen years, but was
overruled by the younger members, many of whom had
mistresses under that age. The agitation spread to Amer-
ica, where for ten years the ladies, supported by public
opinion, the pulpit and the press, have attempted to secure
legal protection for their little daughters.
In twenty-nine States and Territories the age of consent
still ranges from ten to fourteen years. A few States have
been induced, after an heroic struggle, to raise it to sixteen,
even eighteen, years, and, now, as if ashamed of this conces-
sion to common decency, are trying to reduce it again. The
Texas legislature did finally consent a few years ago to in-
crease from ten to twelve the age at which a babe is priv-
ileged to become a bawd ; but the victory cost the ladies a se-
vere struggle. The matter has been brought forcibly to the
attention of the present Legislature, and the Senate has ac-
tually succeeded after much industrious lobbying by the
ladies in passing, over powerful opposition, a bill raising
the age of consent to fifteen years ; also one prohibiting the
sale of cigarettes to "children under sixteen !" What the fate
of this bill in the House will be I do not at this writing (Feb-
ruary 12) know ; but it is safe to say the most potent, grave
and reverend jackasses who consider cigarette smoking a
crime and fornication but a venial fault will consent to no
improvement.
As matters now stand in Texas an unmarried woman of
twenty cannot legally purchase a bottle of beer or sell a foot
of land. At seventeen she cannot legally contract an honor-
able marriage without the consent of parents or guardian ;
she is an infant in the purview of the law for every pur-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 41
pose but prostitution! She is not mistress of her property
until twenty-one, but mistress of her person at twelve !
I lay down the proposition that when a girl is old enough
to be entrusted with the guardianship of her virtue she is
old enough to contract a marriage without asking permission
of any one ; that when she is old enough to become an un-
clean prostitute she is old enough to become an honorable
wife that when she is old enough to dispose of her person
she's old enough to dispose of her property.
The man who will have carnal intercourse with a child un-
der fourteen years of age, with or without her consent,
should be burned alive. The man who will be criminally in-
timate with a girl under seventeen years of age should be
castrated then shot. Yet all the American States but three
decline to consider him guilty of rape.
In Texas the child of twelve is placed on a parity with the
woman of forty, so far as sexual intercourse is concerned.
When Congressman Breckinridge seduced a grown woman,
well versed in the ways of the world, millions of people cried
''Shame!" Yet his offense was no greater in the eye of the
law than tho' he had coaxed some twelve-year-old Texas
child with a box of bon-bons to submit to his brutish desires.
When a middle-aged married woman is "led astray" we de-
nounce her "destroyer" as worthy of death ; yet we take
precious good care to protect with the law the life of the
lecherous brute who despoils her young daughter.
I do not know of a single reason why the age of consent
should not be at least seventeen years in every State of the
Union ; nor can I understand why any law-maker, laying
the slightest claim to respectability, should object to raising
it to that figure. I believe that if the question were submit-
ted to a vote of the very bagnio keepers and blacklegs it
would carry by a big majority, for they still retain some re-
spect for pure womanhood, and are not sunk so low in the
scale of human degradation as to deny legal protection to
children. I can understand the man who considers that
when a girl has reached maturity she is lawful prey for who-
soever can despoil her ; I cannot understand why the Legis-
lature of any State should decline to protect little school-girls
in every possible manner, unless it be dominated by lecher-
ous demons more utterly depraved than those that inhabit
the amen-corner of hell.
42 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
JONAH'S GOURD.
Circumstances over which he seems to have had no con-
trol made Jonah the prototype of the modern panic-builder ;
facile princeps of chronic kickers, the high priest of profes-
sional calamity howlers. He received a call to cry against
Nineveh because of its cussedness, but seems to have had a
presentment that the job wouldn't pay, and made a desperate
attempt to jump it. We are not advised what awful wicked-
ness the city planted by Ninus and watered by Sennacherib
had been guilty of. Perhaps a Democratic Congress had de-
clined to add $500,000,000 to the interest-bearing burden of
the people for the special behoof of the plutocracy. The peo-
ple may have blasphemed the Golden Calf, declared for the
money of the constitution, or hinted that they were better off
when wrestling with the flesh-pots of Republicanism than
trailing a mugwump king across barren deserts to a Baby-
lonian captivity. Or they may have neglected to give the
first fruits and fat of the land to the Lord via the larders of
the Levites. Certain it is that Nineveh had gotten off on the
wrong foot, and Jonah was sent to "cry against it" and en-
able jt to strike the proper gait. Like all the Jews of his gen-
eration, Jonah supposed that Jehovah ruled over but a small
territory that by crossing a State line he could get beyond
his jurisdiction and into the bailiwick of other gods ; so he
boarded a packet plying between Joppa and Tarshish and
''fled from the face of the Lord." It did not occur to the
good man that Jehovah might have an extradition treaty
with the Tarshish deity, or that he might make an excursion
into foreign territory and recapture the runaway at the im-
minent risk of precipitating a celestico-international compli-
cation. Jonah probably did not suppose that Jehovah was
cooped up in the Ark of the Covenant like the fisherman's
genie in the vessel of copper, and uncorked only when the
enemies of Israel became troublesome or some new people
were to be despoiled of their corn and cattle, their vines and
virgins ; still, he imagined, like many people of the present
day, that the Almighty clung pretty close to the amen-corner.
But before the patron saint of amateur fishermen and profes-
sional falsifiers could get clear of the legal three-mile coast
limit of Israel's God, that potentate pulled down on him
with a double-barreled hurricane and a muzzle-loading
leviathan. The aim was true, and Jonah tumbled. When he
found himself in the belly of the big fish our peripatetic
prophet from Galilee which appears to have been the
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 43
ancient Georgia repented of his sins. We all do when they
fail to pay the expected dividends. Jonah decided that he
would rather go to Nineveh and found a Cleveland calamity
club than travel, a perpetual passenger, in the prototype of
Jules Verne's Nautilus ; so he offered up penitential prayers,
made fair promises and was permitted to go ashore.
"The Lord spake to the fish and it vomited Jonah upon
dry land."
Pictures of the prophet walking ashore, with the lower
jaw of the whale for gang-plank, are quite plentiful ; but his
remarks on that occasion have not been preserved. The
kodak fiend seems to have been waiting for him, but the
ubiquitous interviewer failed to get in his graft. Perhaps it
is just as well ; but it gives us a poor opinion of ancient jour-
nalism. During the three days and nights the prophet was a
cabin passenger his whaleship must have swallowed a vast
variety of the denizens of the deep, and it were interesting
to know if Jonah lived happily with them, and if they came
ashore when he did, or continued their voyage. Perhaps
some devout defender of the inerrancy of the Bible will yet
consent to be swallowed by a whale for a few days in order
to give the world a realistic account of Jonah's remarkable
journey.
But although our hero vigorously objected to becoming
a calamity howler he took a wonderful interest in his work
when he once got into harness. He was only commissioned
to conduct a camp-meeting revival in Nineveh and rail
against its moral rottenness ; but he determined to "bring a
corollary rather than want a spirit," so he began to bawl in
the streets.
"Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
Such a calamity cry as that, coming from a man whom we
have no evidence had taken a bath or changed his shirt since
associating with the whale, was enough to frighten a mar-
ble caryatid into convulsions. The entire population, from
the King on his throne to the wingless buzzard who wrote
anonymous communications to the editor of the Nineveh
Morning Bazoo, informing him that he was an iridescent ass,
donned their sackcloth suits, sat in the ashes and failed to
come up to their feed. In those old days a man who filled
his hair with hickory ashes and boycotted his barber and his
belly, was supposed to be an especially agreeable sight to the
good God ; hence we can hardly wonder that he promptly re-
pealed the act authorizing the free coinage of calamities.
Just what awful punishment would have been inflicted upon
the fair city had the people refused to rend their garments
44 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and run their noses in the sand, we are left to conjecture.
The Lord might have sunk it beneath a sea of bitter waters
as he did Sodom, sent the seventeen-year locusts, or saddled
it with a mugwump administration. But the God of the
Jews seems to have ever been open to conviction. That's
where he differed from Grover Cleveland. The Lord even-
tually pulled his prophet of evil off the perch ; but Cleveland
strives manfully to fulfill every panic-breeding prediction of
his faithful cuckoos.
After the hot wave prognosticator had put out his bulle-
tins he got him out of the city, so as not to slip on his own
banana peel, built a jackal a considerable distance from the
spot where his curse was to get action, and deliberately sat
him down to see the show. He expected nothing less than
the utter destruction by a gracious God of the city in which
were 60,000 infants "also much cattle."
The summer climate of Nineveh was almost as sultry as
that of St. Louis ; and as Jonah lay in his hut with his tongue
hanging out the Lord took pity on him and caused a gourd
to spring up to comfort him with its shade. There Jonah
lay, day after day, we are led to suppose, looking off toward
Nineveh, eager to see fire and brimstone descend from
heaven on a million happy homes to inhale the sweet in-
cense of three score thousand helpless babes burned alive!
On the morning of the fortieth day we may well suppose that
he arose bright and early. This is the day that is to prove
him a true prophet and assure him the patronage of princes
and potentates, or proclaim him a garrulous old guy with a
disordered liver and an ill-balanced head. Either Nineveh
or the prophet must be overthrown.
Beyond the Tigris the heralds of the sun are flaming in
the sky. Now the great day-god shows his shining disc,
lingers a moment as tho' loth to leave Aurora's loving arms,
then wheels upward in stately majesty and pours his golden
splendors full upon Assyria's mighty capital. The people
awake from refreshing slumber, and the streets resound with
the same drowsy hum that for a thousand years has been
heard in that ancient centre of civilization. The merchant
goes about his business, the gude house-wife borrows soap
and sad irons of her neighbor and gossips with her over the
back fence about the new priest of Baal; the King and his
courtiers go forth to hunt the wild boar and the bride be-
decks herself for the nuptial rites. Jonah begins to fidget
beneath his gourd and glances often upward, wondering if
the consignment of blazing brimstone has been side-tracked
by another celestial revolution, such as that of which Milton
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 45
sings. The sun sinks like a globe of gold into the plain far
beyond the Zab, and the crescent moon is trying to clasp
Love's brilliant star to her concave breast. The ring of the
hammer and the shrill cry of the herdsmen are hushed, and
from park and garden come peals of mirth and music, the
dreamy cadence of dancing feet on polished cedar floors, and
the sensuous perfume of dew-bespangled flowers. Pyramus
is bending his steps to old Ninus' lonely tomb to meet his
lovely Thisbe; in the banquet hall the golden goblet brims
with nectarous wine such as Samos never knew, and per-
fumed lamps cast a ruddy glow on giant warriors and women
fair as ever cast in mortal mold. The hour grows late, the
music ceases; the hum dies slowly out, and the midnight
quiet is broken only by the prayer of an ascetic worshipping
the host of heaven, and the yoop of an unhappy married man
going home from the primaries in charge of a pair of police-
men. Nineveh is going to bed just as tho' no whale had
swallowed Jonah then puked him up when it discovered
that he had "a call to preach/'
When Jonah learned that the show for which he was act-
ing as press agent had collapsed, he proceeded to file a vig-
orous kick. That was perfectly natural. No matter how
terrible a prophet's predictions may be, he earnestly desires
that they come to pass. Jonah had shrieked calamity until
his tongue was parched, yet nothing serious had happened.
No wonder that he felt that his star was evil that through
no fault of his own a great three-cornered hiatus had been
kicked in his political fences. So he went to the Lord, we
may fairly infer from the trend of the narrative, and said :
"Look here, you've busted me up in business. I'd a been
a hanged sight better off had I taken my stand squarely on
the Chicago platform and defended the money of the con-
stitution instead of joining the mugwumps and clamoring
for currency contraction."
The Lord said unto Jonah, in substance, tho' probably not
in these exact words :
"The calamity clacker, like the cut-worm and the cholera
microbe, hath its uses. Here was Nineveh growing careless.
It had been prosperous so long under Republican paganism
that it was losing sight of the eternal principles of Jefferson-
ian Democracy. The old town had become deaf to argument
and indifferent to political duty; so I stirred up you to grow
a crop of anarchical whiskers, an abnormal gall, and spout
calamity from the beer-kegs at the corners. You have
served my purpose. I will now cut down your gourd, and
you must sing small or the sun will shine into and sour you."
46 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
A CARNIVAL OF CRIME.
During the year 1894 there were about 9,800 homicides
and but "132 legal executions reported in the United States.
I have no later statistics at hand; but it is conceded, I be-
lieve, that crimes of this kind are steadily on the increase,
while the disproportion between the number of homicides
and hangings continues to grow greater. As matters now
stand, one might slay a fellow mortal every year and stand
an excellent chance of dying of old age, so far as the courts
are concerned. You may go upon the streets, insult a man,
provoke him to offer you violence, shoot him down like a
dog, and, if able to employ eminent counsel to behedge you
with legal technicalities and befuddle the jury, go scot free ;
or failing in that, put the public to an expense of several
thousand dollars in excess of what your cowardly carcass is
worth, and escape with a short term in some comfortable
penitentiary, where you will be well cared for, taught a gfood
trade and regularly prayed for at the expense of law-abiding
people. What is the result ? The people, despairing of legal
protection from the armed thug, take the law into their own
hands invoke the power of Judge Lynch to defend their
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There
are more lynchings than legal executions. In 1894 the first
reached the appalling number of 190. That is indeed a ter-
rible record of lawless violence, but it were idle to declaim
against the effect without removing the cause. The Amer-
ican people are naturally law-abiding ; but above and beyond
their respect for courts is their inherent sense of justice
paramount even to the law of the land is the law of self-pres-
ervation. Theorists may protest and sentimentalists rend
their nether garments and spill their ready tears ; but so long
as the assassin is white-washed by the courts and the rape-
fiend turned loose to prey upon pure homes, Judge Lynch
will continue to hold his midnight sessions the shotgun
will continue to roar in the hands of maddened mobs and
the lonely tree groan beneath its grewsome burden. Is it
any wonder that the people lose patience ? In Judge Lynch's
court there is no eminent counsel skilled in the esoteric art of
protecting crime ; no change of venue ; no mistrials ; no ap-
peals ; no postponements to give important witnesses time to
die or get away; no one-year terms in the penitentiary for
the brutal assassin or infamous rape-fiend. We have "re-
formed" our jurisprudence until the contention of the courts
with the great tide of crime suggests Dame Partington's un-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 47
equal combat with the sea. By assiduously trundling her
mop she was able to fill her bucket with brine ; and by labor-
iously grinding, the courts succeed in cramming the peniten-
tiaries with small-fry thieves and people too poor to employ
skilled counsel. Our courts have become mere circumlocu-
tion offices, winding and unwinding red tape, instead of the
sinewy arm of justice wielding the unerring sword. Our
judges are usually learned and upright, our juries eager to
administer justice, our officers active and the public heart in
the right place ; but it avails not our system is all wrong.
We make too many laws, then involve them in a mass of
legal verbiage which permits a skilled sophist to demonstrate
to the untrained mind that they mean what best serves the
interest of his client. It is common cant that "the people
make the laws." They do not. The lawyers make them, and
that with the full understanding that the more intricate the
legal machinery may be, the more need of experts, the fatter
the harvest of fees. All the criminal laws this country needs
could be printed in a pamphlet no larger than the Iconoclast,
together with full instructions for their enforcement; made
so plain that the most, stupid juror could understand them
and in simplicity there is strength. "Thou shalt not kill,"
says the Bible ; and the sentence stands out like a star. The
penalty for violation of this law was death, unless it plainly
appeared that the killing was accidental or done in self-de-
fense. The trial was immediate, and, if conviction followed,
the culprit turned over to the "avenger of blood.' 7 No pro-
vision for experts to pass upon the sanity of the prisoner, no
prattle of hypnotism, no searching of the community for the
greatest numbskulls to determine the case, no reversals on
legal technicalities, no penitentiary and convict labor prob-
lem no lawyers ! A careful, common sense inquirv, hon-
orable acquittal or conviction and immediate execution. The
jury constitutes the chief feature of our legal machinery, a
feature in full accord with our theory of popular sovereignty ;
but we have so hedged it about with foolish restrictions that,
instead of being the ancillary of Justice, it has become a veri-
table bulwark of Crime. We select as jurors, not those who
know most about the case, but those who know least. When
an atrocious crime is committed we set aside as unavailable
those who have kept in touch with current events, and select
a jury from the residue. In these days of rapid transit and
daily papers all men of average intelligence are soon in-
formed of every crime of consequence committed in their
county, even in their State ; and no one gifted with a think-
ing apparatus can avoid arriving at some conclusion regard-
48 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ing all he sees and hears. As a rule, we get together twelve
of the most consummate blockheads in the county a dime
museum of mental freaks permit them to be further ob-
fuscated by artful counsel, whose business it is to "make out
a case" for or against, as goes the fee, then lock them up
until the most obstinate jackass in the corral dominates the
herd or compels a compromise. Sometimes there are two
or more burros of equal obstinacy ; a mistrial results, and the
case goes over to the next term of court. The public loses
interest in it is absorbed in the contemplation of new crimes
and if the culprit is eventually convicted and properly pun-
ished the people regard it as a special dispensation of Provi-
dence. Punishment, to have a repressive effect, must be not
only sure but swift. The law's delay coupled with its un-
certainty encourages crime. More than five years ago, and
on several occasions since then, the Iconoclast suggested that
jurors be elected by the people like other county officers
that every county select nine men of approved worth to try
criminal cases, and establish the majority rule. This would
relieve the citizen of a disagreeable duty for which he is
often in nowise qualified, and insure for jury service men
capable of analyzing evidence and arriving at just conclu-
sions. Let the vote of the jury in criminal cases be made a
matter of public record, and thereby fix the responsibility
for every miscarriage of justice. Only attorneys employed
by the State should be permitted to appear in criminal cases.
These should be skilled lawyers, but in no sense prosecuting
attorneys, intent only upon securing conviction and pocket-
ing a comfortable fee. Their business should be to elicit
facts for the jury to pass upon, and act as counsellors to the
court in questions of law. The attorney who will, with
equal readiness, employ his skill to acquit a felon or hang an
innocent man, should speedily become a forgotten factor in
our criminal jurisprudence. In March, 1895, I called at-
tention to these needed reforms, and well-nigh in the same
words; but a question involving the lives of 10,000 Amer-
icans annually cannot be too frequently called to the atten-
tion of our publicists and the people.
THE APOSTLE'S BIOGRAPHY.
I am pleased to learn from some of my contemporaries
that I am an ex-convict, who tramped into Texas carrying
a false trade-mark ; that I have been driven out of several
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 49
cities, and fired by various managers of morning- newspa-
pers ; that I have been thrashed by aged cripples, and com-
pelled to make retractions in the public prints. That is by
no means the entire catalogue of my high crimes and misde-
meanors, as set forth by my industrious biographers; but
is sufficient to show that as an original sinner neither St.
Paul nor Sam Jones was a circumstance to myself. To be-
come chief of the rogues in this era of rampant rascality
were indeed a distinction ; but being a modest man, I shall
refrain from assuming the post of honor in the nether pan-
theon until my right thereto is fully established.
My biographers 1 are sadly derelict in their duty, or they
would have discovered my pre-Texas cognomen and the
location of the prison in which I clanked my chain. The
cities from which I was expelled should be marked on the
map, and sworn statements by reputable citizens anent these
interesting episodes made matters of record. The affidavits
of publishers who have willingly dispensed with my services,
would give to the work an historical accuracy calculated to
impress the public. Photographs of all the aged cripples
who have walked my log should illume the book, while a fac-
simile of some retraction I have printed would make an ap-
propriate frontispiece.
From the foundation of the world the falsehood has been
the defensive weapon of the fool. Assail him with logic and
he answers with lies ; lash him with sarcasm and he retorts
with calumny ; impale him on the rapier of ridicule and he
deluges you with brutal defamation.
While it is true that no creature rising to the moral level
of the mangy coyote, the intellectual altitude of an aceph-
alous louse, will utter a malicious lie, it is likewise true that
no one within whose heart there pulses one drop of gentle
blood; within whose brain there was ever born a noble
thought; within whose soul there is enshrined the instincts
of a manly man, will retail a story calculated to injure a
fellow craftsman even if he knows it to be true. The re-
spectable journalist, the well-bred gentleman, is ever ready
to break a lance in intellectual tourney to prove his powers
on the Field of the Cloth of Gold but he leaves the throw-
ing of stink-pots to Chinamen, the exploitation of night-soil
to scavengers, the peddling of stale falsehoods to fools, the
concocting of unclean calumnies to cowards.
50 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
BLUE AND GRAY.
AN ADDRESS TO TH OLD VETERANS.
[The following summary of Mr. Brann's address to the United
American Veterans, San Antonio, Feb. 22, 1894, is published by
request.]
It occurs to me that the time is not an appropriate one
for lengthy speeches. This is a love- feast, and I have noticed
that when people are much in love they are little inclined to
talk. Perhaps I have been called upon because I'm a pro-
fessional peacemaker, an expert harmony promoter. Were
I not as meek as Moses and patient as Job I certainly would
weary in well-doing become discouraged and give o'er the
attempt to inaugurate an era of universal peace and general
good will ; for when I go North I am denounced by the par-
tisan press as an unreconstructed rebel seeking to rip the
federal government up by the roots, and when I come South
I'm pointed out as a dangerous Yankee importation with the
bluest of equators. The Democrats insist that I'm a Repub-
lican, but that party declines the responsibility; the infidels
call me a religious crank, the clergy an Atheist, and even
the Mugwumps regard me with suspicion. But let me tell
you right here that whatever I may or may not be, I am an
American from the ground up from Alpha to Omega,
world-without-end. I may be a man without a party and
without a creed; but so long as Old Glory blazes in God's
blue firmament I will never be a man without a country.
I can no more imagine a man loving only the north or
south half of his country than I can imagine him loving
only the right or left side of his wife. If I had to love my
country on the instalment plan I'd move out of it. The
man who is really a patriot loves his country in a lump.
There's room in his heart for every acre of its sunny soil,
its every hill upon which the morning breaks, its every vale
that cradles the evening shadows, its every stream that
laughs back the image of the sun.
When a man feels that way you can safely trust him with
an office and most of us are perfectly willing to be trusted.
As an American citizen I am proud of every man, of
whatever section, who, by the nobility of his nature or the
majesty of his intellect, has added one jot or tittle to the
fame of his fair land, has increased the credit of our com-
mon country, has contributed new power to the car of human
progress. They are my countrymen, friends and brethren.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 51
Are you of the North? Then T claim with you a joint in-
terest in your entire galaxy of intellectual gods. At the
shrine of Lincoln's broad humanity, of Webster's matchless
power, of the cunning genius of your Menlo wizard I humbly
bow. Are you of the South? Your Jefferson, Jackson and
Lee are mine as well as thine, for they too were Americans
lords in that mighty aristocracy of intellect that has, in
four generations, made the New World the wonder of the
Old w r ith its cumulative greatness of forty centuries.
I have watched the progress of the United American Vet-
erans' Association with uncommon interest, because it is dis-
tinctively a national organization, in which shriveled section-
alism and party prejudice find no place. Its cornerstone is
American manhood, its object fraternity, its principles broad
as the continent upon which falls the shadow of our flag.
Do you know what that association means ?^had you
thought of its significance ? It means that when brave men
sheathe the sword the quarrel's done. It means that peace
hath its triumphs no less than war. The world's annals fur-
nish forth no parallel to that association whose guests we
are to-night. Men have fought ere this and patched up a
peace; but where, in all the cycles of human history, have
they waged war more relentless than did Rome and Carth-
age, then, without a murmur, accepted the arbitrament of
the sword and swung into line, shoulder to shoulder, a band
of brothers, one flag, one country, one destiny and that the
highest goal of human endeavor?
My attention has been especially attracted to this asso-
ciation because it is a practical illustration of what I have
so often urged in print: That the pitiful sectional preju-
dices which we see here and there coming to the surface
both north and south ; that the petty hatreds, which appear
to transform some hearts into bitter little pools in which
Justice perishes and divine Reason is quite overthrown, have
no lot or part among the soldiers who made the civil war
the grandest event in modern history one from which the
world will mark time for centuries yet to be. I have yet to
hear an ex-federal who met Lee's veterans at the Wilderness
or Gettysburg, speak disrespectfully of the man who wore
the gray. I have yet to hear an ex-confederate who mixed
it with ""Old Pap"' Thomas at Chickamauga, or Joe Hooker
above the clouds, speak disparagingly of those who wore the
blue. It is those who stayed at home to sing, "We'll hang Jeff
Davis on a sour apple tree," and those who damned "Old
Abe" Lincoln at long range who are doing all the tremendous
fighting now. They didn't get started for the front until
52 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
after Appomattox; but having once sailed in for slaughter
all Hades can't head 'em off! If a merciful Providence
doesn't soon interpose, these mighty post-bellum warriors
will either break a lung or wreck the majestic world. They
are more dreadful in their destructive awfulness than the
farmer's two he-goats, that "fit an' fit" until there was noth-
ing left of 'em but a splotch o' blood and two belligerent
tails. Those who exchanged compliments at Corinth and
Cold Harbor; those who received informal calls from Kil-
patrick's cavalry, who we are told "rode like centaurs and
fought like devils"; those who saw Grant's intrepid West-
erners hurl themselves against Vicksburg's impregnable
heights ; those who were slammed up against Jackson's
"Stone wall" or picnicked with Johnston's cartridge-biters on
grapeshot pie and deviled minnie balls, now treat each other
with the studied respect which the Kansas farmer paid the
cyclone. He felt sure that the Lord was on his side and
that with such help he could more than hold his own; still
he was in no wise anxious to steer his theory against a con-
dition that was making a million revolutions a minute and
hadn't yet brought up its reserves.
In commingling thus in a common brotherhood, those
who followed the fortunes of the confederacy until human
fortitude could no further go, and those who, with the
sword's keen point, held every gleaming star in Old Glory's
field of blue, are furnishing a commendable example to all
our countrymen, to all humanity. It is an echo, nay, an in-
carnation of those words of Grant, the grandest that ever
fell from victorious warrior's lips: "Let us have peace."
The battlefield was sown long since with kindlier seed than
dragon's teeth, has blossomed and borne the fruits of Life
where Death reigned paramount. The flowers of our
Southern fields are no longer dyed with the blood of the
contending brave, but drip with heaven's own dews; the
sullen battery has gone silent on our purple hills and the
crash of steel resounds no more amid our pleasant valleys.
No longer the Northern child waits and watches for the
soldier sire whose lips have felt the touch of God's own
hand ; no longer the Southern woman wanders with burst-
ing heart amid the wreck and wraith of the fierce simoon,
brushing the battle grime from cold brows, seeking among
the mangled dead for all that life held dear. The curse has
passed : "Let us have peace."
The civil war was a national necessity. It was the fiery
furnace in which Almighty God welded the discordant ele-
ments of the New World into one homogeneous people.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 53
For generations the Puritan hated the Cavalier, and the lat-
ter gave back scorn for scorn and added compound interest.
This mutual dislike was a rank, infectious weed that first
took root across the sea and ripened into that revolution
which sent Charles the First to the block and invested Crom-
well with more than regal power. Some of this virus, dis-
tilled in stubborn hearts by religious and political intolerance,
was carried by the Puritan to Plymouth and by the Cavalier
to the banks of the James, and it survived even the fires of
patriotism and the frosts of Valley Forge. Bone of the same
bone and flesh of the same flesh, the religio-political doctrin-
aires had succeeded in casting our forefathers in different
molds each colossal, masculine, heroic, but radically anta-
gonistic. Together they followed Washington through those
eight long years of blood and tears of which human liberty
was born. Together they laid broad and deep the founda-
tion of the Republic and reared thereon that wondrous su-
perstructure which please God shall endure forever, and
together they poured their blood in one unstinted tide upon
its sacred shrine. But the Puritan was still a Cromwell and
the Cavalier a lord. That people so widely divergent in
customs and character could long dwell at peace as one
political household were preposterous. The one had his
"convictions," the other his ''institutions," and neither would
yield the right-o'-way. When such opposing trains of
thought try to pass on a single track there's going to be
trouble sure. The friction, evident even in the early days
of the Republic, grew and gathered fire until the nation
burst forth in that mighty conflagration whose pathetic
ashes repose in a million sepulchers. It had to come. Let
us thank God that the fierce baptism of fire is in the past
and not yet to be ; that the bitter cup can never be pressed
to our children's lips ; that never again while the world
stands and the heavens endure will Americans meet in bat-
tle-shock ; that never again will our rivers run red with the
blood of Columbia's brave, poured forth by her own keen
blade that the last stumbling-block hath been removed from
our path of progress ; that we can now move forward with
a giant's stride to that high destiny for which the chastening
hand of God hath fitted us, the greatest nation and the
grandest people in all the mighty tide of Time !
I rejoice to see the veterans setting the example of recon-
ciliation, for they, more than all others, have most to forgive
and forget. I am doubly gratified that the good work should
have begun in Texas, which has such cause to entertain
the kindliest feelings toward every section of our common
54 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
country, for each and all contributed to her past glory and
present greatness. Among those who cast their lot in Texas
when every step was a challenge to destiny and every hour
was darkened by a danger; who faced unflinchingly the
trials of frontier life and carved out an independent republic
with the sword, were men from every State of the Amer-
ican union. One instance will suffice (though scores might
be cited) to illustrate the cosmopolitan character of that
band of heroes who made the early history of Texas one
of the noblest cantos in the mighty Anglo-Saxon epic. The
New Orleans Grays was the first military company to come
from the States to the aid of the struggling Texans. It
got its first baptism of fire in this city, being a part of that
band of 300 Spartans who followed Old Ben Milam to at-
tack General Cos and his 1,500 veterans. From the roster
of the Grays I learn that the company numbered but sixty-
four men, yet represented sixteen sovereign States and six
foreign countries ! Think of it ! Twenty-five came from
north of the Ohio, twenty-four from the Southern States,
fourteen across far seas to fight for Texas liberty, while one
brave lad came from God knows where, but he got there
iust the same ! General Cos never inquired where Milam's
men were born. He knew where his own were dying, de-
cided that San Antonio had been overrated as a health re-
sort and took to the chaparral.
As most of those daring spirits who flocked hither to fight
for Texas remained, and ever since a steady human tide has
poured in from all parts of the Union, and every country
of Western Europe, we have become a mixed people, scarce
daring to throw a rock in any direction lest we hit our rela-
tives. And the cosmopolitan character of our people the
fact that the Puritan and the Cavalier have blended here as
nowhere else will be found a powerful factor in the attain-
ment of a glorious future.
It is particularly appropriate that the Blue and the Gray
should unite in observing the day that marks the birth of
Washington, that soldier-statesman who marshaled our
fathers under one flag and led them forth to the defense of
human liberty. Whatever may have since mischanced, the
trials and the triumphs of the Revolution are our common
heritage. As the Greeks of old, divided among themselves,
united to face a foreign foe, so did the Americans, North
and South, unite beneath the banner of Washington and hurl
down the gage of battle to Britain's mighty power, and no
historian has yet presumed to say which was the better sol-
dier. Washington belongs to no section. He was truly an
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 55
American, pre-eminently a patriot. The nobility of his
character was his very own ; the dazzling splendor of his un-
dying fame is the brightest jewel in Columbia's crown of
glory, for it was born of the dauntless valor and nurtured
with the priceless blood of a people whom kings could not
conquer nor sophists deceive.
A husband and wife, long estranged, met at the grave of
their firstborn, the child of their youthful strength. Their
strife had been bitter, their love had turned to hate, and
they elected to tread life's path apart. They stood, one on
either side, and looked coldly upon each other. Then they
looked down upon the little mound that held the broken link
with which God had bound their hearts. They knelt and
bowed their faces upon the cold sod that covered the sacred
dust of their dead. They stretched forth their hands across
the little grave, each to the other, and the Angel of God
washed all the bitterness of the years from their hearts with
a rain of penitential tears, and sent them down life's path-
way hand-in-hand, as in the old days when Love was lord
of their two lives and the lost babe was cradled upon its
mother's breast.
This day the North and the South kneel at the grave of
Washington, their best beloved. The estrangement is for-
gotten, the bitterness of the years passes like an uneasy
dream, they reach their hands each to the other across the
tomb, and the benediction of God falls upon a reunited peo-
ple.
A MAID'S MISTAKE.
A DEFENSE OF THE BEAUTEOUS REBECCA.
The King of Corea is anxious to found a harem, and it is
hinted that he has dispatched agents to Houston to see if
Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, of the Post, is really so
pretty as report hath painted her. Waco News.
Ye gods! has American journalism come to this? O
tempora ! O mores ! Oh, mamma ! How can our represen-
tative dailies deliberately mock the misfortunes of a fair
young maid, simply to make a hoodlum holiday? Rebecca
may have erred ; but can she be reformed by drawing a rat-
tail file across her milk-white teeth and coupling her name
in brutal jest with that of a barbaric Mongol, who wears
his eyes cut bias and the narrative of his nether garments
floating wide upon the wandering air? True it is that Re-
56 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
becca's unhappy custom of donning male attire and posing
as a man, at press conventions and on the public streets, is
a great temptation to the sacrilegious paragraphers to let
slip the biting epigram and ribald jest; but they should re-
member that while Rebecca is beautiful as a spotted pup
she was never bright, and pass her little idiosyncrasies over
in silence.
Although Rebecca has gone astray the Iconoclast feels
for her only the profoundest pity, and it will permit no one
to make her a target for the chilly sneer or heap upon her
humbled head great wads of withering scorn. Dear ! dear !
how sad it seems that one so young should feel the heavy
hand of unkind fate Hope's fair morning overcast with the
dun clouds of grim despair ! How pitiful that the bright
dream of a young life should be dispelled, the cloud-capped
temple of Love, in which she expected to wander ever, but
a frightful Fata Morgana the golden Apples of Hesperi-
des for which in holy faith and trust she held out her blue-
veined hand, turned to bitter Dead Sea fruit ! Alas ! The
great heart of the Iconoclast bleeds for Houston's unfortu-
nate belle, once so imperial in her pride, now brought so
low that the very dogs will no longer pause in front of her
office, despite the seductive sign, "Houston Post." How
often, oh how often, as her sad romance came rushing thro'
our mind like an unhappy ghost shrieking and sobbing
thro' Fancy's incorporeal halls, have we put aside our goose-
quill pen and corncob pipe and retired to the dim seclusion
of the woodshed to uncork by stealth the briny tear and tie
loose the melancholy moan. It may be unmanly, but we
always feel better, nobler, purer afterwards better qualified
to instruct the legislature and lead the State out of its finan-
cial follies.
Born beneath the sometimes sunny skies of the great
Goober State, of poor but honest parents, Rebecca grew up,
neglected but beautiful, soulful, an impulsive child of na-
ture. A liberal diet of 'possum, peanuts and corn pone, en-
couraged in its onward course by gourds of buttermilk and
an occasional nip from a moonlight still, rapidly rounded
out the lissom form, and running barefoot over the red hills
in joyous sport with the young coons, gave to her a majestic
carriage which Juno might have envied. Thus the happy
years sped on, as years are wont to do, until the heroine of
this thrilling novelette had reached the age of consent, when
many a young gallant awooirig came and sought to toll the
matchless beauty forth to candy pullings, singin' skules, log
rollings and other hilarious gatherings where the youth
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 57
and beauty of back districts meet, to slobber over each other,
or chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
But Rebecca was ambitious and scorned the. clumsy ad-
vances of the wool-hat boys. She yearned for the glory of
fame and the glamour of wealth. Her soul mounted above
such plebeian occupations as boiling soft-soap, deodorizing
diapers and building crackling bread. Poor child! She
could not understand as yet that the hand that wields the
slipper is the hand that rocks the world; hence she turned
her back upon domestic joys and sought fame and fortune
on the mimic stage played Pauline in Claude Melnotte
with such effect that soon she wore as cestus a string of
bleeding hearts. Pity that she failed to heed the solemn
warning so often given.
"Pauline, thro' pride angels have fallen ere thy time."
Rebecca's triumph on the stage but fired her fond ambi-
tion for loftier flights. She was no longer content to par-
rot the words of others, but would write would dally with
the delusive pen, weapon more powerful than the sword.
The sock and buskin were exchanged for the gilded sanc-
tum, and here the proud beauty and the "Apostle" met.
The queen of the stage, who had resisted the temptations of
the green-room and the seductive rhythm of Cracker poet-
ry, surrendered at discretion, and entered, with all the ardor
of a woman whose charms are waning, upon that intoxicating
yet dangerous dream of bliss that oh lackaday! was too
sweet to last.
While Menelaus was far from home, assiduously hustling
the wherewithal to discharge the family butcher bills, old
Priam's roving son did steal away the matchless Helen
and history repeats itself. While the "Apostle" was absent
trying to enforce the Sunday law in San Antonio and
cording up shekels wherewith to purchase a gilded cage
for his bright Bird o' Paradise Epictetus Paregoric Hill
did abstract from him the fond affections of the fair Re-
becca. Nor was this all. Paregoric proceeded to uncork
himself in the columns of the Houston Post and add insult
to injury. He cried aloud unto the powers that be to tie
the saintly "Apostle" up and spread upon his shrinking
diaphragm nine-and-thirty cruel lashes, for no other crime
than that he had loved, not wisely but too well. As Pare-
goric's fierce appeal was pigeon-holed, perhaps he'll yet con-
clude to tackle the job himself will lift the "Apostle's'"
cuticule and make thereof a silken purse for his old sweet-
heart.
58 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
But we bear Epictetns Paregoric no shade of malice. He
could not help loving Rebecca. If he will but deal honestly
by her all will be forgiven. Whether he has done so thus
far we do not know ; but the poor girl's sad demeanor and
the fact that she has been an inmate of an asylum for the
erring, leads us to fear the worst. Her conscience is evi-
dently hurting her, and day by day that exuberant gladness,
that was once her glory, is departing, leaving her moody and
abstracted as the man who fails to keno. It is possible that
she regrets the days that are no more? That in the stilly
night she dreams of the "Apostle" and smiles again thinks
him still at the old desk, grinding out editorial copy, for
which she cheerfully takes the credit? When she wakes
and finds it all a dream, does she wish that she had awaited
his return, even as Penelope waited for Ulysses, instead of
playing Annie to his Enoch Arden and tying fast to a pink-
haired plug whom God in his inscrutable wisdom has per-
mitted to accumulate a little wealth, while brainier men are
trailing the meek-eyed mule in the lowly cotton-path ? ,
Poor Rebecca! Did mischievous Puck pour into the
soulful eyes of the "Apostle's" fair Titania some curst de-
coction that caused her to dote on a pie-bald ass and mis-
take his ears for angel's wings, his fiery muzzle for a seraph's
radiant nimbus? Or do you possess beneath that fair ex-
terior all the frailties of Hamlet's desiring dam, who is sup-
posed to have left a celestial bed to prey on garbage? We
do not know ; but be it as it may, the "Apostle" will remain
forever your guardian angel will gather you beneath his
wing even as the careful hen gathereth some other bench-
legged gosling, and protect you from the wintry scorn of
those cruel papers, that cannot understand that tho' you have
sinned you have also suffered. Be virtuous, Rebecca, and
you may be happy yet.
OPTIMISM VS. PESSIMISM.
THE PREACHER AND TH "APOSTLE."
I am in receipt of a long letter from a Missouri minister,
in which, to my surprise, he says : "I regret to note that
you are a Pessimist. Permit me to express the hope that
so powerful a journal as the Iconoclast will yet espouse the
sunny philosophy of Optimism, which teaches that all that
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 59
is accords with the Plan of the Creator, and works together
for the ultimate good."
"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform."
I had not hitherto suspected that I was inoculated with
the awful microbes of Pessimism, but if my reverend friend
is a professor in the sunny school of Optimism, I certainly
do not belong to that sect. If "all that is accords with the
Plan of the Creator," did not Christ deserve to be crucified
for bringing about new conditions, and Gallileo to go to
jail for interfering with the stupid ignorance of certain
Catholic cardinals ? Can even the Missouri minister be held
guiltless when he attempts to turn my thinking apparatus
around and make it operate from the other end ? Surely he
should not interfere in even so slight a particular with the
"Plan of the Creator," who may have been moving "in a
mysterious way his wonders to perform" when he gave the
supposedly pessimistic bent to my mind. Nay, if my Chris-
tian friend do but have the rheumatism, should he not refrain
from poulticing himself, lest he throw the celestial machinery
out of gear? If changes wrought in religion, science, gov-
ernment, etc., constitute a portion of the "Plan," we must
concede it to have originally been a very faulty affair quite
upsetting the optimistic theory that "Whatever is is right."
The terms Pessimism and Optimism are handled very
loosely in these latter days. In the modern acceptance of
the terms, the first may be defined as a chronic intellectual
bellyache, the latter as an incurable case of mossbackism.
The thorough Pessimist believes the world is going in hot
haste to the demnition bowwows, and that nothing short of
a miracle can head it off; the full-fledged Optimist carries
concealed about his person an abiding faith that "God or-
dereth all things well" that he not only designed the mighty
universe, but is giving his personal attention to the details
of its management. Really, I do not believe I am Pessimist
to hurt, or that my reverend critic is so dangerously ill of
the Optimistic disease as he imagines. Perhaps he has been
living too high for great intellectual effort. Were he in the
condition of some millions of his fellow creatures, the cuticle
of whose abdomens is flapping against their vertebrae like
a wet dish-rag warping itself around a wire clothes-line, per-
haps there would not be quite so much sunshine in his phil-
osophy. The man with whom the world goes well is apt to
prattle of the "ultimate good" when considering the woes
of other people.
The basis of Optimism is foreordination, the foolish faith
60 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
that before God created the majestic universe and sent the
planets whirling about the blazing sun ; that before the first
star gleamed in the black, over-hanging firmament or a
single mountain peak rose from the watery waste, he calmly
sat him down and mapped out every act of moral man
decreed every war and pestilence, the rise and fall of every
nation, and fixed the date of every birth and death. That
may be excellent "orthodoxy," but it is not good sense. I
reject the theory that all the happenings here below "accord
with the Plan of the Creator work together for the ulti-
mate good." Hence, I am not an Optimist. I dare not
accuse my Creator of being responsible for all the sin and
sorrow, suffering and shame that since the dawn of history
has bedewed the world with blood and tears.
I do not believe the "Plan of the Creator" contemplated
that millions of people should perish miserably by war, and
famine and pestilence. I do not believe the black buck who
ravishes and murders a white babe is one of the great moral
agents of the Almighty, nor that the infamous act has any
possible tendency to promote "the ultimate good/' And
did I so believe, I would keep my shotgun loaded just the
same. I do not believe that the blessed God intended there
should ever be a liar or a thief, a prostitute or a murderer
in this beautiful world. I do not believe that the Creator
entered into a compact with the devil or a covenant with
the cholera. And if not, then all that is does not "accord
with the Plan of the Creator." If that be Pessimism, make
the most of it.
That there is a Divine Plan I do not doubt ; but I believe
it to be broader, deeper, more worthy of the great Demiur-
gus than that which pictures him telling a priest how to carve
his pantaloons or sacrifice a pair of pigeons, than standing
idly by with his hands under his coat-tails, while some
drunken duffer beats the head off his better half with a boot-
jack, or a bronze brute rips the scalp from a smiling babe.
If that's the kind of a hair-pin who occupies the throne of
heaven, I don't blame Lucifer for raising a revolution. I
would have taken a fall out of him myself, even had I known
that my viscera would be strewn across the face of the
shrinking universe.
God gave us life, and this grand old globe for habitat.
He stored it with everything necessary to the health and hap-
piness of the human race poured his treasures forth with
a hand so bounteous that tho' its population were doubled,
trebled, it might go on forever and no mortal son of Adam
need suffer for life's necessaries. The gaunt spectres of
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 61
Want and Pestilence are not of his creation ; they were born
of Greed and Ignorance. God sent no devil with hoofs and
horns to torment or tempt us ; he gave to us passions neces-
sary to the perpetuation and progress of the race and divine
Reason wherewith to rule them then left us to work out
our own salvation, aided by those silent forces that are press-
ing all animate and inanimate life onward to perfection.
Reason needs no celestial guide, no heavenly monitor, for it
is the grandest attribute of God himself. Where Reason sits
enthroned God reigns !
For more than half a million years man has been toiling
upwards, impelled by that mysterious law that causes the
pine to spring towards the sun. Sometimes the advance is
by leaps and bounds, as when some giant intellect some Son
of God, especially gifted with the attributes of his Sire
brushes aside the obstructions at which lesser men toil in
vain ; sometimes the Car of Progress stands still for a thou-
sand years, else rolls slowly back toward brutishness, there
being none of sufficient strength to advance the standards
further up the rugged mountain-side nearer the Celestial
City. Thus, ever in ebb and flow, gaining and losing, only
to regain ; nations rising and falling but to serve as stepping-
stones whereon mount a nobler race, a grander people, the
irrepressible conflict of the God-like with the Beast-like in
man goes bravely on.
In half a million years we have come far won many
a fair field from the dominion of Darkness. We no longer
dwell in caves and hollow trees, fighting naked with the
wild beasts of the forest for our prey. We have erected
temples to that God who dwells, not only in the heavens,
but here on earth in the brain and heart of the human
race. We have made matter so far subject unto mind that
Nature's mighty forces have become our obedient bond-
slaves. We have built societies, nations, weighed the world
and measured the stars. We have acquired not only
knowledge and power, but love and modesty. The procre-
ative passion no longer crawls, a hideous thing, but soars
aloft, a winged Psyche. Thus, one by one, through the
long ages, have we built up within ourselves the attributes
of the Most High, toward whom our feet are tending. Life
is no longer mere animalism, content to gorge itself with
roots and raw meat and sit in the sun. The ear craves
melody, the eye beauty, the brain dominion, while the soul
mounts to the very stars !
Thus far have we come out of the Valley of Darkness,
led on, not 'by those who believe that "all that is accords
62 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
with the Plan of the Creator," but by those whose battle-
cry has ever been,
"Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin forever
Down the ringing grooves of change."
Every reformation yet wrought in religion, science or
politics, was the work of men who declined to accept the
doctrines, enunciated by the Missouri divine. If I am a
Pessimist I am in such excellent company as Confucius and
Christ, General Washington and Mr. Gladstone, Prof.
Morse and Dr. Pasteur, while my critic is training with
the gang that poisoned Socrates, bribed Iscariot and cruci-
fied the Savior. And the world persists in judging a man
by the company he keeps !
BALAAM'S ASS.
AND OTHER BURROS.
"Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law;
Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid,
And gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made.
She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,
Saw gods descend and fiends infernal rise;
Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
Fear made her devils and weak hope her gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge and lust;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide;
And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride."
Pope.
Kind reader, have a care ! For aught I know this article
may be the rankest blasphemy, and reading it may wreck
your immortal soul granting of course, that you are in
possession of such perishable property. I submitted it
to several of my brother ministers and sought their opinion
as to the propriety of publishing it ; but while some assured
me that it was calculated to purify the moral atmosphere
somewhat and foster respect for true religion, others were
equally certain that Satan had inspired it that it was, in
fact, a choice bit of immigration literature for the lower re-
gions. Finding even the elders unable to decide what
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 63
should be done with Balaam's Ass whether it should be
turned loose upon the land like another evangelist, or con-
signed to the flames as a hopeless heretic I determined
to give it the benefit of the doubt. The animal may break
into the preserves of some unctuous hypocrites and trample
a few choice flowers of sacerdotal folly ; but I opine that no
honest man of average intellect will find herein occasion
for complaint. I would not wantonly wound the sensibili-
ties of those earnest but ignorant souls who believe the very
chapter headings of the Bible to have been inspired; who
interpret literally every foolish fable preserved therein
''like flies in amber"; but the Car of Progress cannot roll
forward without crushing an occasional pismire. We can-
not bid it stand forever in the same old rut, like an aban-
doned road-cart or "Jeffersonian Democrat," because
across its shining pathway lie the honest prejudices of zeal-
ous stupidity.
The Bible is a great gold-mine, in which inexhaustible
store of yellow metal is mixed with much worthless rubbish
that must be purged away by honest criticism before the
book becomes really profitable even fit for general circu-
lation. I would rather place in the hands of an innocent
girl a copy of the Police Gazette or Sunday Sun than an un-
expurgated Bible. It is a book I value much, yet keep un-
der lock and key with Don Juan and the Decameron. It
contains both the grandest morality and most degrading
obscenity ever conceived in the brain of mortal man. There
are passages whose beauty and power might cause the heart
of an angel to leap in ecstacy, others that would call a
blush of shame to the brassy front of the foulest fiend that
ever howled and shrieked thro' the sulphurous valleys of
hell.
The man who rejects the Bible altogether because it is
honey-combed with barbarous traditions, rank with revolt-
ing stories and darkened by the shadow of a savage super-
stition, is cousin-german to him that casts aside a priceless
pearl because it is coated with ocean slime. He that ac-
cepts it in its entirety gulps it down like an anaconda
absorbing an unwashed goat; who makes no attempt to
separate the essential from the accidental the utterance
of inspiration from the garrulity of hopeless nescience;
who forgets that it is half an epic poem filled with the
gorgeous imagery of the Orient, may, like the ass which
Balaam rode, open its mouth and speak ; but he never saw
the Angel of the Lord; he utters the words of emptiness
and ignorance.
64 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Had the Bible been taught intelligently and truthfully
the entire world would have accepted it centuries ago. Its
very worst enemies are those who insist upon its inerrancy
who strive by some esoteric alchemy of logic to transmute
its every fragment of base metal into bars of yellow gold,
the folly of the creature into the wisdom of the Creator.
During the Dark Ages hide-bound orthodoxy prevailed and
practically every man was a church communicant ; it is par-
amount to-day only in those countries that have failed to
keep pace with the Car of Progress. It is a sad com-
mentary upon all religious faiths that they flourish best
where ignorance prevails that Atheism is rapidly becom-
ing the recognized correlative of education. By presum-
ing to know too much of God's great plan ; by decrying in-
telligent criticism and attempting to seal the lips of living
students with the dicta of dead scholastics; by standing
ever ready to brand as blasphemers those who presume to
question or dare to differ, the dogmatists are driving
millions of God-fearing men into passive indifference or
overt opposition.
Ignorance is not a crime per se; but it is the mother of
Superstition and Intolerance, those twin demons that have
time and again deluged the world with blood and tears;
that for forty centuries have stood like ravenous wolves in
the path of human progress; that with their empoisoned
fangs have torn a thousand times the snowy breast of Lib-
erty that have done more to inspire Doubt and foster In-
fidelity than all the French philosophes that ever wielded
pen. The logical, well-informed man who to-day becomes
a church communicant does not so because of the doctrine
promulgated by the average pulpiteer, but despite of it.
Trie long night of intellectual slavery has not altogether
passed, but on the higher hills already flame the harbingers
of Reason's glorious morn. Gone is the Inquisition with
its sacred infamies the Christian rack is broken and the
thumb-screw rusted in twain. The persuasive wheel no
longer whisks the non-conformist into full communion, the
Iron Virgin has ceased to press the writhing heretic to her
orthodox heart. The faggot has fallen from the hand of
the saintly fanatic and the branding iron from the loving
grasp of the benevolent bigot, while Superstition, that once
did rule the world with autocratic sway, can only shriek her
impotent curses forth and flourish her foolish boycott at
Reason's growing flame.
If I can but enable sectarians to understand that all so-
called sacred books are essentially the same that Brahma
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 65
and Baal, Jupiter and Jehovah are really identical ; if I can
but make them cognizant of the crime they commit in de-
crying honest criticism ; if I can but convince them that the
man who is
"Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks thro' nature up to nature's God,"
is not necessarily an active emissary of evil whom it is their
duty to denounce ; if I can but create a suspicion in the
minds of the clergy that perhaps they know no more of the
Omnipotent than do other men are possibly mistaking bile
for benevolence, gall for godliness and chronic laziness for
"a call to preach" I w r ill feel that these few hours ex-
pended grooming Balaam's burro have not been cast away.
Our information concerning the Rev. Mr. Balaam and
his burro is very limited. Although the latter was endowed
with the gift of gab it appears to have spoken but once and
then at the especial bidding of an angel, which fact leads us
to suspect that the voluble jackasses now extant have de-
teriorated at both ends since the days of their distinguished
ancestor have parted with all their brain as well as with
half their legs. Bro. Balaam does not appear to have
"syndicated" his sermons or made any special bid for noto-
riety. If he ever hired half -starved courtesans a la Park-
hurst to dance the can-can, then hastened into court to file
complaint against the very bawds he had filled with booze
and dandled naked on his knee ; if he called the ladies of
his congregation "old sows" after the manner of Sam Jones ;
if he got himself tried on a charge of heresy or became en-
tangled with some half-wit sister whose religious fervor
led her to mistake Levite for the Lord, no record of the
shameful circumstance has been preserved. He appears
to have attended pretty strictly to the prophet business, and
we may presume, from such stray bits of his biography as
have come down to us, that he prospered.
The Israelites, who had gotten out of Egypt between two
days with considerable of the portable property of other
people concealed about their persons, had gone into the
Bill Dalton business under the direct guidance as they
claimed of their Deity, and were for some time eminently
successful. Wholesale murder and robbery became their
only industry, arson and oppression their recognized amuse-
ment. They had swiped up several cities "leaving not
a soul alive" and were now grinding the snickersnee for
66 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Moab and Midian, The people of the petty nations of
Palestine whom God's anointed received an imperative
command to "utterly destroy" had builded them happy
homes and accumulated considerable property by patient
industry. They appear to have been peaceably disposed
and devout worshippers of those deities from whom the
better attributes of Jehovah were subsequently borrowed.
The Israelites had not struck a lick of honest labor for
forty years. They had drifted about like Coxey's "Com-
monwealers" and developed into the most fiendish mob of
God-fearing guerrillas and marauding cut-throats of which
history makes mention. Compared Avith Joshua's murder-
ous Jews, the Huns who followed Atilla were avatars of
mercy and the Sioux of Sitting Bull were Good Samaritans.
A careful comparison of the crimes committed by the
Kurds in Armenia with those perpetrated by "God's chosen
people" in Palestine will prove that the followers of Allah
are but amateurs in the art of courage. Doubtless any
other people, brutalized by centuries of bondage, then
turned loose without king or country, with only ignorant
prophets for guides and avaricious priests for law-givers,
would have become equally cruel would have adopted a
divinity devoid of mercy and a stranger to justice. The
god of a people is, and must of necessity ever be a reflec-
tion of themselves, an idealization of their own virtues and
vices a magic mirror in which, Narcissus-like, man wor-
ships his own image
The Jews are one of the grandest people that ever dwelt
upon the earth. A more intellectual and progressive race
is unknown to human history ; but, like all others, it had its
age of savagery and its epoch of barbarism before it reached
the golden era of civilization. I am not criticising the
Jews for their treatment of the Canaanites during that cen-
tury when crass ignorance made them credulous and bond-
age rendered them brutal ; but to assume that the excesses
of semi-savages were heaven-inspired were a damning libel
of the Deity. I rather enjoy being lied about by malicious
lollipops; but did I sit secure in some celestial citadel, hold-
ing the thunderbolts of heaven within my hand, it were
hardly safe to assert that I instigated such unparalleled
atrocities as were perpetrated by the emancipated Israelites
in Palestine. I would certainly be tempted to take a pot-
shot at an occasional preacher who persisted in defaming
me with his foolish dogmatism.
Balak, the king of Moab and Midian, saw that he was
not strong enough to withstand the sacred marauders, and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 67
well knew that surrender meant a wholesale massacre
that those who had dared to defend their homes would be
placed under harrows of iron that the silvery head of the
aged grandsire would sink beneath a sword wielded in the
name of God ; that unborn babes would be ripped from the
wombs of Moabite women and the maidens ot Midian
coerced into concubinage by their heaven-led captors In
this dire extremity Balak bethought him of Bro. Balaam,
who was not "a prophet of God," as popularly supposed,
but a priest of Baal, the deity devoutly worshipped in Moab
and Midian. It were ridiculous to suppose that the king,
princes and elders of Moab and Midian would apj.-eal for
aid to the God of their enemies instead of to their own
divinity, for in those days the principal business of a deity
was to wage war in behalf of his worshippers. Balaam
was a Midianite, and Balak sent messengers to him "with
the reward of divination in their hand," and begged '.hat
he would kindly ojvne over and knock the Israelites off the
Christmas tree with one of his smooth-bore, muzzle loading
maledictions ; "for," said he, with a pious fervor that proves
he was addressing a priest of his own faith, "I wot that he
whom thou blesseth is blessed, and whom thou curseth is
cursed." He evidently believed that Balaam carried the
celestial thunderbolts concealed about his person that \\ hen
he turned them loose those on wrom they alighted frizzled
up like a fat angle-worm on a sea-coal fire. The good man
said he would see what could be done to help Balak out of
the hole.
And God came unto Balaam and said, What men are these with
thee?"
As Balaam was evidently expecting the visit we may con-
clude that the caller was Baal, as Jehovah was not at that
time on visiting terms with the Gentile priests was busily
engaged pulling down their altars and putting them to the
sword. Balaam gratified the very natural curiosity of his
celestial visitor, and the latter, after learning all the partic-
ulars, cautioned his diviner or priest not to make any bad
breaks. Balaam sent the ambassadors back with word that
Baal was a trifle shy of curses at that particular time.
Balak evidently understood the situation, for he sent other
agents with larger offerings. Balaam still insisted that he
had received no permission to wipe up the Plain of Moab
with the ex-brick builders, but saddled his ass and went
along, promising to do the best he could for his bleeding
country. He evidently desired to size up the situation and
68 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
be quite sure that none of his curses would come home to
roost. Doubtless he also desired to see if Balak was bid-
ding all he could afford for celestial aid, for we have no
reason to believe that Bro. Balaam was in the prophet busi-
ness for his health or peddling curses for recreation. While
en route his companions probably informed him that the
Jews were as frequent as jugs in a Prohibition precinct
that they had slaughtered the people of Ai, driven Og into
the earth, overcome Ammon and were making the rest of
the Canaanitish nations hard to catch, for the good man
was seized with a sudden desire to take the back track:
His burro balked and Balaam told his fellow travelers
that an angel was interfering with his transportation fa-
cilities. Perhaps the princes of Moab made ribald remarks
anent the celestial obstruction even hinted that Balaam
had best get a Maud S. move on him or he might contract
,a vigorous case of unavailing regret. Then the burro
began to blab. Like many of the old pagan priests, Balaam
was doubtless an adept in the art of ventriloquism. That
may have convinced the ambassadors and bulled the price
of curses; for then, as now, it was no uncommon thing
for the utterance of an ass to be mistaken for that of an
oracle. Or some Doubting Thomas may have twisted the
burro's tail. For some reason not set forth by the sacred
chronicler, the angel withdrew his objections and the
prophet proceeded on his way, but still protesting that no
permit had been accorded him to put a kibosh on Joshua's
free-booters.
Balaam was entirely too smart to pray for rain when the
wind was in the wrong quarter altogether too smooth to
launch his anathemas at an army he knew could take Moab
by the back-hair and rub her nose in the sawdust. He
counted the campfircs of Israel and concluded that Balak's
promises of high honors were worth no more than a camp-
meeting certificates of conversion that he would soon be
hoofing it over the hills with his coat-tails full of arrows ;
so, after working his patrons for all the spare cash in sight,
he made a sneak, leaving his sovereign to wage war with-
out the aid of supernatural weapons. Like many of his
sacerdotal successors, Balaam took precious good care to
get on the winning side.
* * *
Ever since the days of Bro. Balaam there has been con-
siderable trading of curses for cold cash. The industry has
been patiently built up from humble beginnings to a mag-
nificent business. From an itinerant curse peddler, trotting
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 69
about on a spavined burro and resorting to the methods of
the mountebank to create a market for his merchandise, it
lias become a vast commercial concern with costly estab-
lishments in every country. The first curses, as might
have been expected, were very crude affairs little more
than hoodoos, intended to promote the material welfare of
the purchaser at the expense of other people. A king of
ye olden times bought a curse and turned it loose upon his
enemies "played the god an engine on his foe" much as
a modern prince might a gatling-gun ; but it seems to have
slowly dawned upon the royal ignorami that the Lord is
usually on the side of the heaviest battalions a fact which
Napoleon emphasized. The practice of fencing in a nation
with a few wild-eyed prophets, or sending a single soldier
forth with a hair-trigger 'hoodoo and the jawbone of a
defunct jackass to drive great armies into the earth, gradu-
ally fell into disuse curses and blessings became a drug in
the market.
About this time the Jewish priesthood began to take
kindly to the doctrine of future rewards and punishments.
This theological thesis promulgated before the age of
Abraham had influenced to some extent the religious
thought of the entire eastern hemisphere. That the Jews
were among the last to admit the immortality of the soul
was doubtless due to the fact that, because of their long en-
slavement, they did not emerge from semi-savagery so soon
as did the other divisions of the great Semitic family. Fur-
thermore, for a long period after their emancipation the
Jew\s seem to have received the rewards of their peculiar
virtues here on earth and were little inclined to defer their
happiness to the hereafter were amply able to punish their
enemies and had no occasion to delegate that pleasant duty
to a Superior Power. Finally, however, the fortunes of
war began to go against them. They were no longer able
to make on earth a heaven for themselves and a hell for
other people. Instead of despoiling others they discov-
ered an occasional hiatus in their own smoke-house. In-
stead of burning the cities of their inoffensive neighbors
their own began to blaze. The priests and prophets in-
sisted that these evils befell them because they had ne-
glected their Deity ; but the more devout they became
the more fat kids, fine meal and first fruits they referred
to the Levite larder as "offerings to the Lord" the more
deplorable became their condition. The people began to
drift to the more reasonable religion of their neighbors and
even the wisest of their kings could not be held to the
70 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
faith of their fathers. The Jewish priesthood gradually
'adopted the bid Parsi doctrine <of heaven and hell a
doctrine unrecognized by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and
having no place in the theology of Moses.
The Jews eventually discovered that robbery was wrong
and assassination a crime that the practice of ripping open
pregnant women and putting prisoners of war under har-
rows of iron was displeasing to the Lord. It was a forcible
illustration of the ancient axiom that it makes a great dif-
ference whose ox is gored. Instead of founding a mighty
nation as predicted by their prophets, the Jews were con-
quered, scattered, enslaved.
Palestine was filled with foreigners ; had become a relig-
ious Babel, a theological chaos. The time was ripe for a
religious revolution such as had been inaugurated in India
six centuries before. It was accomplished and, as might
have been expected, the result was a curious composition ;
a religious olla-podrida in which the profound wisdom of
Zoroaster and the childish superstition of western barbar-
ians, grand morality and monumental absurdity elbow each
other like spectres in a delirium in which is heard both
"the still small voice" of Omnipotent God and the mega-
lophanous bray of Balaam's Ass.
Jehovah, the national God of the Jews, supplanted Jove
and Baal, Ashtaroth and Oromasdes, and with their thrones
took many of their attributes. The doctrine of future re-
wards and punishments became the corner-stone of the new
theology, while further concessions were made to ethnic
creeds in various stages of decay by the adoption of the
Trinity, Incarnation and Resurrection. The Jewish
prophets were accepted by the composite cult which Christ
may have originated, but certainly did not develop but
their every utterance was given a new interpretation of
which the Hebrew hierarchy had never dreamed. The
great kingdom which they had predicted was to be spiritual
instead of temporal; the Jerusalem predestined to become
the capitol of a powerful prince, to whom all nations
should acknowledge allegiance and pay tribute was not
the leprosy-eaten old town among the Judean hills, but a
city not made with hands, existing eternal in the heavens.
Christianity does not contain a single original idea. It
borrowed liberally on every hand, but chiefly of Parseeism
in which faith, as taught by Zoroaster Aristotle says 6000
years before Plato may be found its most important fea-
tures. It owes absolutely nothing to Judaism but the name
of its God and an idle string of misinterpreted prophecies
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 71
is, from first to last, essentially a "Gentile" faith. There
never was a religion instituted upon the earth that the
priesthood failed to transform into arrant folly, to debase
until it finally fell into disrepute. Such was the fate of
that established by Zoroaster, and upon the ruins of the
grandest theology this world has known, Siddartha
Guatama erected the Buddhist credo, which is really a
revolt to first principles a search for happiness here on
earth, the attainment of Nirvana. So, too, the priesthood
has corrupted the teachings of Christ until the logical mind
revolts from the jumble of self-evident absurdities, rejects
Revelations as a nursery tale and seeks by the dim light
of science to find the cause of all Existence.
The new cult was not regarded kindly by the old priest-
hoods, and the methods adopted for its suppression were
almost as rigorous as those it in turn employed some centu-
ries later for the discouragement of other "blasphemers"
,and "heretics" ; hence it is not surprising that the old
Hebrew doctrine that whom the Lord loves he makes
mighty, gives wealth in plenty and concubines galore, power
over his enemies and privilege to despoil his neighbors,
should have been early transformed into "Whom the Lord
loveth he chasteneth." The doctrine of temporal rewards
and punishments revived somewhat as Christianity became
powerful, but has remained a subordinate feature. As not
a sparrow falls to the earth without a special permit from
the Almighty, it follows, as a natural sequence, that every
brutal crime is gracefully permitted if not ordained by
that dear Lord whose protection we daily pray, and whose
apostles we support. If we inquire why this is so we are
cautioned not to commit blasphemy some worthy brother
of Balaam's Ass bids us beware the Angel of the Lord.
The claim of the ancient priesthoods to support was based
on the presumption that they promoted the national welfare
of the. people by keeping the national deity in good humor.
Whenever he contracted a case of the sulks the smell of
fresh blood would usually bring him around all right.
Sometimes the butchery of a few innocent birds and beasts
would do the business ; but it not infrequently became neces-
sary to commit a number of homicides to get him actually
gay. When even the sweet incense of blazing cities and
roasting babes failed to restore his hilarity the prophet's
sounded the alarm much as the weather bureau gives
warning of approaching cyclones and other atmospheric
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
disturbances. In case the dire predictions failed to mater-
ialize the Lord had listened to their protestations that he
was not doing the proper thing and "repented him" the
Immutable had changed his mind ! The prophets were sup-
posed to make a man prosperous as a Tammany politician
by blessing, or poor as a Houston Post editorial by laying
a curse upon him. As civilization advanced the people
able to pay "the rewards of divination" became too intelli-
gent to be taken in by the transparent tricks of Bro. Balaam,
hence the new priesthood devoted itself chiefly to the spirit-
ual welfare of the people made a specialty of the here-
after business. For obvious reasons, it is the safer enter-
prise.
Man was now told to believe thus-and-so and he would
be blessed eternally, but if he believed not he would be
cursed everlastingly. The rewards promised by the early
priesthoods had, by centuries of evolution, developed from
good crops and fat cattle, fruitful vines and successful vil-
lainy, into mansions in heaven ; the punishments from a
protracted drought or descent of the Assyrians, a bad case
of buck ague or boils into a hell of fire where the souls of
aged unbelievers and unbaptized babes forever burn. This
was the old argumentum ad hominem in a new Mother
Hubbard ; but the masses were still ignorant, and those who
could not be bribed with the fruits of heaven were bluffed
with the fires of hell. The old priesthoods were crushed
and kings became the sworn defenders of the new faith,
even propagated it with the sword dispensed saving grace
with gallows' ropes and with the bludgeon drove heaven
inspired precepts into the heads of unbelievers. Wisdom
could not withstand such logic rthe philosopher yielded to
the unanswerable argument of the Inquisition. As no one
could disprove the comforting doctrine of eternal damna-
tion, and there is a strong vein of superstition in even the
best of men, the ignorant populace cowered in terror most
pitiful at the feet of a presumptuous priesthood. And to
this good day men who have managed in some mysterious
manner to dodge the mad-house, believe that priests or
preachers are the special deputies of the Deity, that a criti-
cism of the clergy is an insult to the Almighty that if you
dare dissent from the foolish opinions of some wooden-
headed dominus anent the Divine Plan you might as well
"curse God and die."
Once this old ethnic cult in a new dress became well es-
tablished and the source of considerable revenue to the
latter day Levites its most glaring absurdities were able to
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 73
withstand for a time even the invention of the printing
press and the general dissemination of knowledge ; for "that
monster custom, of habits devil," is very potent in shaping
the minds of men and retarding human progress. Thus we
find, in this so-called enlightened age, millions of men de-
fending the rights of certain scorbutic families of indif-
ferent minds and muddy morals, to sway the sovereign's
sceptre. Mental collosi men who tower up like Titians
in the world of intellect are proud to acknowledge them-
selves the "dutiful subjects" of some brainless fop or beery
old female who chanced to be born in a royal bed while
their betters were ushered in as the brats of beggars. So,
too, we find men possessing clear judicial minds defending
with all the fervor of Fifteenth century fanatics, not the
Christian faith per se, but some special interpretation there-
of ; not the philosophy of religion, but the inconsequential
theorems of some sacerdotal "reformer" who has added
to the world's discord by founding a new "faith." These
various religious divisions have become little more than
rival commercial establishments, each peddling its own pe-
culiar brand of saving grace warranted the only genuine
and dealing damnation round on all dissenters.
Dogmatism begat Doubt, and men began to study the
Bible, not to search out its wisdom and its truth, but its
folly and its falsehood. They represent the recoil from one
extreme to the other from blind belief to unreasoning
skepticism, from intellectual slavery to liberty degenerated
into license. Instead of judging the Bible by God they
judge God by the Bible, and finding by this ridiculous for-
mula that he is little better than a brutal maniac, they re-
ject him altogether and try to account for the creature with-
out the Creator, to explain an effect without an efficient
cause. If we could but muzzle the dogmatists Infidelity
would quickly die.
* * *
The essentials of the Christian religion do not depend
uffbn the inerrancy of the Scriptures. They do not depend
upon direct Revelation or the Miracle, the Incarnation or
the Resurrection of Jesus from the tomb of Joseph of Ari-
mathea. In fact, these very "Evidences" adduced in be-
half of the "True Faith," produce all the Doubt with which
it is called to contend. Let us grant that Moses was not
called to Sinai's flaming crest to receive laws promulgated
centuries before Joseph was carried a captive into Egypt;
that the Bible is but the history of a barbarous people a
compendium of their poetry, religion and philosophy; that
74 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the Incarnation and Resurrection are but myths borrowed
from decaying ethnic cults, and what have we lost ? Simply
indefensible non-essentials the tawdry garment with which
Ignorance has bedecked her poor idea of the Infinite. What
matters it whether we call our Creator Jehovah or Jupiter,
Brahma of Buddha? Who knoweth the name by which
the Seraphim address him? Why should we care whether
Christ came into the world with or without the intervention
of an earthly father ? Are we not all sons of the Most High
God "bright sparkles of the Infinite?" Suppose that the
story of the Incarnation (older than Jerusalem itself) be
literally true that the Almighty was the immediate father
of Mary's child: Is not the birth of each and all of us as
much a mystery, as great a "miracle," as tho' we sprang
full-grown from the brow of Olympian love? Is it neces-
sary that the Creator should violate his own laws to convince
us that he does exist? Is it more wonderful that the sun
should stand still upon Gibeon and the moon in the Valley of
Ajalon than that the great world should spin forever, bring-
ing the night and the morning, the seed-time and the har-
vest? Is not a "miracle" an interruption of nature's har-
mony rather calculated to make a man of logical mind sus-
pect that he is the sport of chance than believe himself the
especial care of an Omniscient Power that "Ordereth all
things well?" When this great globe hangs motionless in
space and the rotting dead arise in their cerements ; when
great multitudes are fed with a few small fishes and virgins
are found with child, then, and not till then, will I relinquish
faith in an intelligent Architect and acknowledge lawless
Force the only Deity.
Man is but a microbe lost in immensity. He peers about
him and, by the uncertain light of his small intelligence,
reads ( here a word, there a line in t^he great Bookj of
Nature, and, putting together these scattered fragments,
makes a "Faith" which he defends with fanatical fervor.
Dare to call in question its most inconsequential thesis
and you are branded as an heretic; deny it in to to and you
are denounced as an enemy of the Almighty ! The curses
of Brother Balaam no longer kill the body, but they are
expected to play sad havoc with the soul ! When the
priest of Baal was en route to Moab's capitol for cursing
purposes an angel tried to withhold him, and even his
burro rebuked him ; but neither angels nor asses are exempt
from the law of evolution. Now when a priest or preacher
lets slip a curse at those who presume to question the super-
nal wisdom of his creed, the angels are supposed to flap their
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 75
wings until heaven is filled with flying feathers, while
every blatant jackass who takes his spiritual fodder at
that particular rick unbraids his ears and brays approv-
ingly.
A TOUCH OF HIGH LIFE.
THE PRESS AND THE PARVENUES.
There was a time when the principal business of the
American press was the publication of important news
and the expression of opinion anent matters of moment.
In those days it posed as a "public educator," and the
self-bestowed title was not altogether inappropriate; but
it has, for the most part, dropped its high pretensions and
is now notoriously "out for the stuff." The "great dailies"
that once went in for glory and aspired to decency, that
"molded public opinion" and "saved the country" semi-
occasionally, are not averse to accepting a fat fee for
championing some particular interest, regardless of the
general welfare. When it was proven that the Galveston-
Dallas News had sold its alleged editorial influence, it
had the audacity to defend the practice as legitimate jour-
nalism ! A majority of the other morning papers of Texas
are not of sufficient importance to justify the public in
keeping tab on them. If they should succeed in selling
their souls for a copper cent the public would only pity
the purchaser. When the great dailies are not "pulling
the leg" of some corporation with a legislative axe to
grind, or inflating with a pneumogastric bellows some
political boomlet born of a bank account, they are court-
ing the parvenues who are ever ready to pay for pub-
licity puffing society belles for a consideration, obse-
quiously bowing to cymling-headed dudes with more dol-
lars than sense and gathering in the golden shekels from
every available source.
The marriage of Miss Anna Gould a very common-
place young person to a French butterfly whom we have
no evidence ever did aught to entitle him to existence
upon the earth, afforded the "independent" American
press an opportunity to slop over in great shape, and it
slopped. Tons of toads were eaten with evident relish,
fulsome flattery fairly overran the column rules, and the
disgusting tide of eulogistic dish water is now but slowly
ebbing.
76 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Some of the bridegroom's ancestors had once borne
petty titles out of which the tiers etat unceremoniously
kicked the sawdust; but the nice little thing, who is of
less importance to the world at large than a blind wiggle-
tail, still clings to his title like a spendthrift to a canceled
pawn ticket calls himself the "Count de Castellane"
and spends his time painting, primping and puttering
about like a girl inoculated with the matrimonial itch.
And the great American dailies, which are supposed to be
the very avatars of rugged republicanism, "dearly love a
lord" even tho' his title be worth no more than a draft
on a broken bank or a cook book to a starving hobo. Miss
Gould was the rather stupid daughter of an American
sovereign who began life as a map-maker and mouse-trap
architect, and who succeeded, by very questionable meth-
ods, in amassing an enormous fortune. "Nobility and
wealth !" That were indeed a combination sufficient to
cause the average American editor to bow his face to the
earth and lick boots until he resembled a tame duck with
its mouth full of dried mud ! The great dailies informed
us when the little "Count" went to bed and when he got
up. They told us what he ate for breakfast and how he
spent each day, but even "journalistic enterprise" could
not catch him in the water closet. The press watched the
little parvenue who had purchased him as narrowly as a
hungry buzzard could a spoiled beefsteak. "It was a love
match, pure and simple," they informed the world then
wondered in the next paragraph if she would utilize the
trousseau purchased less than a year ago, when she was
engaged to wed some other gilly. But she didn't. She
could afford a new one the mouse-trap of her sire had
been set for suckers as well as for ravenous rodentia. The
trousseau purchased when she made that other "love
match, pure and simple," was not nearly good enough in
which to be tied fast to a titled dude like a living' man
to a dead mule. The cable was kept hot ordering new
"dreams of loveliness" from the he-milliners and mus-
tachioed mantua-makers of "Paree," and the great dailies
had to tell us all about it just how each gown was cut
and what it cost, how many suits of silk lingerie the bride-
elect had ordered and their colors. Whether the "Count"
ordered any extra underwear for the occasion the news-
papers neglected to state, which omission leads us to sus-
pect that he was not addicted to the luxury of lingerie and
the expense of pajamas before he succeeded in trading his
Confederate bond title and mortgaged chateau for fifteen
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 77
millions of Jay Gould's ill-got gold. The Associated Press
the champion toad-eater of the universe informed us,
however, that before ze "Count" could obtain a special
dispensation from his theological boss to bag the eager
heiress she had to sign an agreement not to interfere with
the religious faith of Frenchy and consent that their kids
be brought up Roman Catholics. If His Holiness had
but seen his niblets he would probably have considered
the latter stipulation entirely unnecessary a work of
supererogation, so to speak. In about two years we may
expect to see the "Countess" come sneaking back to her
own countree in company with a divorce case and a tale
o' woe that would wring the briny from a bust of Sitting
Bull. It is the usual way. She will have the experience,
the "Count" will have the cash and the newspapers will
have another scandal with whiskers on it that trail the
shrinking earth.
* * *
In the hurly-burly of getting Miss Gould married, the
newspapers rather neglected the divorce case of Mr. and
Mrs. Willie K. Vanderbilt only giving us a column or so
each day as condiment. But they had been hammering at
it for lo ! these many moons had already told us, several
times, all they knew about it and pretty much everything
that a morbid imagination could guess at. Willie and his
wife separated some time ago for reasons which they suc-
ceeded in keeping within the sacred Vanderbiltian circle.
It was known that Willie resembled Solomon in that he
"loved many strange women," and that was usually sup-
posed to constitute the casus belli; but Mrs. Willie did not
trot to any alarming extent in the same class with Caesar's
wife. That they quarreled and fought like some drunken
"canary," and his drab was understood ; but, by a liberal
use of money they kept the divorce proceedings out of the
papers, so it is not generally known whether the separa-
tion was caused by "incompatibility of temper" or mutual
fornication. The pot probably grew aweary of calling the
kettle black, and the latter of animadverting on the com-
plexion of its companion, so a legal separation was se-
cured and each can now indulge in those propensities
peculiar to social swelldom untrammeled by marital ties.
Mrs. Vanderbilt is one of three sisters, each of whom
found a husband an inconvenient handicap. Willie and
his ex-wife, buoyed up by boodle, will continue to float
in the creme de la creme where adultery seems to be the
rule and decency the exception and the great dailies to
78 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
deluge a defenseless public with highfalutin hogwash
anent their most inconsequential doings, just as tho' the
common people cared a tinker's dam whether Mrs. Van-
derbilt was yum-yumming with Alphabet Belmont in
London while Willie was dallying with the Neustetter
nymph du pave in Paris. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a cross-
grained old curmudgeon with his bump of acquisitiveness
abnormally developed, went into business and prospered.
Had he failed the great dailies would trouble themselves
but little about his descendants. Those who got hanged
or divorced might get a few lines gratis, the marriage and
death notices would cost the usual dollar per line set in
solid nonpareil and sandwiched between market reports
and pure patent medicine advertisements.
Jno. W. Mackay is said to have begun life by peddling
bock beer over a pine bar. This occupation probably re-
quired intellectual effort to which he found himself un-
equal, for he exchanged the barkeeper's apron for the
miner's overalls ; the bung-starter for the quartz breaker.
He was a good fellow and the Goddess of Fortune favored
him. When he "struck it rich" his wife, who appears to
have been general manager of a miners' hash-factory,
forthwith blossomed out as a "sawsiety" butterfly. A
dinner of "biled" turnips and bull beef, a calico Mother
Hubbard and a red bandana had formerly been the ultima
thule of her ambition; but with millions at her command,
nothing America could produce satisfied her sybaritic
tastes. She obtained an establishment in "Paree," and
there she is in the habit of dispensing Lucullean luxuries
to the hungry horde of high-toned hoodlums who regard
a fresh-picked American parvenue as an oasis in the
Sahara of semi-starvation. And the daily press, which
would not have given her a two-line personal when she
was slinging hash and building slumgullion, began to
gush like a cask of fermenting molasses, to crawl on its
belly before the Mackay millions. Mrs. Mackay could not
purchase a poodle or old John cut his corns without the
fact being cabled across the ocean and peddled to eager
papers by the Associated Press accompanied by the
usual cackle about its own remarkable "enterprise."
Finally Miss Mackay persuaded papa to purchase a little
macaroni prince for her to play with, and the press pro-
ceeded to have ecstatic spasms. The "Prince and Princess
Colonna" loomed up by the page in all important news-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 79
papers, accompanied by double-column before-and-after-
taking portraits. More space was devoted to this foolish
young female and her titled lazzarone than to all the au-
thors and artists, inventors and educators upon the earth.
One would have supposed that when, in consideration of
some millions of money, the Prince Colonna consented to
occupy the same bedroom with the American heiress, a
new and happier era had dawned upon the human race
that the millennium was at hand. But when the Prince
had wrapped his scorbutic diaphragm around a few square
feeds at his wife's expense he became so vicious that
a self-respecting dog could not have endured him, and his
purchaser was compelled toi turn him loose. A few months
of poverty usually brings him around all right, however,
and a "happy reunion" results. Colonna would rather live
with his plebeian wife occasionally than clean cuspidores
or manipulate a hurdy-gurdy for a living. Every time the
Prince patches up a truce for the purpose of acquiring
more boodle to blow in on the gamblers and courtesans of
European capitals the American people are compelled to
learn all about it, else boycott the daily papers. Just how
much the Dago dudelet has cost old honest John will
probably never be known ; but the latter has doubtless
regretted a dozen times that the law does not allow him
to take the scurvy scion of a titled but ignoble family out
behind the wood shed and knock put his seldom brains
by slugging him beneath the coat tails with a brogan built
for that especial business.
As these lines are penned the readers of the daily press
are getting another dose of the disreputable Mrs. J. Cole-
man Drayton, nee Astor. Old John Jacob Astor embarked
in the skin business and, being an artist in that particular
line, soon accumulated enough money to purchase prop-
erty in Manhattan Island when it was worth about as
much as a West-Texas goat walk. New York grew into
a great city and the "unearned increment" made the fam-
ily he had incidentally founded while trading tin toma-
hawks and firewater for the Aborigines' furs as rich as a
fat pork pie. Three generations have sufficed to rub the
grease off his gold and transform the aggressive effluvia
of his hide house into odors of Araby the Blest. J. Cole-
man Drayton distinguished himself by capturing one of
the Astor heiresses, then started in to enjoy life regardless
of expense, while the great dailies gushed and slopped,
80 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
toadied and tamed. The girl was no great shakes, but her
bank account was a bute. J. Coleman was nothing to
speak of, but with an Astorian fortune at his fingers' ends
he quickly became an object of absorbing interest to our
"public educators." But, like Othello, the gentleman who
parts his name on the side and his hair in the middle be-
came suspicious. The green-eyed monster straddled his
neck, rode him around the donjon keep of the Astorian
castle and permitted the portcullis to fall upon him with a
dull, sodden plunk. Not caring to "keep a cistern for foul
toads to knot and gender in," he gave his alleged better
half the bounce. It was expected that he'd borrow an
axe and carve a great three-cornered orifice in the anat-
omy of her paramour; but he concluded to tell his troubles
to the court. An opera-bouffe duel grew out of the affair ;
but the cuckold was nursing his mental anguish and kept
well out of the way while a brace of society swells wound-
ed the atmosphere and attracted the world's attention to
the frailties of his wife. Meanwhile the press fairly stag-
gered beneath the burden of the sensation a crisis
seemed to have suddenly arisen in the history of the
human race ! We were almost led to expect that the
world would cease revolving and the entire solar system
slip an eccentric because a female descendant of an igno-
rant old fur trader had been dallying with the dudes
had strayed 'from home in her reckless pursuit of happi-
ness.
And so it goes. The daily press is ever at the feet of
the parvenues, always cringing before the Golden Calf.
Its boasted "backbone" is made of gutta-percha, it is as
deficient in moral force as a mangy yellow fice. It has
degenerated from a public educator into a professional
scandal-monger, from an inculcator of independent Amer-
ican manhood to a pitiful flunkey that serves for hire,
panders to a vitiated public taste for stray pennies, flatters
Mammon for its fodder and slobbers over everything with
a title simply because it has no better sense. That is
strong language ; but it will find an echo in the heart of
this mighty Yankee nation composed, not of princes and
pimps, lords and lackeys, counts and cuckolds, but of
American sovereigns who do not depend upon boodle to
make them respectable ; who are superior, morally, men-
tally and physically, to the very kings of foreign coun-
tries. The proudest European nobleman is a Subject ; the
humblest American citizen is a Sovereign ! The American
who cannot understand that fact whether "able editor"
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 81
of a great daily or heiress seeking social distinction
should be castrated or killed. We are breeding entirely
too many title-worshippers, toadies and intellectual tom-
tits too few self-reliant, manly men, who realize that
below them are all things, animate and inanimate, above
them only the eternal King of kings.
EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION.
THE PLUTOCRAT AND THE PAUPER.
"For Christ's sake, Cap, give me the price of a sand-
wich !"
I stopped and surveyed the speaker, not because the
request was unusual, but because the applicant for aid had
not acquired the beggar's whine. He was a large, power-
ful man, evidently a mechanic, for every trade leaves its
peculiar stamp upon its followers.
"Why should I give you a dime? You are far more
able to work than I. A man with half your strength
should be ashamed to beg."
"Work ?" he retorted, bitterly. "Give me a job at any-
thing and see if I do not prove myself a man."
"But I have nothing for you to do.*'
"A dozen men have told me that to-day. You sneer at
me because I do not earn the bread I eat, yet decline to
give me an opportunity to do so."
I steered him against a lunch counter and watched him
chisel desolation into a silver dollar, then listened to his
story one that I had heard a hundred times within the
year. Thrown out of employment by the business depres-
sion, he had tramped in search of work until he. found
himself penniless, starving in the streets of a strange city.
He handed me a letter, dated St. Louis, written by his
wife. Some of the words were misspelled and the bad
chirography was blotted as if by falling tears, but it
breathed the spirit of a Roman matron, of a Spartan
mother. Both the children were ill. She had obtained a
little sewing and provided food and some medicine, but
two months' rent were due and the landlord would turn
them out unless it was promptly paid. She would do the
best she could, and knew that her husband would do the
same. Then thro' the blinding tears came a flash of nether
fire. Transformed into respectable English it read :
82 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
"Were I a man I would not tramp from city to city
begging employment only to be refused. Were I a man
I would not see my babies starve while people are piling
up millions of money which they can never need. In this
country there should be an opportunity for every man to
make a living. Were I a man I would make an effort to
release myself and my unhappy fellows from this brutal
industrial bondage, this chronic pauperism if it cost my
life. I have two sons, whom God knows I do dearly love ;
but I would consecrate them to the holy cause of human
liberty if I knew they would perish on the scaffold. I
would rather see them die like dogs than live like slaves."
He sat a long time silent after returning the letter to his
pocket, then said as tho' speaking to himself :
"I wonder if the rich people ever pause to reflect that
there's a million brawny men in my condition to-night
a million men who only lack a leader? I wonder if they
think we'll stand this kind o' thing forever? Don't talk
to me about patriotism," he interrupted, fiercely. "No
man can be a patriot on an empty stomach ! Why should
I care for the preservation of a government of, for and
by the plutocrat? Let it go to the devil across lots ! D n
a flag beneath which a competent and industrious me-
chanic cannot make a living. Anarchy? Is anarchy worse
than starvation? When conditions become such that a
workingman is half the time an ill-fed serf, and the other
half a wretched vagabond, he's ready for a change of any
kind by any means. I am supposed to be entitled to
'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness/ I have Lib-
erty to starve and I can pursue Happiness or rain-
bows to my heart's content. There's absolutely no law
prohibiting my using the horns of the moon for a hat-
rack if I feel so disposed !"
The optimists who are depending upon the "conserva-
tism" of the American people to maintain intact our
political and industrial systems ; who proclaim that the
present too apparent spirit of unrest is but the ephemeral
effect of a few professional agitators, are of the same
myopic brood as those French aristocrats who declared
that all was well until the crust over the tartarean fires
steadily eaten away from beneath, steadily hammered
upon from above gave way with a crash like the crack
of doom and that fair land was transformed as if by* in-
fernal magic into a high-flaming vortex of chaos, engulf-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 83
ing all forms and formulas, threatening the civilization of
a world.
"After us the deluge!" cried those court parasites, who,
with more understanding than their fellows, read aright the
mene, mene, tekel upharsin traced upon the walls of royalty.
But the deluge waited not upon their convenience. Like
another prodigy of Death gendered by Pride in the womb
of Sin, it burst forth to appall the world. But the American
multi-millionaires mock at the ''deluge" can in nowise un-
derstand how it were possible for the thin crust that holds
in thrall the fierce Gehenna fires to give 'way beneath their
feet, dance they upon it never so hard.
The American nation is trembling on the verge of an in-
dustrial revolution a revolution that is inevitable; that will
come peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must. So ripe are the
American workingmen for revolt against the existing order
of things; so galled are they by the heavy yoke laid upon
them; so desperate have they become that it but needs a
strong man to organize and lead them, and our present in-
dustrial system perhaps our political, also would crumble
like an eggshell in the grip of an angry Titan.
Nor is the dissatisfaction confined to the industrial class,
the farmer, that Atlas upon whose broad shoulders the great
world rests, is in full sympathy with every attack made upon
the Cormorant by the Commune. While not ready for a
revolution by force, he would not take up arms in defense of
the prescriptive rights of the plutocrat from the assaults of
the proletariat. Yet the American press proclaims that all
is well! The "able editor" looks into his leather spectacles
free trade or high tariff brand and with owl-like gravity
announces that if the import tax on putty be increased some-
what, or fiddle-strings be placed on the free list, the Ameri-
can mechanic will have money to throw at the birds that
mortgages and mendicancy will pass like a hideous night-
mare, and the farmer gaily bestride his sulky plow attired
like unto Solomon in all his glory.
What is wrong? In God's name, what is right? Here
we have the most fertile land upon the globe, the best sup-
plied with all things necessary to a prosperous people. Our
resources are not half developed ; there is .no dearth of cap-
ital; our working people are the most intelligent, energetic
and capable upon which the sun ever shone. Man for man
the world never contained their equal. Their productive
capability is the marvel even of this age of industrial mir-
84 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
acles. And yet, with every nerve strained to its utmost ten-
sion ; toiling, saving at very death-grips with destiny
they are sinking year by year deeper into the Slough of
Despond into that most frightful of all Gehennas, the hell
of want !
Nor is this all. While those who toil are but fighting a
losing battle wearing out hand and heart and brain for a
crust that becomes ever scantier, ever more bitter there are
thousands and tens of thousands who cannot even obtain
the poor privilege of tramping in this brutal tread-mill, but
must stand with folded arms and starve, else beg or steal.
All this might be borne would be endured with heroic for-
titude if such were the lot of all ; but while the opportunity
to wear out one's strength for a bare existence is becoming
ever more a privilege to be grateful for, we are making mil-
lionaires by the hundreds. While the many battle desper-
ately for life, the few are piling up fortunes beside which the
famed wealth of ancient Lydia's kings were but a beggar's
patrimony. The employer is becoming ever more an auto-
crat, the employee ever more dependent upon his good
pleasure for the poor privilege of existing upon the earth.
To say that the "conservatism" of the American working-
man will cause him to patiently endure all this is to brand
him a spiritless slave, deserving not only slavery, but the
shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much
longer , and when his patience reaches its utmost limit
when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind sup-
plied him in such, plentitude by aspiring politicians and
"able editors," look ye to see something break.
The problems for our statesmen to solve are, First, how
to insure to every person able and willing to work an op-
portunity to earn an honest livelihood; Second, to effect a
more equitable distribution of the wealth created among the
factors engaged in its production. All other problems now
engaging the attention of publicists sink into insignificance
beside these. They are to practical statecraft what the im-
mortality of the soul is to theology. They must be solved ;
at least, some progress must be made in that direction or
force will ere long attempt it. The trouble with such con-
vulsions is that they invariably produce temporary evil, but
do not always compensate it with permanent good. They
are a kind of social mania a polu, racking the whole organ-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 85
ism, debilitating it good chiefly as frightful examples of
what evil customs lead to.
To diagnose the disease and prescribe a remedy were no
easy task. There is infinitely more the matter than a mal-
adjustment of the tariff, inflated railway stocks or a dearth
of white dollars. It is a most difficult, a wonderfully intri-
cate problem one entirely without precedent. The rapid
development of America; the still more remarkable ad-
vancement in the science of mechanics, conjoined to a po-
litical organism not yet fully developed, but half under-
stood, yet marking an epoch in man's social progress ; com-
mercial customs of by-gone days surviving in the midst of
much that is new really when you come to think of it you
may well wonder that we have got thus far without more
than one great convulsion ! Clearly it is no place for cathol-
icons.
That a comparatively small class of men are absorbing
the wealth of the country as fast as it is produced, leaving
to those who create it scarce a bare subsistence, is patent
to all : that the vast body of the people, clothed with political
power and imbued "with the spirit of "equality," will not
permit such conditions to long continue, any thoughtful
man will concede. Even in European countries, where the
working people have come to regard privileged classes as a
matter of course, there are mutterings of a coming storm
that will only gather fresh terrors by delay. In Europe the
change will probably be wrought by revolution ; in America
it may be achieved by peaceful evolution if the monied aris-
tocracy does not, with its checks and repressions with its
corrupted judiciary, purchased legislators and obsequious
press drive a people, already sorely vexed, to unreasoning
madness.
What shall we do? We must avoid the two extremes
that of the radical reformer and the apostle of laissez faire.
We will find a middle course safest and best will need to
proceed with caution, but by no means with cowardice. The
politico-economic school that would at once change the ex-
isting order of things "with as much sang-froid as a miller
substitutes steam for water-power forgets that society is not
a machine ; that it was not made to order like a newspaper
editorial, and that to attempt by a radical process to make
it other than what it is to change its genius arbitrarily
were as fatuous as trying to transform a wolf into a watch-
dog by a chemical process or surgical operation. But while
86 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the radical "reformer" the man who would ignore the les-
sons of history and launch boldly out upon the tempestuous
sea of experimentalism is one dangerous extreme, we must
remember that it is not the only one. In avoiding Scylla
we must not forget Charybdis. If we are to look ever to
the past, to make no experiments, to become the bond-
slaves of precedent, then progress is at an end and society
must petrify, retrograde or consume itself in fierce fire
"whirlwinds.
When the American people emancipate themselves from
party-slavery than which there is none more debasing;
when they cease to fight the battles of ambitious place-hunt-
ers and begin in true earnest to fight their own, then, and
not till then, will the faults of our social organism be rapidly
reduced to the minimum. When the common people of
this country decline to be divided into two or more hostile
camps by "issues" carefully concocted by political harle-
quins, then will the combined wisdom, purified of partisan
prejudice, evolve the best possible national policy.
How many of the hard-working people of this nation who
are now assiduously assailing or defending the dogma of
protection or free trade or any other of the many "issues"
evolved from time to time by professional politicians as a
kind of Pegasus upon which they fondly hope to ride into
power ever carefully considered the question in all its
bearings ; studied it from a national, sectional or even indi-
vidual standpoint. Questions upon which Adam Smith and
Auguste Compte, Jefferson and Hamilton disagreed, are
settled by the dicta of a partisan convention composed
chiefly of political hacks and irresponsible hoodlums with
less trouble than a colored wench selects a calico gown.
The American people, as P. T. Barnuni long ago point-
jed out, have a weakness for humbugs. They are the
natural prey of the charlatan, and in nothing more so than
in matters political. Despite their boasted intelligence,
they will follow with a trust that partakes of the pathetic
the mountebank who can perform the most sleight-of-hand
tricks, the demagogue who can make the most noise.
They think, but are too busy or indifferent to think
deeply, to reason closely. They "jump at conclusions/'
assert their correctness stubbornly and prove the courage
of their convictions by their ballots. They demonstrate
their "independence" by choosing their political fetich,
their confidence in the infallibility of their judgment by
worshiping it blindly. Herein lies the chief danger dan-
ger that the American workingman will follow this or
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 87
that ignis-fatuus, hoping thereby to find a shorter north-
west passage to impossible spice islands, until poverty
has degraded him from a self-respecting sovereign into^a
volcanic sans culotte; until he loses hope of bettering his
condition by whereases, resolutions, trades-unions, acts of
Congress, etc., and, like another blind and desperate Sam-
son, lays his brawny hands upon the pillars of the temple
and pulls it down about his ears.
SPEAKING OF GALL.
Gall is a bitter subject, and I shall waste no time select-
ing sweet words in which to handle it. There's no sur-
plus of sweet words in my vocabulary anyhow. I have
never yet been able to rent my mouth for a taffy mill.
Webster gives several definitions of Gall; but the good
old etymologist was gathered to his fathers long before
the word attained its full development and assumed an
honored place in the slang vernacular of the day. It was
needed. It fills what editors sometimes call "a long-felt
want." Gall is sublimated audacity, transcendent impu-
dence, immaculate nerve, triple-plated cheek, brass in
solid slugs. It is what enables a man to borrow five dol-
lars of you, forget to repay it, then touch you for twenty
more. It is what makes it possible for a woman to bor-
rbw her neighbor's best bonnet, then complain because
it isn't the latest style or doesn't suit her particular type
of beauty. It is what causes people to pour their troubles
into the ears of passing acquaintances instead of reserving
them for home consumption. It is what makes a man
aspire to the governorship, or to air his asininity in the
Congress of the United States when he should be fiddling
on a stick of cordwood with an able-bodied buck-saw. It
is what leads a feather-headed fop, with no fortune but
his folly, no prospects but poverty who lacks business
ability to find bread for himself to mention marriage to
a young lady reared in luxury, to ask her to leave the
house of her father and help him fill the land with fools.
Gall is what spoils so many good ditchers and delvers to
make peanut politicians and putty-headed professional
men. It is what puts so many men in the pulpit who
could serve their Saviour much better planting the mild-
eyed potato or harvesting the useful hoop-pole. It is what
causes so many young ladies to rush into literature in-
88 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
stead of the laundry to become poets of passion instead
of authors of pie.
Gall is a very common ailment. In fact, a man^ with-
out a liberal supply of it is likely to be as lonesome in this
land as a consistent Christian at a modern camp-meeting,
or a gold-bug Democrat in Texas. Nearly everybody has
it and is actually proud of it. When a young man is first
afflicted with the tender passion ; when he is in the throes
of the mysterious mental aberration that would cause him
to climb a mesquite bush and lasso the moon for his
inamorata if she chanced to admire it, he is apt to think
it love that makes the world go round. Later he learns
that Gall is the social dynamics the force that causes
humanity to arise and hump itself.
Gall has got the world grabbed. Politics is now a high-
class play, whose pawns are power and plunder; business
is becoming but a gouge-game wherein success hallows
any means. Our mighty men are our most successful
marauders ; our social favorites minister in the temple of
Mammon, our pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night
the follies and foibles of the "Four Hundred," our God the
Golden Calf. The standard by which society now meas-
ures men is the purse ; that by which it gauges greatness
the volume of foolish sound which the aspirant for im-
mortal honors succeeds in setting afloat, little caring
whether it be such celestial harp music as caused Thebe's
walls to rise, or the discordant bray of the ram's horn
which made Jericho's to fall. This century, which proudly
boasts itself "heir to all the ages and foremost in the files
of time," doffs its beaver to brazen effrontery, burns its
sweetest incense on the unhallowed shrine of pompous
humbuggery, while modest merit is in a more pitiable
predicament than the traditional tomcat in Tartarus with-
out teeth or toenails.
We make manifest our immeasureable Gall by pro-
claiming from the housetops that, of all the ages which
have passed o'er 'the hoary head of Mother Earth, the
present stands pre-eminent; that of all the numberless
cycles of Time's mighty pageant there was none like unto
it no, not one. And I sincerely hope there wasn't. Per-
haps that which induced the Deity to repent him that he
had madej man and send a deluge to soak some of the
devilment out of him, was the nearest approach to it. We
imagine that because we have the electric telegraph and
the nickel-plated dude, the printing press and the cam-
paign lie, the locomotive and the scandal in high life ; that
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 89
because v/e now roast our political opponent instead of
the guileless young missionary, and rob our friends by
secret fraud instead of despoiling our foes by open force,
that we are the people par-excellence and the Lord must
be proud of us.
Progress and improvement are not always synonyms. A
people may grow in Gall instead of grace. I measure a
century by its men rather than by its machines, and we
have not, since civilization took its boasted leap forward,
produced a Socrates or a Shakespeare, a Phidias or an
Angelo, a Confucius or a Christ. This century runs
chiefly to Talmages and Deacon Twogoods, pauper dukes
and divorce courts intellectual soup and silk lingerie.
The poets no longer sing of the immortal gods, of war
and sacrifice, while the flame mounts to manhood's check,
red as the fires of Troy : They twitter of lovies and dov-
ies, of posies and goose-liver pie, while pretty men ap-
plaud and sentimental maids get moonsick. Cincinnatus
no longer waits for the office to seek the man : He sells
his brace of bullocks and buys a political boom. No more
the Spartan mother gives her long black hair for bow-
strings: She blondines it, paints, powders and tries to
pass as the younger sister of her eldest daughter. The
Norse viking no longer plows the unknown wave, his
heart wilder than the wat'ry waste, his arm stronger than
tempered steel: He comes to America and starts a sa-
loon. No more the untamed Irish king caroms on the
Saxon invader with a seasoned shillalah : He gets on the
police force and helps "run the machine," or clubs the
head off the harmless married man who won't go home
till morning. In these degenerate days the philosopher
retires not to the desert, and there, by meditation most
profound, wrings from the secret treasure-house of his own
superior soul, jewels to adorn his age and enrich the
world: He mixes an impossible plot with a little pessimism,
adds a dude and a woman whose moral character has seen
better days, spills the nauseous compound on the public
as a "philosophical novel" and works <the press for puffs.
Indeed we're progressing; going onward and upward
like the belled buzzard dodging a divorce scandal. Greece
had her Pericles, but it was left for us to produce a Park-
hurst. Rome had her Cicero and her Caesar, but was never
equal to a Culberson or a Corbett. The princes of old con-
quered the earth, but the modern plutocrats put a mort-
90 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
gage on it. Cleopatra drank pearls dissolved in wine, but
whisky straight is said to be good enough for some of her
successors. Samson slew the Philistines with a jawbone of
an ass ; but a modern politician, employing the self-same
weapon, would have got 'em to elect him governor. We've
got no Helen of Troy; but our "Hell'n Blazes" is a bird
o' the same feather. We've got to yield the palm in poetry
and philosophy, art and architecture; but when it comes
to building political platforms that straddle every import-
ant issue and slinging princely style on a pauper income
we're out of sight.
How can the acorn become a mighty forest monarch if
planted in a pint pot and crossed with a fuzzy-wuzzy chrys-
anthemum? How can the Numidian lion's whelp become
a king of beasts if reared in a cage and fed on cold potatoes,
muzzled and made to dance to popular music? How can
the superior soul expand until it becomes all-embracing,
god-like, a universe in itself, in which rings sweet sphere-
music and rolls Jovinian thunder in which blazes true
Promethean fire instead of smoulders the sulphurous caloric
of the nether world when its metes and bounds are irre-
vocably fixed for it when it can only grow in certain pre-
scribed directions, painfully mapped out for it by bumptious
pismires who imagine that their little heads constitute the in-
tellectual Cosmos?
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, lamented that he lacked
Gall; but the melancholy Dane was dead years before the
present generation of titled snobs appeared upon the scene.
None of the princes or dukes of the present day appear to be
short on Gall ; none of the nobility seem to be suffering for
lack of it. Not long ago a little Duke who owes his title
to the fact that his great-grand-aunt was the paramour of a
half-wit prince, kindly condescended to marry an American
girl to recoup his failing fortunes. A little French guy
whose brains are worth about two cents a pound for soap-
grease put up a Confederate-bond title for the highest bid-
der and was bought in like a hairless Mexican pup by an
American plutocrat. Now half-a-dozen more little pauper
princelings and decadent dukelings are trying to trade their
worthless coronets for American cash. But the fact that
many a man boasting of his American sovereignty will dick-
er with a titled young duke, instead of using the forecastle
of a No. 9 foot to drive his spinal column up thro' his plug-
hat like a presidential lightning-rod; will actually purchase
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 91
for his daughter some disgusting little title upon which rests
the fateful bar-sinister of a woman ? s shame, and is encum-
bered by a dizzy young dude, too lazy to work and too cow-
ardly to steal too everlastingly "ornery" to raise a respect-
able crop of wild oats proves that the young lollipop lord-
lings haven't a monopoly of the Gall of the Globe.
A most shameful exhibition of Gall is the practice now
coming into vogue with certain society ladies of encourag-
ing newspapers to puff their charms even paying them so
much a line for fulsome praise. Not a few metropolitan
papers reap a handsome profit by puffing society buds
whom their fond parents are eager to place on the matri-
monial market, hoping that they will "make good
matches ;" in other words, that they will marry money
its possessors being thrown in as pelon. Even married
women, who are long on shekels but short on sense, some-
times pay big prices to get their portraits in the public
prints accompanied by puffs that would give a buzzard
a bilious attack.
But the Gall of the girl who puts her picture in the pa-
pers, accompanied by a paid puff of her "purty," scarce
equals that of the conceited maid who imagines she has
only to look at a man and giggle a few times to "mash
him cold" to get his palpitating heart on a buckskin
string and swing it hither-and-yon at pleasure. How the
great he-world does suffer at the hands of those heartless
young coquettes if half it tells 'em be true! David said
in his haste that all men are liars. And had he carefully
considered the matter he would have come to the same
conclusion. Washington may have told his father the
truth about that cherry-tree ; but later in life he became
entirely too popular with the ladies for a man unable to lie.
lit is natural for men to pay court to a pretty woman
as for flies to buzz about a molasses barrel ; but not every
fly that buzzes expects to get stuck, I beg to state. The
man who doesn't tell every woman who will listen to him
excepting, perhaps, his wife that she's pretty as a peri,
even tho' she be homely enough to frighten a mugwump
out of a fat federal office ; that she's got his heart grabbed ;
that he lives only in the studied sunshine of her store-
teeth smile and is hungering for an opportunity to die for
her dear sake well, he's an angel, and he-seraphs are
almighty scarce I beg of you to believe. Since Adonis died
and Joseph was gathered to his fathers none have appeared
92 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST.
that I am aware of. These young gentlemen were all
right, I suppose ; but I'd like to see either of them get
elected now-a-days on the Democratic ticket in Texas.
But feminine conceit, fed on flattery, were as milk-shake
unto mescal, as a kiss by mail to one by moonlight com-
pared with the insufferable egotism of the "pretty man"
who puts his moustache up in curl-papers and perfumes
his pompadour ; who primps and postures before an amor-
ous looking-glass and imagines that all Eve's daughters
are trying to abduct him. Whenever I meet one of these
male irresistibles I'm forcibly reminded that the Almighty
made man out of mud and not very good mud at that.
The two-legged he-thing who makes a clothes-horse of
himself and poses on the street-corner perfumed like an
emancipation day picnic ; who ogles a pretty woman until
the crimson creeps into her cheek, then prides himself on
having captured her heart like the boy caught the itch,
because he couldn't help it when she's only blushing for
the mother who bore the pitiful parody on manhood ; who
imagines that every maid who deigns to waste a smile an
him is sighing her soul out for his sweet sake, has allowed
his Gall to go to> his head and curdle his brains.
More than a moiety of our so-called great men are but
featherless geese, possessing a superabundance of Gall
creatures of chance who ride like driftwood on the crest of
a wave raised by forces they cannot comprehend ; but they
ride, and the world applauds them while it tramples better
men beneath its brutal feet. Greatness and Gall, genius
and goose-speech, sound and sense have become syno-
nyms. If you fall on the wrong side of the market men
will quote the proverb about a fool and his money ; if on
the right side you're a Napoleon of finance. Lead a suc-
cessful revolt and you are a pure patriot whose memory
should be preserved to latest posterity; head an unsuc-
cessful uprising and you are a miserable rebel who should
have been hanged. "Nothing succeeds like success." Had
the Christian religion failed to take root, Judas Iscariot
would have been commemorated in the archives of Rome
as one who helped stamp out the hateful heresy, and had
Washington got the worst of it in his go with Cornwallis
he would have passed into history as a second Jack Cade.
Alexander of Macedon was great, as measured by the
world's standard of eminence. After two-and-twenty cen-
turies our very babes prattle of this bloody butcher, and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 93
even his horse has been enshrined in history. In our own
day Father! Damien left kindred and country and went
forth to die for the miserable lepers in the mid-Pacific,
but he is already forgotten his name and fame have
faded from the minds of men. Yet greater and grander
than all the blood-stained princes and potentates of earth;
nobler, more god-like than all the proud prelates that ever
aired their turgid eloquence at Christian conference or
ecumenical council was that young priest; but no ceno-
taph rises to commemorate his sacrifice silent as his own
sealed lips is the trumpet of fame.
But for Gall of the Ai, triple X brand, commend me to
the little pot-house politician who poses as a political
prophet and points out to wiser men their public duties.
We have to-day in this land of the free and home of the
crank, thousands of self-important little personages who
know as little of political economy as a parrot of the
power of prayer, prating learnedly of free-trade or pro-
tection, greenbackism or metallic money. Men who
couldn't tell a fundamental principle from their funny-
bone, an economic thesis from a hot tamale who don't
know whether Ricardo was an economist or a corn-doc-
tor evolve from their empty ignorance new systems of
''saving the country," and defend them with the dogmatic
assurance of a nigger preacher describing the devil make
gorgeous displays of their Gall. I have noticed that, as a
rule, the less a man knows of the science of government the
crazier he is to go to congress. About half the young states-
men who break into the legislature imagine that Roger Q.
Mills wrote the Science of Economics, and that Jefferson
Davis was the father of Democracy.
But the Gall is not confined to the little fellows the big
political M D's have their due proportion. The remedies
they prescribe for Uncle Sam's ailments remind me of the
panaceas put on the market by the patent-medicine men
warranted to cure everything, from a case of cholera-mor-
bus to an epidemic of poor relations. We have one school of
practitioners prescribing free-trade as a sure-cure for every
industrial ill, another a more drastic system of protection.
One assures us that the silver-habit is dragging us down to
the demnition bow-wows, another that only an heroic dose
of white dollars will save us from industrial death. Politi-
cal claptrap to corral the succulent pie "issues" to get of-
fice. We have had high and low tariff, the gold and silver
standard, greenbackism and "wild-cat" currency; we have
had presidents of all shades of political faith and congresses
94 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of every kind of economic folly; yet in a single century
America has risen from the poorest of nations to the wealth-
iest in all the world. True it is that wealth is congested
that willful Waste and woeful Want go hand in hand that
the land is rilled with plutocrats and paupers ; but this dis-
tressing fact is due to the faults of our industrial system it-
self, and can never be reformed by placing fiddle-strings on
the free list or increasing the tariff on toothpicks.
Gall? Ye gods! Look at the platform promises of the
blessed Democratic party then at its performances ! Look
at the party itself a veritable omnium-gatherum of political
odds and ends, huddled together under the party blanket like
household gods and barn-yard refuse after a hurricane.
High and low tariffs and free-traders ; gold-bugs, green-
backers and bi-metallists ; Cleveland and Croker, Altgekl
and Olney, Hill and Hogg, Waco's Warwick and Colonel
Culberson's kid, all clamoring to be dyed-in-the-wool Dem-
ocrats ! When I get a new main-spring put in my vocabu-
lary I'm going to tackle the Gall of the Populists and Re-
publicans.
* * *
Some specimens of Gall amaze me by their greatness,
some amuse me, while others only spoil my appetite. Of
the latter class is the chronic kicker who is forever fuming
about feminine fashions. If the hoop-skirt comes in this
critic is in agony; if the "pull-back" makes its appearance
he has a fit and falls in it. Ever since Eve attired herself
in a few freckles and fig-leaves he's been reforming the fash-
ions. Don't mind him, ladies. Like a peacock crying in
the night, he's disagreeable, but not dangerous. Adorn
yourselves as you see fit ; follow such fashions as seem good
in your sight, and have no fear that the sons of men will ever
forsake you because of your clothes. When you find a
man dictating to the ladies what they shall wear you're pret-
ty apt to see his head housed in a stove-pipe hat the most
inartistic and awkward monstrosity ever designed by the
devil to make the Almighty ashamed of his masterpiece. In
all history there's no record of a great idea being born in a
beegum. I never saw a statue of a hero or picture of a
martyr with a plug hat on. Imagine the Lord laying aside
a silk cady preparatory to preaching that Sermon on the
Mount or Napoleon apostrophizing the pyramids in a
plug! Before finding fault with the fashions of the ladies
just imagine Apollo in the make-up of a modern society
swell, loafing into court on High Olympus ! Why Jove
would hit him with a thunderbolt so hard there'd be nothing
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 95
left of him but a wilted chrysanthemum and a pair o' yaller
shoes !
* * *
For a specimen of Gall that must amaze the very gods
commend me to a crowd of pharisaical plutocrats, piously
offering, in a hundred thousand dollar church, prayers to
him who had nowhere to lay his head ; who pay a preacher
$15,000 per annum to point the way to Paradise, while in
the great cities of every Christian country children must
steal or starve and women choose between death and dis-
honor. New York is crowded with costly churches that
lift their proud spires into the empyrean, that part the clouds
with golden fingers monuments which Mammon rears as
if to mock the lowly Son of God. Their value mounts up
into the millions ; yet I learn from a religious paper, mark
you that 100.000 men, women and children were evicted
in New York alone last year for the non-payment of rent;
turned into the streets to suffer summer's heat or winter's
cold to beg, or starve, or steal, as they saw fit. I find
these startling statistics in the same column with a tearful
appeal for more money to send missionaries to black bar-
barians on the same page with a description of a new
church that must have cost a cold half-million of cash.
That's what I call sanctified assurance gall masquerading
as grace. And what is true of New York is true, in greater
or less degree, of every town from Plymouth Rock to Poker
Flats, from Tadmor-in-the-Wilderness to Yuba Dam.
Everywhere the widow is battling with want, while we send
Bibles and blankets, prayer-books and pie, salvation and
missionary soup to a job-lot of lazy niggers whose souls
aren't worth a soumarkee in blocks-of-five who wouldn't
walk into heaven if the gates were wide open, but once
inside would steel the eternal throne if it wasn't spiked down.
Let the heathen rage; we've got our hands full at home.
I'd rather see the whole black-and-tan aggregation short on
Bibles than one white child crying for bread.
While Europe and America are peddling saving grace
in pagan lands and incidentally extending the market for
their cheap tobacco, snide jewelry and forty-rod bug- juice
they are also building warships and casting cannon pre-
paring to cut each other's throats while prating of the prince
of peace ! The idea of countries that have to build forts on
their frontiers and keep colossal standing armies to avoid
being butchered by their own Christian brethren; that are
full of divorce courts and demagogues, penitentiaries and
poorhouses, sending young theological goslings, who be-
96 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
lieve that all of divine revelation can be found in one book,
to teach the philosophic Hindu the road to heaven! Gall!
Why the men we are trying to convert were preaching the
immortality of the soul when the Hebrew prophets were
putting people to the sword for accepting it; they were
familiar with all the essential features of the Christian faith
a thousand years before the crucifixion of Christ. Charity
begins at home. In our own country children are coming
up in ignorance and crime, while sect vies with sect in the
erection of proud temples in which polite society may dis-
play its Parisian finery while pretending to worship One
who broke bread with beggars and slept in the brush.
I haven't much use for gold-plated godliness. Christ
never built a church, or asked for a vacation on full pay,
never. He indulged in no political harangues never told
his parishioners how to vote never posed as a professional
Prohibitionist. He didn't try to reform the fallen women
of Jerusalem by turning them over to the police, a la Park-
hurst. Although gladitorial shows were common in his
country and that without gloves he didn't go raging up
and down the earth like some of our Texas dominies, de-
manding that these awful crimes against civilization should
cease. There is no record of his engineering a boycott
against business men who dissented from his doctrine. I
think he could have read a copy of the Iconoclast with far
more patience than some of his successors. Human or
divine, he was the grandest man that ever graced the mighty
tide of time. His was a labor of love, instead of for lucre.
The groves were his temples, the mountain-side his pulpit,
the desert his sacristy and Jordan his baptismal font.
* * *
Then there's the unconscious Gall of the pious parrot
who is quite sure that the only highway to the heavenly
hereafter is outlined by his- little sect, macadamized by his
creed; that you've got to travel that or get into trouble,
perhaps fall into the fire.
Just imagine that dear Lord, who so loved sinners that
he died to save them from death eternal, looking over
heaven's holy battlements and observing a miserable mortal
plunging downward to his doom, leaving behind him a
streak of fire like a falling star, his face distorted with fear,
his every hair erect and singing like a jewsharp. He asks
St. Peter:
"Who's that?"
"Oh," says the man on the door, "that's old John Smith."
The Lord goes over to the office of the Recording Angel
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 97
and turns the leaves of the great ledger. He finds the
name, "John Smith, No. 11027," and on the credit page
these entries: "He was fearless as Caesar, generous as
Macaenas, tender as Guatama and true to his friends as the
stars to their appointed courses. He was a knight of
nature's nobility, a lord in the aristocracy of intellect, cour-
tier at home and a king abroad. On the debit page he
reads : "Went fishing on Sunday. There was a miscue on
his baptism. He knew a pretty woman from an ancient
painting, a jack-pot from a prayer-book, and when smitten
on one cheek he made the smacker think he'd been smuck
by a cyclone." Good-bye, John !
* It may be that the monarch of the majestic universe
marches around after every inconsequential little mortal,
note-book in hand, giving him a white mark when he prays
for the neighbor who poisons his dog, or tells his wife the
truth regardless of consequences ; a black one when he bets
his money on the wrong horse or sits down on the sidewalk
and tries to swipe the front gate as it goes sailing by ; but
I doubt it. If I could make the sun, moon and stars in one
day and build a beautiful. woman of an old bone, I'd just
like to see the color of that man's hair I'd waste much time
and attention on.
* * *
Why should we quarrel about our faiths and declare that
this is right and that is wrong, when all religions are, and
must of necessity ever be, fundamentally one and the same
the worship of a superior power, the great
"Father of all, in every age, in ev'ry clime adored,
By saint, by savage and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."
Man's cool assumption that the Almighty made him as
his "master-piece" should be marked Exhibit A in the
mighty aggregation of Gall. That after millions of years
experience in the creation business after building the arch-
angels and the devil ; after making the man in the moon and
performing other wondrous miracles, the straddling six-foot
biped who wears a spike-tail coat and plug hat, a silk sur-
cingle and sooner tie; who parts his name on the side and
his hair in the middle ; who sucks a cane and simpers like a
school-girl struggling with her first compliment ; who takes
it for granted that he knows it all, when his whole life
including his birth, marriage and death is a piece of ridicu-
lous guess-work ; who insists that he has a soul to save, yet
labors with might and main to lose it ; protests that there's
98 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
a better land beyond the grave, yet moves heaven and
earth to keep from going- to it so long as he can help it
the assumption, I say, that this was the best the Creator
could do, is prima facie evidence of a plentitude of Gall of
the purest ray serene.
The calm assurance of man that the earth and all it con-
tains were made for his especial benefit; that woman was
created solely for his comfort; that the sun was made to
give him light by day and the moon to enable him to find
his way home from the lodge at night without the aid of a
policeman ; that the heavens were hung with a resplendent
curtain of stars and the planet:; sent whirling thro' space in
a majestic dance about the God of Day, simply to afford
him matter for wonder or for amusement when too tired to
talk politics or too bilious to drink beer, evinces an egotism
that must amuse the Almighty.
Master-piece indeed ! Why, God made man, and, finding
that he couldn't take care of himself, made woman to take
care of him and she proposes to discharge her heaven-
ordained duty or know the reason why. Tennyson says
that, "as the husband is the wife is ;" but even Tennyson
didn't know it quite all. When wives take their hubbies for
measures of morality, marriage will become an enthusiastic
failure and Satan be loosed for a little season. We acknowl-
edge woman's superiority by demanding that she be better
than we could if we would, or would be if we could.
We are fond of alluding to woman as "the weaker ves-
sel;" but she can break the best of us if given an oppor-
tunity. Pope calls man the "great lord of all things" but
Pope never got married. We rule with a rod of iron the
creatures of the earth and air and sea ; we hurl our wither-
ing defi in the face of Kings and brave presidential light-
ning; we found empires and straddle the perilous political
issue, then surrender unconditionally to a little bundle of
dimples and deviltry, sunshine and extravagance. No man
ever followed freedom's flag for patriotism (and a pension)
with half the enthusiasm that he will trail the red, white and
blue that constitute the banner of female beauty. The mon-
arch's fetters cannot curtail our haughty freedom, nor
nature's majestic forces confine us to this little lump of
clay; we tread the ocean's foam beneath our feet, harness
the thunderbolts of imperial Jove to the jaunting car, and
even aspire to mount the storm and walk upon the wind;
yet the bravest of us tremble like cowards and lie like Cre-
tans when called to account by our wives for some of our
cussedness.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 99
But you will say that I have wandered from my text
have followed the ladies off and got lost. Well, it's not the
first time it's happened. But really, I'm not so inconsistent
as I may seem ; for if the gentler sex exceeds us in goodness
it likewise surpasses us in Gall. Perhaps the most colossal
exhibit of polite and elegant audacity this world can boast
is furnished by that female who has made a marriage of
convenience; has wedded money instead of a man, prac-
tically put her charms up at auction for the highest bidder
yet who poses as a paragon of purity; gathers up her
silken skirts the price of her legalized shame lest they
come in contact with the calico gown of some poor girl who
has loved, not wisely, but too well.
Marriage is the most sacred institution ever established
on earth, making the father, mother and child a veritable
Holy Trinity; but it is rapidly degenerating into an un-
clean Humbug, in which Greed is God and Gall is recog-
nized high-priest. We now consider our fortunes rather
than our affections, acquire a husband or wife much as we
would a parrot or a poodle, and get rid of them with about
as little compunction. Cupid now feathers his arrows
from the wings of the gold eagle and shoots at the stomach
instead of the heart. Love without law makes angels
blush ; but law without love crimsons even the brazon brow
of infamy.
* * *
But the fact that so many selfish, soulless marriages are
made is not altogether woman's fault. Our ridiculous
social code is calculated to crush all sentiment and sweet-
ness out of the gentler sex to make woman regard herself
as merchandise rather than as a moral entity, entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The average
woman must select a husband from a narrow circle; must
make choice among two or three admirers or elect to live
a loveless old maid to forego the joys of motherhood, the
happiness of a home. Man is privileged to go forth and
seek a mate. The world is before him, a veritable "Dream
of Fair Women." He wanders at will, as amid a mighty
parterre of flowers, sweet as the breath of morn, and finally,
before some fair blossom he bows the knee pours forth
the incense of his soul to the one woman in all the world
he would make his wife. True, she may refuse him and
marry some other fellow ; but he is at least privileged to
approach her, to plead his cause, to employ all the art and
eloquence of love to bring her into his life. Woman en-
joys no such privilege. She must wait to be wooed, and if
100 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
her king comes not she must take the best that offers and
try to be content.
Every daughter of Eve dreams of an ideal, of a man
tender and true, who will fill her life with love's own melo-
dy; his word her law, his home her heaven, his honor her
glory and his tomb her grave. And some day, from these
castles in the clouds he comes these day-dreams, golden
as the dawn, become the halo of a mortal man, to whom her
heart turns as the helianthus to the sun. At last the god
of her idolatry doth walk the earth; but she must stand
afar, must not, by word or act, betray the holy passion
that's consuming her, lest "that monster custom, of habits
devil," doth brand her bold and bad. Love ofttimes begets
love, as the steel strikes fire from the cold flint, and a word
from her might bring him to her feet ; but she must stand
with dumb lips and assumed indifference and see him drift
out of her life, leaving it desolate as the Scythian desert,
when it should have budded and blossomed like the great
blush rose. So she drifts desolate into old maidenhood and
the company of Maltese cats ; else, when hope is dead in
her heart when the dream of her youth has become dust
and ashes she marries for money and tries to feed her
famished heart with Parisian finery, to satisfy her soul with
the Dead Sea fruit of fashion.
No ; I wouldn't give woman the ballot not in a thousand
years. I want no petticoats in politics no she-senators or
female presidents ; but I'd do better by woman ; I'd repeal
that ridiculous social law survival of female slavery
which compels her to wait to be wooed. I'd put a hundred
leap-years in every century, give woman the right to do half
the courting to find a man to her liking and capture him
if she could. Talk about reforms! Why, the bachelors
would simply have to become Benedicts or take to the brush,
and there'd be no old maids outside the dime museums.
But I was speaking of Gall.
Gall is usually unadulterated impudence ; but sometimes it
is irremediably idiocy. When you find a man pluming
himself on his ancestors you can safely set it down that
he's got the disease in its latter form, and got it bad. I
always feel sorry for a man who's got nothing to be proud
of but a dead gran'daddy, for it appears to be a law of
nature that there shall be but one great man to a tribe that
the lightning of genius shall not twice strike the same family
tree. I suppose that Cleveland and Jim Corbett, Luther
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 101
and Mrs. Lease, Homer and J. S. Hogg had parents and
gran 'parents ; but we don't hear much about 'em. And
while the ancestors of the truly great are usually lost in the
obscurity of the cornfield or cotton-patch, their children
seldom succeed in setting the world on fire. Talent may
be transmitted from father to son ; but you can no more in-
herit genius than you can inherit a fall out of a balloon.
It is the direct gift of that God who is no respecter of per-
sons, and who sheds his glory on the cotter's child as freely
as on those of monarchs and of millionaires.
We have in this country three aristocracies: The aris-
tocracy of intellect, founded by the Almighty; the aristoc-
racy of money, founded by Mammon, and the aristocracy
of family, founded by fools. The aristocracy of brains
differs from those of birth and boodle as a star differs from
a jack-o'-lantern, as the music of the spheres from the bray
of a burro, as a woman's first love from the stale affection
hashed up for a fourth husband.
To the aristocracy of money belong many worthy men;
but why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? The founder
of one of the wealthiest and most exclusive of American
families skinned beeves and made weinerwurst. The calling
was an honest and useful one. His sausages were said to
be excellent, and at a skin game he was exceptionally hard
to beat : but his descendants positively decline to put a calf's
head regardant and a cleaver rampant on their coat-of-arms.
A relative much addicted to the genealogical habit once
assured me that he could trace our family back 600 years
just as easy as following the path to the drugstore in a
Prohibition town. I was delighted to hear it, to learn that
I too had ancestors that some of them were actually on the
earth before I was born. While he was tracing I was
figuring. I found that in 600 years there should be 20 gen-
erations if everybody did his duty and that in 20 genera-
tions a man has 2,093,056 ancestors! Just think of it!
Why, if he had gone back 600 years further he might have
discovered that I was a lineal descendant of Adam, perhaps
distantly related to crowned monarchs if not to the Duke
cf Marlborough. As my cousin couldn't account for this
job-lot of kinsmen had no idea how many had been hanged,
gone into politics or written poetry, I rang him off. Those
people who delight to trace their lineage through several
generations to some distinguished man should be tapped for
the simples. When John Smith starts out to found a family
and marries Miss Jones, their son is half Smith and half
Jones*. The next crop is nearly one-fourth Smith and at the
102 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
end of a dozen generations the young Smiths bear about as
much relation to the original as they do to a rabbit.
There are various grades of Gall; but perhaps the super-
lative brand is that which leads a man to look down with
lofty scorn upon those of his fellow mortals who have
tripped on Life's rugged pathway and plunged into a shore-
less sea of shame. I am no apologist for crime I would
not cover its naked hideousness with the Arachne-robe of
sentiment; but I dp believe that many a social out-cast,
many a branded criminal, will get as sweet a harp in the
great hereafter as those who have kept themselves un-
spotted from the world. It is easy enough to say grace
over a good square meal, to be honest on a fat income, to
praise God when full of pie; but just wait till you get the
same razzle-dazzle the devil dished up for Job and see how
your halle-hallelujahs hold out before exalting your horn.
Victory does not always proclaim the hero nor virtue the
saint. It were easy enough to sail with wind and tide to
float over fair seas, mid purple isles of spice; but the cap-
tain who loses his ship mid tempests dire, mid wreck and
wrath, may be a better sailor and a braver than the master
who rides safe to port with rigging all intact and every
ensign flying. With
"The boast of heraldry, the j -mp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,"
it were easy enough to be a good citizen and a consistent
Christian. It is poverty and contempt, suffering and dis-
appointment that try men's souls that proclaim of what
metal they are made. Faith, Hope and Charity are man's
triune transcendent "and the greatest of these is Charity."
A pharisee is either a pious fraud or a hopeless fool he's
either short on "gumption" or long on Gall.
Half the alleged honesty of this world is but Gall, and
must be particularly offensive to the Almighty. We have
oodles of men in every community who are legally honest,
but morally rotten. Legal honesty is the brand usually
proclaimed as "the best policy." Only fools risk the pen-
itentiary to fill their purse. The smart rogue is ever "honest
within the law" infamous in strict accord with the criminal
code.
Dives may attire himself in purple and fine linen and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 103
fare sumptuously every day, while Lazarus lies at his door
for the dogs to lick, vainly craving the crumbs that fall from
the millionaire's table, and still be legally honest, even a
church member in good standing ; but his loyalty to legal
forms will avail him but little when he finds his coat-tails
afire and no water \\ithin forty miles.
The girl who flirts with a featherless young gosling till
he doesn't know whether he's floating in a sea of cham-
pagne to the sound of celestial music, sliding down a greased
rainbow or riding on the ridge-pole of the aurora borealis,
then tells him that she can only be a kind of Christmas-
present, opera-ticket sister to him; who steals his unripe
affections and allows 'em to get frost-bitten carries him
into the empyrean of puppy-love, only to drop him with a
dull plunk that fills his callow heart with compound frac-
tures well, she cannot be prosecuted for petit larceny nor
indicted for malicious mischief; but the unfortunate fellow
who finally gets her will be glad to go to heaven, where
there's neither marrying nor giving in marriage.
The man who preaches Prohibition in public and pays
court to a gallon jug of corn-juice in private; who damns
the saloon at home and sits up with it all night abroad, may
not transcend the law of the land, but if his Gall should
burst the very buzzards would break their necks trying to
get out of the country.
The druggist who charges a poor dunderhead a dollar for
filling a prescription that calls in Latin for a spoonful of salt
and an ounce of water, may do no violence to the criminal
code, but he plays ducks and drakes with the moral law.
The little tin-horn attorney, whose specialties are divorce
cases and libel suits ; who stirs up good-for-naughts to sue
publishers for $10,000 damages to lo-cent reputations;
who's as ready to shield Vice from the sword of Justice as
to defend Virtue from stupid violence; who's ever for sale
to the highest bidder and keeps eloquence on tap for who-
soever cares to buy ; who would rob the orphan of his patri-
mony on a technicality or brand the Virgin Mary as a bawd
to shield a black-mailer well, he cannot be put into the
penitentiary, more's the pity! but it's some satisfaction to
believe that, if in all the great universe of God there is a
hell where fiends lie howling, the most sulphurous section
is reserved for the infamous shyster that if he cannot be
debarred from the courts of earth he'll get the bounce from
those of heaven.
The woman who inveigles some poor fool perhaps old
enough to be her father into calling her his tootsie-wootsie
104 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
over his own signature, then brings suit for breach of prom-
ise or the Seventh Commandment; who exhibits her
broken heart to the judge and jury and demands that it be
patched up with Uncle Sam's illuminated anguish plasters ;
who plays the adventuress, then poses in the public prints as
an injured innocent sends a good reputation to join a bad
character in hope of monetary reward well, she too may
be legally honest; but it's just as well to watch her, for no
woman worth powder to blow her to perdition ever did or
ever will carry such a case into court. When a woman's
heart is really hurting her money is not going to help it;
when she's truly sorry for her sin she tells her troubles to
the Lord instead of to policemen and reporters.
The man who sues a fellow-citizen for alienating his
wife's affections, instead of striking his trail with a bell-
mouthed blunderbuss and a muzzle-loading bulldog; who
asks the court to put a silver lining in the cloud of infamy
that hangs over his home ; who tries to make capital of his
shame and heal with golden guineas the hurt that honor
feels well, he too may be a law-abiding citizen ; but ten
thousand such souls, if separated from their Gall, might
play hide-and-seek on the surface of a copper cent for a
hundred years and never find each other.
Dignity is but a peculiar manifestation of Gall. It is the
stock in trade of fools. If Almighty God ever put up great
dignity and superior intellect in the same package it must
have got misplaced. They are opposing elements, as an-
tagonistic as the doctrines of infinite love and infant damna-
tion. Knowledge makes men humble; true genius is ever
modest. The donkey is popularly supposed to be the most
stupid animal extant excepting the dude. He's dso the
most dignified since the extinction of the dodo. No pope
or president, rich in the world's respect; no prince or oo-
tentate reveling in the pride of sovereign power ; no poet or
philosopher bearing his blushing honors thick upon him ever
equaled a blind donkey in impressive dignity. As a man's
vision broadens ; as^ he begins to realize what a miserable
little microbe he is in that mighty immensity, studded with
the stupendous handiwork of a power that transcends his
comprehension, his dignity drains off and he feels like ask-
ing to be recognized just long enough to apologize for his
existence.
When I see a little man strut forth in the face of heaven
like a turkey-cock on dress parade ; forgotten aeons behind
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 105
him, blank time before him, his birth a mystery, his death
a leap in the dark; when I see him pose on the grave of
forgotten races and puff himself up with pomposity like the
frog in the fable; when I see him sprinkled with the dust
of fallen dynasties and erecting new altars upon the site of
forgotten fanes, yet staggering about under a load of dignity
that would spring the knee-joints of an arch-angel, I don't
wonder that the Lord once decided to drown the whole lay-
out like a litter of blind puppies.
A lecture on Gall were woefully incomplete without some
reference to the press, that "archimedean lever" and ''mould-
er of public opinion." The average newspaper posing as a
"public educator" is a specimen of Gall that cannot be prop-
erly analyzed in one evening. Men do not establish news-
papers for the express purpose of reforming the world, but
rather to print what a large number of people in a particular
community want to read and are willing to pay for. A
newspaper is simply a mirror in which the community sees
itself, not as it should be, but as it actually is. It is not the
mother, but the daughter of public opinion. The printing
press is a mighty phonograph that echoes back the joy and
the sorrow, the glory and the shame of the generation it
serves. I have no more quarrel with editors for filling their
columns with inanities than casting shadows when they
stand in the sun. They know what kind of mental pabulum
their people crave, and they are no more in business for their
health than is the merchant. They know that should they
print the grandest sermon that ever fell from Massillon's
lips of gold not 20 per cent., even of the professedly pious,
would read it; but that a detailed account of a fragrant di-
vorce case or international prize-fight will cause 99 per cent,
of the very elect of the Lord to swoop down upon it like
a hungry hen-hawk on an unripe gosling and fairly devour
it, then roll their eyes to heaven like a calf with the colic
and wonder what this wicked old world is coming to. The
editor knows that half the people who pretend to be filled
to overflowing with the grace of God are only perambulating
pillars of pure Gall. He knows that the very people who
criticise him for printing accounts of crimes and making
spreads on sporting events, would transfer their patronage
to other papers if he heeded their howling that they are
talking for effect thro' the crown of their felts.
Speaking of prize-fights reminds me that a governor who,
after winking at a hundred brutal slugging matches, puts his
106 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
state to the expense, of a legislative session to prevent a pair
of gladiators pounding each other with soft gloves, is not
suffering for lack of Gall ; that those pious souls who never
suspected that pugilism was an insult to our civilization un-
til they got a good opportunity to make a grand-stand play,
then whereased and resoluted themselves black in the face
anent its brutality, should be presented with a medal of pure
brass. Politics is said to make strange bed-fellows, but I
scarce expected to see a shoe-string gambler and would-be
Don Juan lauded by ministerial associations as "our heroic
young Christian governor."
Gall? Why, Geo. Clark presumes to give Bismarck
pointers and congress advice. Nobody knows so well how
to manage a husband as an old maid. A bachelor can give
the father of a village pointers on the training of boys. Our
Northern neighbors know exactly how to deal with the
nigger. The man who would starve but for the industry of
his wife feels competent to manage the finances of the coun-
try. People who couldn't be trusted to wean a calf, tell
us all about the Creator of the Cosmos. Sam Jones wants
to debate with Bob Ingersoll, and every forks-of-the-creek
economist takes a hard fall out of Henry George. The
A. P. A. agitators prate loudly of freedom of conscience and
insist on disfranchising the Catholics. We boast of reli-
gious liberty, then enact iron-clad Sunday laws that compel
Jew and pagan to conform to our creed or go to prison.
The prohibs want to confine the whole world to cold water
because their leaders haven't sufficient stamina to stay sober.
Men who fail to make a living at honest labor insist on
entering the public service. Political parties charge up to
each other the adverse decrees of Providence. Atheists
deny the existence of God because he doesn't move in their
set, while ministers assume that a criticism of themselves is
an insult to the Creator.
But to detain you longer were to give a practical illustra-
tion of my text. I will be told that Gall is a necessary evil ;
that a certain amount of audacity, of native impudence, is
necessary to success. I deny it. Fame and wealth and
power constitute our ideal of success folly born of false-
hood. Only the useful are successful. Father Damien was
the grandest success of the century ; Alexander of Macedon
the most miserable failure known to human history with
the possible exception of Grover Cleveland. Alexander
employed his genius to conquer the Orient and Cleveland
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 107
his stupidity to ruin the Occident. The kingdom of the
one went to pieces, and the party of the other is now
posing as the lost tribe of the political Israel !
Success? A Gould must give up his gold at the grave,
the sovereign surrender his sceptre, the very gods are in
time forgotten are swallowed up in the voiceless, viewless
past, hidden by the shadows of the centuries. Why should
men strive for fame, that feather in the cap of fools, when
nations and peoples perish like the flowers and are forgotten
when even continents fade from the great world's face
and the ocean's bed becomes the mountain's brow. Why
strive for power, that passes like the perfume of the dawn,
and leaves prince and pauper peers in death? Why should
man, made in the mortal image of immortal God, become
the subservient slave of Greed and barter all of time for
a handful of yellow dross to cast upon the threshold of eter-
nity? "Poor and content is rich," and rich enough. With
a roof to shelter those his heart holds dear, and table fur-
nished forth with frugal fare; with manhood's dauntless
courage and woman's deathless love, the peasant in his lowly
cot may be richer far than the prince in his imperial hall.
Success ? I would rather be a fox and steal fat geese than
a miserly millionaire and prey upon the misfortunes of my
fellows. I would rather be a doodle-bug burrowing in the
dust than a plotting politician, trying to inflate a second-
term gubernatorial boom with the fetid breath of a foul hy-
pocrisy. I would rather be a peddler of hot peanuts than
a President who gives to bond-grabbers and boodlers privi-
lege to despoil the pantries of the poor. I would rather be
a louse on the head of a lazar than lord high executioner of
a theological college that, to preserve its reputation and fill
its coffers with filthy lucre, brands an orphan babe as a
bawd. I would rather watch the stars shining, down thro'
blue immensity, and the cool mists creeping round the pur-
ple hills, than feast my eyes on all the tawdry treasures of
Ophir and of Ind. I would rather play a corn-stalk fiddle
while pickaninnies dance, than build, of widows' sighs and
orphans' tears, a flimsy bubble of fame to be blown adown
the narrow beach of Time into Eternity's shoreless sea. I
would rather be the beggar lord of a lodge in the wilderness,
dress in a suit of sunburn and live on hominy and hope, yet
see the love-light blaze unbought in truthful eyes, than to
be the marauding emperor of the mighty world, and know
not who fawned upon the master and who esteemed the
man.
108 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
INCOME TAX DECISION.
The Supreme Court of the United States has taken a
whirl at the income tax law and left it looking like a picnic
suit after a shower. The bigwigs agreed to disagree on
pretty nearly every point in controversy, deciding only two,
and these in utter disregard of the laws of logic and the dic-
tates of common sense. Chief Justice Fuller gravely declares
that incomes derived from state, county and municipal bonds,
(amounting to $65,000,000 per annum) "are not proper sub-
jects for the taxing powers of Congress.'' If not, why not?
The federal government is supported by revenues drawn
from the people who constitute the various local govern-
ments, and upon whom congress is empowered by the con-
stitution to levy a direct tax. Any property is depreciated
in value by the amount of the tax laid upon it. Then where-
in is it more objectionable for Congress to depreciate the
value of Texas bonds than the value of the property pledged
for their redemption? The difference would seem to con-
sist in the fact that state, county and municipal securities
yielding a revenue of $65,000,000 per annum have passed
into the hands of the monied aristocracy who must be pro-
tected, while the property from which so much interest is
yearly wrung is largely in the possession of the masses
who are "proper subjects for the taxing power of Con-
gress." If I own a little home in Waco I am taxed to pay
interest on bonds issued by state, county and municipality,
and may be mulcted for the support of the federal govern-
ment ; but the millionaire into whose plethoric purse the in-
terest goes must not be troubled by Uncle Sam's tax collect-
ors. So says the court. The income of A, derived from culti-
vating cotton or planting hogs, is a "proper subject for the
taxing power of Congress," while the income of B, derived
from state, county or municipal six per-cents, is not ! Had
the law been upheld, buyers of future bond issues would
unquestionably shift the tax upon the people emitting them ;
but to urge their exemption on that account were a plea for
the exemption of merchants and manufacturers, telegraph
companies and common carriers. Had the law been upheld
the tax upon that $65,000,000 per annum now derived from
state, county and municipal bonds, and amounting to more
than $1,300,000, would have been borne exclusively by the
holders would have constituted a true income tax as in-
tended by Congress, because it could not have been shifted
to other shoulders. The best clause in the entire law
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 109
granting the wisdom of an income tax has been knocked
out, not because it was unconstitutional, (for the Chief Jus-
tice did not so declare it), but because it displeased the
court, which appears to have made the plutocrat its especial
protege. The second point decided by the court was that
a tax on incomes derived from land were equivalent to a
direct tax upon the land itself, therefore, inadmissible unless
apportioned as provided by the Constitution. If this be
sound logic, then the Supreme Court has stricken out the
enacting clause of the law in question; it is dead from nozzle
to narrative, and we might just as well call off the col-
lectors. With this utterance of Chief Justice Fuller for
premise, the conclusion must inevitably follow that a tax on
income derived from any class of property whatsoever is
equivalent to a direct tax, therefore, unless apportioned, un-
constitutional and void. It were clearly absurd to say that
a tax on income derived from land is "direct," while that on
incomes derived from buildings, mines, cattle, newspapers,
professions, etc., is "indirect." That kind of hair-splitting
would disgrace a forks-of-the-creek economist or profes-
sional shyster. If a tax on rent is a direct tax, what the
devil is a tax on salary the reward of individual effort?
"What," asks Chief Justice Fuller, "is the land but the
profit on it?" And what, we ask, is any class of property,
profession or occupation but "the profit on it ?" The idea of
the framers of the income tax law was to compel every man
to contribute to the support of government according to his
abilities rather than his necessities; but the Supreme Court
has practically declared that "Unto every one that hath shall
be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that
hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."
SANCTIFICATION AND THE SWORD.'
ANOTHER "TEA PARTY" PENDING.
One of the leaders of the crusade for disestablishment in
Wales writes the Iconoclast from Manchester, England, as
follows :
"I hope to live to see the complete separation of church and state
throughout the civilized world. I am a churchman, but the church
and state should be kept as far apart as possible. America is my
ideal. There the government of man and the government of God
are separate and distinct, the one compulsory, the other entirely a
matter of conscience."
110 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
I much fear that my English friend is not a close student
of American institutions or he would look elsewhere for his
"ideal." He has yet to learn that even here in this boast-
ed land of liberty "the government of man and the gov-
ernment of God" are still starring as Siamese twins and that
the latter is no less compulsory than its companion. He
has evidently not heard that the American citizen, whether
he be Jew or Gentile, Christian or Atheist, is compelled to
cough up an extra sum to the tax collector in order that
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of church property
may escape the government mulct and legislative bodies be
provided with matin prayers paid for at the rate of $5 a
minute from the public purse. He has probably never seen
a great American state selling a widow's home or auc-
tioning off her cow to satisfy a tax assessment, while the
bells of a costly church in the same block pealed merrily^as
tho' praising God that it had a "pull" on the government.
Nor has he carefully examined the Sunday laws here in
force or he would not assert that with us "the government
of God is entirely a matter of conscience." Uncle Sam has
evidently deceived our correspondent and has well nigh
humbugged himself with his foolish boasts of "religious
liberty," "freedom of conscience," etc. Our states are prac-
tically theocracies, our legislatures ecumenical councils by
which those religious dogmas entertained by the majority
are declared the law of the land and enforced by judicial
process, the posse comitatus and the entire military force at
the command of the government. We might at least expect
that beneath the Lone Star, that especial child of liberty, the
state would eschew the sacerdotal character and confine it-
self strictly to secular matters ; yet our legislatures are fully
persuaded that they are in duty bound to guard both the
spiritual and temporal welfare of the citizen that they
have been duly ordained to administer the government of
both man and God. Texas plumes herself on being "the
banner democratic state," has much to say anent personal
liberty and local self-government and never tires of pointing
the finger of scorn at sumptuary laws ; yet her statutes make
it a misdemeanor punishable by fine which the offender
must lay out in prison if he cannot pay to labor, sell
goods, or open a place of amusement in any section of the
state, regardless of the religious predilections of the people.
Here we have a conservation of the spirit of the Spanish
Inquisition showing itself as boldly as it dares, the fag-end
of that early New England fanaticism and tongue-boring
cropping out where a big democratic majority is swinging
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 111
its sombrero and cracking its lungs howling for personal
liberty !
Think of throwing an American citizen into jail in this,
the last decade of the Nineteenth century, for shaving a
"sovereign" or selling a cigar on Sunday; for an offense,
not against his fellow man but against that great God who
created the heavens and the earth and incidentally "made
the stars also" threw them in as lagniappe ! Yes, think of
it; then contemplate a people boasting their independence
and posing as the very apotheosis of progress, tamely sub-
mitting to such a flagrant infringement of their divine rights
and constitutional prerogatives !
But "the old order changeth, yielding place to new." Our
English correspondent has probably heard that it changed in
1776. At this time there was in Great Britain a fat-headed
fellow who played the divine racket on the American peo-
ple much as the priests and preachers are doing to-day.
He assumed that he had been divinely ordained to decide
what was best for them that they were in duty bound to
obey, pay taxes and look pleasant. They took his presump-
tion in good part for a great many years, but when he got
to rubbing it in they grew restless and began to file pro-
tests much as they are doing now, and with the same un-
satisfactory results. At that time to question the preroga-
tive of princes to do as they pleased with the common people
was regarded as almost as great a sin as "Sabbath desecra-
tion" is to-day, and as King George was in the majority he
simply sneered at the recalcitrants, rubbed a little more holy
oil on his divine right and went ahead with his hog-killing.
Finally the famous tea party, which had been so long brew-
ing, was held in Boston harbor and for eight long years
there was h 1 to pay and a distressing stringency in the
money market. Another tea party is rapidly getting ripe,
and when it is over and the cups and saucers returned to the
cupboard there'll be no "blue laws" in Uncle Sam's baili-
wick, costly churches will be taxed just the same as the poor
man's cottage, and legislators who desire to indulge in the
luxury of $5~a-minute Protestant prayers will not rob Cath-
olic, infidel and Jewish pantries to pay the sacred wind-
jammer, but go down into their own jeans for the price of
saving Grace.
We could stand taxation for church purposes without
representation in the amen corner if our sanctified brethren
would refrain from adding injuries that benefit nobody, then
presenting us with choice specimens of unprovoked inso-
lence simply to reduce their superabundant stock ; but when
112 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
a man cheerfully puts up his pro-rata for perfunctory pray-
ers and the exemption of church property from all taxation,
then finds himself persistently boycotted both in politics and
business by the people he has befriended, denounced from
the pulpit as an emissary of the devil by flannelmouthed
preachers who are indirectly fattening- upon his substance,
and rendered an abject slave one-seventh of his life by the
laws of his native land simply because an emperor who died
1,500 years ago was an unmitigated ass, he feels like ex-
changing his stock of Christian charity for a stuffed club
and asserting his rights as a free-born American citizen.
Nearly nineteen centuries ago Christ informed the Phar-
isees that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for
the Sabbath," but that extensive sect of sacred mummers
still cling tenaciously to the interdicted dogma. They de-
clare it criminal to do on Sunday what is eminently proper
on other days, and, being in a majority, they enact an iron-
clad law compelling Jew and Gentile to conform to their
theological faith. And what excuse have they to offer for
this insolent interference with individual liberty, the abro-
gation of that "freedom of conscience" guaranteed us by
the Conscript Fathers? Sam Jones sums it up when he
says: "The citizen has no right to do wrong." True, oh
reverend blather-skite ; but who authorized you to decide for
the American citizen what is right and wrong, theologically
considered? Produce your credentials, Sir Garrulity, or
come off the grass. Another lippy member of the black
army Talmage, I believe has told us that "the majority
has a right to say how the Sabbath shall be observed." In-
deed? Then it also has a right to say what day shall be
accepted as the Sabbath by the entire people ; hence it fol-
lows that if the Jews and Seventh Day Adventists should
eventually find themselves in the majority they would be
privileged to make Saturday the legal Sabbath and compel
its rigid observance as such by all other sects. The con-
sistent Christian could then harvest his hooppoles or dig
fishbait on the first day of the week "in the fear of the
Lord." Having issued his ipse dixit, we invite Brother
Talmage to loaf around^it and see how he likes it. This
being the country of majority rule in religion as well as in
matters mundane, it follows that what is sauce for the Chris-
tian goose is sauce for the Hebrew gander.
Good soul, who made thee thy brother's keeper? Where
in the constitution of your country or the teachings of your
Saviour do you learn it to be your duty to lay violent hands
upon a worldling and drag him, squirming and kicking
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 113
perhaps cursing to the Throne of God? Produce your
authority for employing the jails of this country to propa-
gate the Christian religion for cramming its forms and
symbols down the throat of thy fellow man with a police-
man's bludgeon. What is it to thee if I till my field, sell
my goods or list to some aspiring Roscious spout Eurip-
ides on Sunday? Does it compel thee to do likewise?
Does it interfere with your freedom or abridge your prero-
gatives, endanger your health or cost you a copper? Will
the blessed Saviour compel you to answer for my sins and
send you to hades as a "vicarous atonement" while I roost
on some roseate cloud in company with a halo and a harp
and attended by a choice assortment of she-angels! No?
Then please to forbear further interference in my affairs.
If I feel the need of your assistance to reach the Throne of
Grace I'll so inform you. I may prefer to deal with the
Almighty direct and without the officious intervention of a
middle-man to map out my own path to the heavenly here-
after without the assistance of a theological surveyor. Your
religion is really bile instead of benevolence. Instead of a
crown you need a cathartic. You have mistaken an abnor-
mal itch for meddling for the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
You prattle about the "desecration of the Sabbath" when
the very niggers know that Christ had no more to do with
its establishment than Moses with making the Fourth of
July an American holiday that it was not sanctioned by the
Father, the Son or any of the original Saints. You would,
if clothed with plenary power, compel every son of Adam to
accept your narrow-gauge creed and "worship God accord-
ing to the dictates of your so-called conscience instead of his
own. You have altogether mistaken the spirit and ignored
the letter of that message which Christ brought to mankind.
It was a message of Love and Liberty, while you are the
apostle of Slavery, the apotheosis of Persecution.
"Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest," saith the Lord. "Jog along to
your Jesus or go to jail," says the state. When encom-
passed by his enemies in the Garden of Gethsemane Christ
rebuked that follower who employed force in his defense.
"Put up again thy sword into his place ; for all they that
take the sword shall perish by the sword."
Yet his so-called followers here in Texas rely upon the
sword, not to protect their dear Lord from ignominious
death, but to prevent some impecunious publican wrecking
the New Jerusalem and throwing Omnipotent God into a
fit of the sulks by selling a popcorn ball on Sunday.
114 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
assume that every utterance of the Saviour was a divine
truth which must, perforce, be fulfilled to the very letter,
yet persist in playing with edge-tools.
That religion which must rely upon secular law is inher-
ently rotten. That religion which appeals to brute force to
secure respect is not of God but the devil, therefore, not
worthy of the devotion of a yaller dog.
"But Sunday laws are necessary as a police regulation,"
I am told. Indeed? Is there aught in the Lord's day cal-
culated to multiply criminal deeds? Is it possible that 'extra
precautions must be taken on Emperor Constantine's "Holy
Sabbath" to stay the hand of the homicide? Can it be that
when a million Christian prayers are ascending like incense
to the Throne of God and ten thousand preachers turning
an honest penny that people are seized with an unnatural
impulse to despoil their neighbors ? This being the conceded
effect of the Christian Sabbath it would appear desirable to
abolish it altogether "as a police regulation," and the quicker
the better.
NO CROSS-EYED CLERGYMEN.
The Methodist Episcopal Conference, recently assembled
in New York, created something of a sensation by rejecting
a candidate for clerical honors because he was cross-eyed.
He had studied three years for the ministry and outstripped
all his classmates, was admittedly intelligent and of unex-
ceptionable morals ; but strabismus was regarded by the theo-
logical solons as an insuperable objection, and he was re-
jected. Many worthy brethren have sharply criticised the
action of the conference, but The Iconoclast is inclined to
commend it. No man who can look two "ways at once has
any business in the Methodist ministry; he might see too
much for a successful exponent of sectarianism. Further-
more, those sanctified gentlemen who assembled in the me-
tropolis of the most enlightened nation the world ever knew,
were obeying the imperative command of the Creator as
expressed in the Bible, hence a criticism of their action were
akin to blasphemy. In the Twenty-first chapter of Leviticus
we learn that
"The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron saying,
Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any
blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God; for
whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach:
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 115
A blind man ; or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything
superfluous; or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, or
crook-backed, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be
scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken ... he shall not
go into the vail nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a
blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries."
No intellectual qualifications whatever were suggested,
they evidently being considered as superfluous it was sim-
ply stipulated that the priest, like the sacrificial bull, should
be a perfect animal, and that he attire himself in "garments
for glory and beauty." To the credit of the various relig-
ious denominations be it said that in selecting their priests
and preachers they have adhered pretty closely to the orig-
inal plans and specifications. Whenever they have departed
therefrom in any marked degree a heresy trial has been
sent to trouble them a swift and awful "judgment" for
their sin.
Whether the Lord really gave such a command to Moses,
or the latter dreamed it while lying in the dusky arms of
his Ethiopian wife, it is not my province to determine; but
as a general law, intended to cull out the slick stock for the
clergy, it has much to commend it. It were clearly absurd
to select the finest specimens of physical manhood to
defend the country from fellow mortals, leaving the
"scurvy" and the "scabbed" to lead the scattering army of
the Lord against the legions of the devil. Whether flat
heads be preferable to flat noses, crooked morals to curved
backs and spavined intellect to procreative impotence, can
not be considered by the truly orthodox as a debatable ques-
tion.
Now that the Methodist church has undertaken to make
its ministry conform to the Mosaic standard we trust that
it will not weary in well-doing, but make thorough work
of it. The Iconoclast, as the unswerving friend of religious
reform, suggests that each candidate be subjected to a rigid
medical examination and a system of physical tests in
order that the ministerial stud may consist exclusively of
thoroughbreds. It would first be necessary to take the
aspirant's altitude, as "Little Giants" were not considered
eligible by the God of the Jews. Having found that his
coat-tails hung sufficiently far from the earth, the next step
will be to bring him in purls naturalibus before the board of
examiners, who will determine whether he has "'anything
superfluous," then either fire him out or forward him on to
the officiating Muldoon to be tested in "wind and limb. Hav-
ing passed this ordeal successfully, his eyes will be exam-
116 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ined by an expert oculist, and if it be found that he can
look through a keyhole with both at once, this fact will
be duly certified and a civil engineer appointed to survey
his proboscis and make report. If he finds that it is an
incipient mountain peak instead of a lowly campagna the
candidate will be duly licensed to preach to carry saving
grace to godless sinners.
It is imperative that we have in our fashionable pulpits
preachers who will harmonize with their recherche sur-
roundings. Placing a hunchback, a cross-eyed man or one
with an amorphous snout like that of old Socrates amid
the gorgeous trappings of a hundred thousand dollar tem-
ple were an insufferable sin against the estheticism of the
age. True, Christ was no brute, if we may believe Isaiah,
who we are assured was referring to the Saviour when he
said: "His visage was more marred than any man, and
his form than the sons of men." The Jews "saw no beauty
in him," and the Rev. George C. Needham, in his appendix
to the Bible, intimates that physically he was a fright.
St. Paul was so horribly homely that the ladies avoided
him, and he played for even by putting- a time-lock on their
mouths and discountenancing marriage. None of the
Apostles, so far as we can gather, were calculated to adorn
a fashionable pulpit or cause the hearts of the sisters to pal-
pitate with suspicious piety. They traveled extensively,
but not on their shape. But we are building neither
churches nor ministers on the model supplied us by the
Son of Mary. This is "a progressive age" and the Metho-
dist church has at last caught up with Moses.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE.
The so-called Monroe Doctrine has kept Uncle Sam in
hot water for three-quarters of a century and bids fair to
embroil him in one of the bloodiest wars known to the
world's history if he persists in exploiting it. In 1823,
when it was^ suspected that the Holy Alliance would attempt
to ^ re-establish Spain's dominion over her revolted col-
onies, President Monroe, in a message to Congress, enunci-
ated the "doctrine" that bears his name, but which doubt-
less emanated from that eminent jingoist, John Quincy
Adams, then Secretary of State. Monroe declared that the
American continents "are henceforth not to be considered
as subjects for future colonization by any European Power,"
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 117
and particularly warned the respective members of the
Holy Alliance that "we should consider any attempt on
their part to extend their system to any portion of the west-
ern hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."
Then, to make his meaning so plain that none might mis-
take it, he added, referring to the cisatlantic governments
then struggling for life, that "we could not view any inter-
position for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling
in any other manner their destiny, by any European Power,
in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States."
If that means anything whatsoever it means that the
United States has established a quasi-protectorate over the
smaller American governments, so far as Europe is con-
cerned that Uncle Sam is the self-constituted bouncer of
the western hemisphere and proposes to serve without
salary. Several Texas dailies have consumed considerable
editorial space trying to give it a different construction;
but unless we agree with Talleyrand that "language was
made to conceal thought," we must concede that the Mon-
roe pronunciamento means exactly what it says. Jefferson
was consulted on the subject by the Monroe administration
before the delivery of the message and he declared, after
referring to the importance of the question, that "we should
never suffer Europe to intermeddle with cisatlantic affairs."
Webster, who certainly understood the English tongue,
gave it this interpretation and his hearty endorsement so
far as those countries bordering on the Mexican gulf are
concerned. It is urged by certain political sophists that,
even conceding the message to have meant all it said, and
to constitute our policy to-day, it does not follow that we
would take up arms to enforce it. To assume that Uncle
Sam would solemnly warn European governments to keep
off the cisatlantic grass, then fail to back his bluff with
powder and ball ; that he would suffer his "peace and safety"
to be endangered without writing his protest in blood if
need be, were to brand him a cowardly bully.
The Monroe Doctrine declares in diplomatic but unequi-
vocal language that if Europe monkeys with any portion of
the western hemisphere which has set up political house-
keeping for itself, she will run afoul of the American eagle,
and there'll be, as Sam Jones would say in his aesthetic
pulpit vernacular, "blood and hair and the ground tore up."
It assumes our right to inquire into such controversies as
that of England vs. Venezuela, and to interfere, if need be,
to prevent "oppression" by the transatlantic Power, or
118 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
any tampering with the "destiny" of the little Republic.
Such is the common-sense construction of the Monroe Doc-
trine by the world's diplomats; so it has been understood
for two-and-seventy years by the people of every American
government.
The Monroe Doctrine, like a defunct feline in the family
cistern, can not be explained away ; it must be removed.
It is illogical, useless, productive of nothing but interna-
tional ill-will. A protectorate implies responsibilities. If
we will not permit European Powers to forcibly collect their
dues of our neighbors or chastise their insolence, we become
morally bound for their debts and responsible for their be-
havior. The Monroe Doctrine not only denies to Spain the
right to reconquer Mexico, but would prevent the latter
again becoming a Spanish province by the expressed will
of her people, hence it is the tool of tyranny as well as the
aegis of Liberty.
What can this country hope to gain by playing continent-
al policeman at its own expense? Monroe declares that
we must consider the extension of European authority "to
any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace
and safety." But that was seventy-two years ago, when Uncle
Sam was in his swaddling clothes and, quite naturally,
much concerned about the character of his neighbors. But
time has amply demonstrated the uselessness of Monroe's
anxiety. England owns everything to the north and other
European Powers once controlled everything to the south
and west of us, including a large tract of our present terri-
tory, yet the bird o' freedom never moulted a feather. If
John Bull should put all South America into his capacious
political pocket it would in nowise endanger the "peace
and safety" of Uncle Sam. The Briton could not turn the
wild beasts and reptiles of that practically unpopulated
region loose upon us as he did the redskins during the
Revolution. In case of war such possession would weaken
him, and he would be unable to hold it after it became
worth the having. As soon as the American colonies quit
calling on him for troops to defend their frontier they arose
and smote him in the umbilicus, and we have to close the
door to keep Canada from coming into the Union and
bringing her sky-scraping Dominion debt with her. Spain
lost Mexico and her South American possessions and is
having a hades of a time holding Cuba. Brazil slipped
through the fingers of Portugal like a greased pig, France
has practically faded from the map of the New World, and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 119
even the kindly offices of Grover Cleveland could not keep
monarchy alive in the mid-Pacific.
Really we need not worry about any seed the European
monarchies may sow in American soil. The climate is not
adapted to that kind of a political crop. About the time
it gets a good start and promises to make a bale to the
acre a revolutionary cyclone rips it up by the roots. It is
not necessary that this government the most powerful on
the globe should "view with alarm" every European foot-
print in the western world, nor is it under any obligation to
afford protection at its own expense to opera bouffe Repub-
lics. About the first thing a Spanish American government
does after donning its initial diaper, is to flagrantly insult
the American flag. Uncle Sam had serious trouble with
Mexico, and the heteroscian pismires are continually crawl-
ing up the old man's pants. There is not a country between
our southern boundary and the Antartic circle in which an
American citizen is safe from official insult ; yet whenever a
European Power proposes to hold one of these single-shovel
"Republics" up by the ear and pound the impudence out
of it, it turns to us for protection. They are Republics de
jure but despotisms de facto, and the cause of Liberty would
suffer no loss if they were all made subject to the Russian
czar. Madame Roland truly said that many crimes are
committed in the name of Liberty, but even she never
dreamed of aught so damnable as the wholesale sacrifice of
Anglo-Saxons at the foolish shrine of a mongrel despotism
masquerading in the robe of Freedom. Uncle Sam has
been starring in the ridiculous role of Don Quixote quite
long enough, and should now give the Spanish cavaleros
and half-civilized Aborigines to the south of us to distinctly
understand that they must work out their own salvation ;
that he desires "Peace, commerce and honest friendship
with all nations entangling alliances with none."
THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER.
The locomotive engineer is to the village-bred boy of to-
day what the stage-driver was to the youth of his grandsire.
The brakeman who can ride all day on top of a box car,
and the passenger-train conductor, with his gaudy cap and
Mardi Gras lantern, pale into insignificance beside the man
who manages the iron horse. Machinery possesses a weird
fascination for the American youth, and the locomotive is
120 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
to all other mechanism what a shotgun is to a "nigger-
shooter." It adds to its attractions the romance of travel
is to the boys of the interior what a ship is to those reared
within the sound of the sea.
At the age of ten I was so infatuated with locomotives
that to get possession of one I stole an entire freight train.
It was standing on the main track in my native village,
the crew had abandoned it to investigate a big watermelon
which the station agent had opened, and I improved the
opportunity to penetrate the mysteries of the engineer's
cab. I had no intention of meddling with the iron monster,
but when I got my hand on the lever the temptation to
set the big drivers in motion was too strong to be resisted.
The train started so easily that it did not attract the attention
of the hilarious crew in the freight-house until it went roar-
ing across Flat Branch bridge and on towards Mattoon at
a good round gait. I decided that I might as well be
hanged for an old sheep as a lamb, and pulled the throttle
open a little wider, whistling and ringing the bell for all
the crossings and pretty much everything else in sight. A
mule got on the track in front of me, and I was so fearful
he would escape that I gave the lever another lusty pull.
The train fairly bounded forward and the telegraph poles
seemed thick as fence posts. I got the mule spread him
all over the smoke-stack. By this time I had the lever
down among the tallow pots was making the highest speed
the machine was capable of. The great iron monster
swayed and groaned, the cars seemed bowing to both sides
of the right-o'-way, and I was delirious with joy. Mattoon
was in sight, and I determined to go through the town like
a whirlwind, on to Cairo and take a look at the two big
rivers. I was leaning out of the cab window trying to make
out the figures on the mile-posts when I was suddenly pulled
by the ear. Instead of joining the watermelon debauch
the conductor had lain down in the caboose and gone to
sleep. When the "dog house" began to dance on one wheel
he awoke and realized that there was something wrong.
He crawled over the boxes at the imminent risk of his life
to expostulate with the engineer. While he was bringing
the train to a standstill I debated whether I should run
away or go back home and take the worst licking of my life.
The conductor solved the problem for me ; I went back. I
have a very vivid recollection of the events immediately sub-
sequent thereto, but as they could not possibly possess that
absorbing interest for the general public that they did for
me I will let them pass.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 121
The locomotive engineers constitute a peculiar class that
is neither understood nor appreciated by the general public.
Sober, silent, alert, with the time-table for their Bible and
the train dispatcher's written orders for their creed, they dis-
charge their dangerous duty. If a soldier loses his little
finger in the service of his country he is voted a hero and
given a pension. When a locomotive engineer deliberately
goes to his death to protect the lives of others and the prop-
erty committed to his care, his reward is a few lines in the
daily press. Such occurrences are too common to excite
comment.
If all the dangers of the rail were as patent to the public
as to the man at the throttle there would be precious little
traveling for "pleasure." The public hears only of the ac-
cidents that occur, not of the thousands averted by the cool
judgment and leonine courage of the man in the cab.
Mounted upon his iron steed, with its heart of fire and
breath of flame, he goes rushing through the midnight storm
at the rate of 50 miles an hour, dragging in his "wake a heavy
train filled with precious human freight. He may know
that the speed is too rapid for either the track or rolling
stock, but the time-table calls for it and it must come. Per-
haps around the next curve he will find a culvert washed
out or the track obstructed by a "cave-in." The rails may
spread out at any moment, or the next switch be misplaced.
Sleepy dispatchers sometimes blunder and a collision may
occur; but he can only keep his eye on the slippery track,
his hand on the lever, and go plunging on. If an accident
occurs those in the coaches must escape with only a shak-
ing up, regardless of what happens to him. He must stand
at his post like a Roman sentinel tho' the heavens rain fire.
To the man at the throttle his engine is no dull, dead
piece of mechanism, but a living, sentient creature, to be
praised when it does well and rebuked when it does ill. It
responds to his touch like a well trained steed and he be-
comes devotedly attached to it talks to it as a good jockey
does to his horse.
It is the end of a long night run with a heavy train, on a
sinuous, ill-constructed ' track a veritable serpent of rust
resting upon rotten ties. The engineer has scarce spoken
a word except to quote a little sacred blank verse when the
new brakeman, who had turned a switch to let him in on
a siding, turned it back to let him out. Even his orders to
the fireman are given by a motion of the hand. But as we
strike the stiff home grade his demeanor changes. He
122 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
uncurls from his bench and looks back at the train, then
surveys his engine as though measuring its strength.
"Now, old girl, you've got to hustle for it. Pull yourself
together and sand your feet. Here, here ! no skirt-dancing,
madam! This is no John Bell joint. Steady, old girl
steady/'
The great machine plunges at the grade and struggles
like a living creature, the sharp puffs waking the echoes
far and wide amid the sombre pines, upon whose tall tops
rests the morning mist, reddened by the rising sun. The
engineer coaxes, as a driver might a willing horse, and the
machine, which seems to understand him, responds with
greater exertions, but the heavy loads roll slower and slow-
er, the drivers slip despite the sand, emitting a million me-
tallic sparks the "old girl" is stalled. A short, sharp
whistle, that sounds like the shriek of some sentient animal
for aid, the three rear brakes are hard set, and up on this
buttress the train rolls slowly back. The engineer is pre-
paring to "take the slack." His engine is no longer "old
girl" and "sweatheart," but the most disreputable drab that
ever inhabited Happy Hollow or got listed in the blue
book of New York's Four Hundred. Locomotive en-
gineers are not much addicted to gab they are nothing if
not epigrammatic and when they speak are liable to say
something. The engine stands for a minute as tho' heartily
ashamed of itself, panting like a brown roadster, then
springs forward with a bound. The cars follow, each in its
turn, with a rattling jerk that tests the drawheads, until
the last are reached, when the brakes are quickly released,
and "madam," having retrieved her moral character, goes
puffing proudly into port.
A year later I sat by the bedside of the same engineer
while he breathed his life away crushed and scalded at the
post of duty. Again he was out on his "run," striving
desperately to make time with a heavy train.
"The last grade, my girl; climb that and we're home.
Molly's waiting, and so are the kids, to see you come round
the curve. What! Can't keep your feet? You must do
better than that or we'll never get in. How dark it is !
Tom, did you douse that glim ? I can't see the rails ! There's
the station light now we roll now we " and he had
climbed the "last grade."
No one troubled with what is sometimes called "nerves"
has the least business with a locomotive. To manage one
and at the same time enjoy good health requires not only
superior courage, but a stoicism worthy of a Sioux warrior.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST -123
The locomotive engineers shoulder graver responsibilities
and face more dangers than almost any other class of men
that could be mentioned. And this for a salary that would
not satisfy a competent book-keeper.
One night, while northbound with the Fast Mail, we re-
ceived orders to look out for a brakeman "who was supposed
to have fallen from a southbound freight.
"Who is it?" asked the engineer.
"Damfino," replied the pert young operator. "Think
it's the Scotchman they call Sandy. What's the matter,
old man? Seen a ghost?" But the engineer climbed into
the cab without a word. There was something in his throat
that would not permit of words.
"You d d fool, Sandy's his son," said the conductor as
he gave the signal to go ahead. I offered to handle the en-
gine, but he only shook his head.
We are an hour late and are expected to move as fast as
"66" can turn a wheel. A heavy fog is hugging the earth
and at a hundred yards the headlight resembles a splotch
of luminous vapor* a tallow dip whose flame had liquified.
We tear through the fog like a thunderbolt rending the
clouds, the buildings gliding by like ghosts, the engineer's
eyes fixed steadily upon the dripping rails that come rush-
ing out of the gloom. He knows to an inch what space
he can stop, to a foot how far he can see into the fog. San-
dy is safe so far as "66" is concerned. Ten miles, twenty,
thirty, and still no sign of the missing man, and I can see
the father is beginning to hope that it is a false alarm ; but
suddenly a prostrate figure, lying right across the rails,
comes rushing into view, so near that an involuntary cry
bursts from the lips of the fireman and he averts his face.
Quick as the lightning's flash the engine is reversed and the
air applied but the latter will not work ! The engineer
shrieks for the hand brakes, but it is too late. The re-
versed drivers churn the rails to a red heat, but the terrible
momentum of the heavy train cannot be overcome. Sandy
waves his hand to us, he half rises, his white face showing
ghastly beneath the headlight's glare. The sire dashes
thro' the cab window as tho' to snatch the son from the
very jaws of death, but ere he can reach the pilot it strikes
the upturned face, and we feel the jar of the engine and hear
the hiss of blood on the fire-box as he is ground beneath
the wheels.
124 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
BRANN VS. SLATTERY.
[Ex-Priest Joseph Slattery, in his lectures at Waco, Texas, in
the interests of the A. P. A., having bitterly denounced the
Iconoclast, Mr. Brann replied to him as follows:]
Fellow Americans: The Iconoclast does not please ex-
Priest Slattery, "Baptist minister in good standing," and I
am not surprised. Its mission, as its name implies, is to
expose Frauds and abolish Fakes, to make unrelenting war
upon Humbugs and Hypocrites; hence it is not remark-
able that Slattery should regard its existence as a personal
affront. It is ever the galled jade that winces; or, to bor-
row from the elegant pulpit vernacular of the Rev. Sam
Jones, "it's the hit dog that yelps."
Slattery would have you believe that I'm a rank atheist
who's trying to rip religion up by the roots and bang it
across a barbed wire fence in close companionship with the
hides of Protestant preachers This charge has been
hurled at me by various sectarian papers and malicious min-
isters ; but not one iota of evidence has ever been submitted.
It is simply a bald assertion born of sanctified malice, a
brazen libel, similar to that which charges the Pope with
trying to subvert the American government. I defy Slat-
tery and all that unclean brood of moral vultures, assassins
of character and thieves of reputation which trail in his
wake and applaud his infamies, to produce one line I ever
wrote, or quote one sentence I ever uttered disrespectful
of any religion, Pagan, Protestant or Catholic. If in the
wilds "of Central Africa I should find a man bowing down
to a dried toad, a stuffed snake or a Slattery, I'd remove
my hat as a tribute of respect, not to his judgment, but to
his honesty. I have no word of condemnation for any re-
ligious faith, however fatuous it may appear to me, that has
comforted the dying or consoled the living that has cast
one gleam of supernal sunshine into the dark vale where
grope, each beneath his burthen of sorrow, the sons of men.
I am not warring upon religious faith, but on falsehood ; not
upon Christ, but on those who disgrace his cause who
mistake bile for benevolence, gall for godliness and chronic
laziness for "a call to preach."
Nor have I taken the Pope of Rome under my apostolic
protection. The Popes managed to exist for a great many
years before I was born, and, despite the assaults of Slattery,
will doubtless continue in business at the old stand for sev-
eral years to come. I was raised a Protestant, and thank
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 125
God ! Fin i no apostate. I learned Protestantism at my
mother's knee, and from my father's pulpit; but I did not
learn there that the Church of Rome is the "Scarlet
Woman," nuns unclean creatures and priests the sworn
enemies of my country. I learned that but for the Church
of Rome the "glad tidings of great joy," which Christ
brought to a dying world, would have been irredeemably
lost in that dismal intellectual night known as the Dark
Ages. I was taught that for centuries the Church of Rome
was the repository, not only of the Christian faith, but of
civilization itself. I was taught that the Catholic is the
mother of the Protestant church, and that no matter how un-
worthy a parent may be, a child should not become the her-
ald of its mother's shame.
And while being taught my duty as a Protestant, my ed-
ucation as an American citizen was not neglected. I was
taught that this was a land of religious liberty, where every
man is privileged to worship God in his own way, or ignore
him altogether; that it was my 'duty to insist upon this right,
both for myself and for my fellows.
That is why I am the uncompromising enemy of the A.
P. A.
Any attempt to debar an American citizen from the hon-
ors and emoluments of a public office 'because of his reli-
gious faith, or non-faith, is a flagrant violation of a funda-
mental principle of this Republic. And no patriot; no
man in whose veins there pulses one drop of the blood of the
Conscript Fathers, or who would recognize the Goddess of
Liberty if he met her in the road ; no man imbued with the
tolerant spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ will aid or abet such
an un-Christian and un-American movement. The A. P.
A. is the bastard spawn of Ignorance and Intolerance, was
conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity.
There may be some honest men connected with the move-
ment; but if honest they should get their heads trepanned
to give their brains room to grow. They are as unable as
a mule-eared rabbit to comprehend either the broad princi-
ples upon which this government is grounded, or its polit-
ical and religious history. No man not even Judas
Iscariot Slattery is to blame for his ignorance; so we
should humbly pray, Father forgive them, they know not
what they do. Nor is the Church of Rome responsible
for the shameless apostate's lack of information. It did all
that it could to transform him from an ignorant little beggar
into an educated gentleman but even the Pope cannot
make a silk purse of a sow's ear. It is no fault of the
126 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Church of Rome that he's densely ignorant of the very text-
book truths of history ; that he knows less than nothing of
that Reformation of which he talks so glibly ; that he is un-
able to comprehend the genius of the government upon
which he has conferred his more or less valuable citizenship.
The fault, if fault it be, lies with the Almighty, who gave
him a bad heart and a worse head.
American Protective Association, eh? That signifies
that Uncle Sam is in need of protection. I had hitherto
supposed that the gentleman in the highwater pants and
star-bespangled cutaway was able to protect himself; but it
now appears that unless he crawls under the aegis of the re-
doubtable Slattery he is to again borrow from the most
popular of all Protestant divines "a gone sucker." Think
of placing Uncle Sam under the protection of a man who is
an apostate in religion and a renegade in politics of an
Irishman who apostrophizes the British flag ! Think of that
kind of a bird presuming to tell the grand-sons of Revolu-
tionary soldiers their duties as American citizens.
Slattery assures us that we need protection from the
Pope. There was a time when the proudest monarchs of
Europe trembled at the Papal nod ; but gradually the Pope
has been shorn of temporal power, confined ever more to
the realm of spiritual, until to-day he exerts about as little
influence on the political destiny of this world as does Dr.
Cranfill with his little Prohibition craze. But Slattery will
have it that the Pope is gradually undermining American
institutions leads us to infer that, sooner or later, he'll blow
our blessed constitution at the moon and scatter fragments
of the Goddess of Liberty from Dan to Beersheba, from
Cape Cod to Kalamazoo. The Pope, it appears, is a veri-
table Guy Faux, who is tunnelling beneath our national
capitol with a keg of giant powder in one hand and a box
of lucifer matches in the other. What's the evidence? Why,
out in San Francisco, so Slattery says but as Slattery's
been convicted of lying it were well to call for papers a
Catholic school-board was elected and employed only Cath-
olic teachers. The same awful thing happened in Detroit if
Slattery's telling the truth, which is doubtful in the extreme.
Then what? With a pride worthy a more American act,
this illogical idiot informs us that "when the Protestants cap-
tured the school-boards of those cities they discharged every
one of the Catholic teachers and put only good Protestants
on guard." And at that Baptist brethren with water on
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 127
the brain who boast of Roger Williams, cheered so loudly
as to be in danger of lockjaw. In the exuberant imagina-
tion of Slattery and his dupes there appears to be a wonder-
ful difference between tweedledum and tweeclledee. It
doesn't seem to have occurred to them that what is sauce
for the Protestant goose should be sauce for the Catholic
gander. They damn the Catholics for doing the very thing
for which they commend the Protestant. That's the logic
of the A. P. A. the Aggregation of Pusillanimous Asses.
In my humble opinion both were engaged in very small
business. The only difference in the offenders that I can
see is that while the Catholics are saying nothing, the Pro-
testants are loudly boasting of their vicious subversion of
the American principle of religious liberty. The circum-
stance is a sharp reminder that if we are to preserve a gov-
ernment of the people, for the people and by the people,
we've got to keep religion of all kinds out of our politics,
just as the framers of the federal constitution intended that
we should do. Mixing religion and politics is like mixing
whisky and water it spoils both.
Slattery would have you believe that our Catholic citizens
are simply emissaries of the Pope, to whom they owe alle-
giance both spiritual and temporal, and that they will, at
the first opportunity, subvert American institutions and
make this Nation simply a satrapy of the Vatican.
The American Catholic takes his theology from Rome ;
he takes his politics from the ecumenical council of his
party from the national convention of that partisan organi-
zation to which he may chance to belong.
That there can be no "Catholic conspiracy" against the
free institutions of this country must be evident to every
man of common sense from the simple fact that Catholics
are divided among all the political parties are continually
voting against each other. Now I appeal to your judg-
ment lay aside your religious prejudices for the moment
and look at the matter from a non-partisan, non-sectarian
standpoint: If our Catholic fellow citizens be under the
thumb of the Pope politically, as the apostate now evange-
lizing for the A. P. A. would have us believe; and if the
Pope desires to make himself temporal ruler of this land, or
in any manner direct its affairs, would they not be found
voting as a unit a mighty political machine instead of
being as badly divided on secular questions as the Baptists
themselves? San Antonio is a Catholic stronghold, yet a
prominent Roman Catholic was overwhelmingly defeated
in the last mayoralty election. And I could cite you hun-
128 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
dreds of instances where Catholics have voted against men
of their own religious faith and elected Protestants or in-
fidels.
Again: If the Pope is plotting against America; and if
all manner of crime be considered a virtue when committed
by Catholics in furtherance of his ends, as Slattery would
have you believe, then it were well to keep a sharp eye on
apostate priests. How are we to know that they are not
emissaries of the Vatican, commissioned to stir the Protest-
ants up to persecute their brethren in Christ and thereby
solidify the Catholic vote? No one, not even Slattery, has
accused the Pope of being a fool ; and certain it is that the
A. P. A. movement, if persisted in, will have the effect of
driving the Catholics of this country to political unity in
self-defense. Persecution, political ostracism for religious
opinion's sake, will infallibly bring about those very condi-
tions which Slattery, Hicks, et al. declare that the Pope de-
sires. The communicants of the Church of Rome will no
longer vote as Democrats or Republicans, but as Catholics
and then? With unlimited wealth, and such a political
machine at the command of a man so ambitious and unscru-
pulous as we are asked to believe the Pope to be, the cap-
ture of the federal government and the political domination
of this country were as easy as lying ! The Protestants, di-
vided into a hundred warring factions, many of them far-
ther apart theologically than Episcopalianism and Catholic-
ism, could offer no resistance to such a political machine,
and they would receive but cold comfort from the liberal
element, which has suffered so long from their petty perse-
cutions.
And I tell you Protestants right here, that if it be the
intention of the Church of Rome to transform this govern-
ment into a theocracy by fair means or by foul, then the
Pope is the real founder of the A. P. A. and Slattery's a
Papal spy.
According to the story of this self-constituted protector
of the American government, he studied Roman Catholic
theology for years, then officiated as a priest for eight more
before discovering anything immoral in the teachings of the
Mother Church, when it suddenly occurred to him that it
was but a tissue of falsehoods, a veritable cesspool of rot-
tenness. His transformation appears to have been almost
as sudden as that of Saul of Tarsus or that of Judas Iscar-
iot. I have no objection to his leaving the Catholic priest-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 129
hood his bishop stopped his pay. Like the servant maid
caught pilfering, he "gave notice, with the missus a pintin'
at the door." If Slattery believes that the Protestant
Through Line runs more comfortable cars to the great here-
after, he's welcome to take his ticket over that route; but I
would have thought better of him had he made the change
quietly and refrained from assaulting with the vindictiveness
of a renegade that church to which he owes his education,
such as it is ; had he treated the religion of his mother with
decency if not with respect.
I thought I had met all manner of men ; men hardened in
crime men destitute of even a semblance of shame; but
never before did I behold one with the hardihood to stand
up before American women and boast that he had incurred
a mother's curse. When a man falls so low in the scale
of human degradation that his own mother disowns him it
were well to watch him. When a creature asks strangers to
accept him because his relatives have rejected him; when,
for the sake of gain, he snaps like a mangy fice at the hand
that once fed him, and stings like a poisonous adder the
bosom that once nurtured him; when, to promote his per-
sonal ends, he will use his best endeavors to exterminate
religious liberty and precipitate a bloody sectarian war,
I tell you he was not born a man but begotten a beast.
From the very foundation of this government the Catho-
lics have been its firm defenders. Their wisdom and elo-
quence have adorned its councils from the signing of the
Declaration of American Independence to this good day,
and its every battlefield, from Lexington to the Custer mas-
sacre, has been wet with Catholic blood. Nine Roman
Catholics signed the Declaration of Independence, and the
Roman Catholics of New York contributed so liberally of
their blood and treasure to the cause of the new-born Nation
that Washington wrote them a letter praising their patriot-
ism. Several Roman Catholics helped frame the Federal
Constitution, and the interpretation of that wonderful in-
strument by a Roman Catholic chief-justice to-day consti-
tutes the fundamental law of the land. Yet Slattery and that
ridiculous organization of which he boasts himself a mem-
ber, would have you believe that the American Catholics
would, at a nod from the Pope, ruthlessly trample under
foot that flag in whose defense they pledged their lives,
their fortunes and their sacred honor that they would
wreck without remorse and ruin without regret that Nation
they helped place on the map of the world. How do you old
Confederates, who followed Pat Cleburne, relish having this
130 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
blatant tramp defame your dead commander? Can you
believe, on the unsupported testimony of this mendacious
mountebank, that Father Ryan's tribute to the Stars-and-
Bars was rank hypocrisy that the poet-priest was the polit-
ical tool of a foreign power? Sherman died a Catholic.
Fighting Phil Sheridan was a Catholic. Old Pap Thomas,
"the Rock of Chickamauga," was a Catholic. The "Bloody
Sixty-ninth" New York was a Catholic regiment, and its
heroism at the Battle of Bull Run forms one of the brightest
pages in the military history of this nation. Strange it
never occurred to those demoralized Protestant regiments
which took refuge behind the bayonets of the Sixty-ninth
that they were throwing the Vatican between themselves
and the Confederate forces!
Slattery assures us that the number of Irish Catholics on
the police force of our great cities is evidence that the
Church of Rome is on mischief bent. I am not surprised
that an Irish Catholic with a club in his hand should prove
rather alarming to Bro. Slattery. But, although he says,
"meet a policeman and you'll see the map of Ireland in his
face," those same policemen have several times saved his
worthless bacon. When he was mobbed in St. Louis for
defaming Catholic nuns, the police formed a cordon around
his infamous carcass and saved him from a well-merited
trouncing at the hands of the slandered women's relatives.
Probably the police did not relish the job overmuch, but
they had sworn to uphold the laws, and although Slattery
insists that a Catholic oath amounts to nothing, they risked
their lives in his defense.
We have many nationalities in this country, and each of
them, as every observant man well knows, manifests a pre-
dilection for some special occupation. Thus the Jews take
to trade, the Germans to agriculture, the Norwegians to
lumbering, the French to catering and the Irish to politics.
Make a Freewill Baptist or a Buddhist of an Irishman and
you do not change his nature he'll turn up at the next po-
litical convention just the same. And the man who's too
good to take a hand in practical politics ; who's too nice to
mingle with the horny-handed at the ward primaries ; who's
too busy to act as delegate to the convention who deliber-
ately neglects his duty as an American citizen finds that
Pat's activity has been rewarded with a place on the police
force, and blames it all on the Pope.
It is not my province to defend Roman Catholic theology
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 131
I suppose that Slattery said all that could be urged in its
behalf before the apostatized. Perhaps the Catholics really
believe the Pope infallible ; and if they do, it is certainly no
worse than for certain Waco Protestants to believe that Slat-
tery's infallible. I noticed that at his lecture last week they
cheered every charge he preferred against either the Pope
or the "Apostle," and that without asking for an iota of
evidence. When I arose at the stag party with which he
wound up the intellectual debauch, and questioned his in-
fallibility, the good brethren cried, "Throw him out !" Why
did they so unless they believed that to question the supernal
wisdom and immaculate truth of aught a Baptist minister
might say, were sacrilege a sin against the Holy Ghost ?
Here was I, their fellow citizen of Waco. I had done
them no harm; yet when a strolling vagabond, wearing
God's livery, and whose forte is the defamation of women,
made a statement, which if true, would forever disgrace me
in the eyes of the world; when he preferred this charge
against me within two blocks of where my babies lay sleep-
ing, they wanted to mob me for branding him then and there
as an infamous liar and a cowardly blackguard.
Mark you, I'm no tramp in America. This is the house
of my fathers. They helped hew it out of the Virginia wil-
derness. They helped put Old Glory in the heavens, and
to keep it there for more than a hundred years; still it ap-
pears that I have no rights in this country which a foreigner
with the smell of the steerage still upon him is bound to re-
spect, if he chances to be a Baptist preacher.
Talk to me about the Church of Rome muzzling free
speech when the A. P. A. would mob an American citizen
for defending his character from the infamous falsehoods
of a foreign tramp ! "Throw him out !" Why throw him
out ? I'll tell you : The sanctified buzzards had gone there
with appetites sharpened for a mess of carrion, and they
were afraid I'd kill their cook. "Throw him out!" But I
noticed that those who were splitting their faces as wide as
Billy Kersands' were glued to their seats. They wanted
somebody else to throw him out. They were anxious to see
a gang of three or four hundred sanctified hoodlums trample
upon me, but there was not one among the self-constituted
protectors of this mighty American Nation with sufficient
"sand" to lead the mob. If there were no better Americans
than those trailing in the wake of the Rev. Joseph Slattery,
like buzzards following a bad smell, I'd take a cornstalk,
clean out the whole shooting-match and stock the country
with niggers and yaller dogs. If such cattle were sired by
132 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Satan, dammed by Sycorax and born in hell they would dis-
honor their parents and disgrace their country.
Slattery insists that Catholics believe thus-and-so, and
that no man with such a faith concealed about his person
can be a good American citizen. I don't know about that;
but I do know that if the Catholic, act in strict accordance
with their religious creed they are the only people in this
country that do so. I've learned that you can't judge a
man by his catechism. Slattery assures us that he has dis-
carded the Pope and taken Christ for his immediate guide.
The latter commands his followers to pray for those who
despitefully use them ; but if Slattery did any praying for the
"Apostle" during his sojourn in this city he managed to
keep that fact a profound secret. Christ enjoins patience
and humility. He tells his followers to turn the other cheek
to the smiter; yet Slattery assured the ladies Wednesday
night that he was "a great believer in muscular Christian-
ity." Then he placed his 250 pounds of stall-fed beef in
fighting attitude and declared he'd "like to have his enemies
come at him one at a time" to be prayed for, I presume.
If Christ taught "muscular Christianity" I have inadvertent-
ly overlooked a bet. Christ commands us to love our ene-
mies, but doesn't suggest that we should manifest our affec-
tion by lying about 'em. He rebuked those who tattled
about a common courtesan, yet Slattery defamed decent
women. No, you can't judge a man by his creed. If the
allegiance of the Catholics to the Pope is of the same charac-
ter as that of Slattery to the Lord Jesus Christ, Uncle Sam
need not lie awake o' nights to worry about "Papal plots."
Had Slattery been truly a Christian, instead of black-
guarding me when protected by the presence of ladies, he
would have put up a fervent prayer for my immediate con-
version to the Baptist faith. But his milk of human kind-
ness had soured he was short on Christian charity and long
on gall.
"Faith, hope and charity," says St. Paul ; "and the great-
est of these is charity." And he might have added that it's
also the scarcest. Perhaps that's what makes it so valuable
the supply is never equal to the demand.
Speaking of .charity reminds me of my experience "with
the Protestant preachers of San Antonio, some of whom, I
understand, are aiding and abetting this A. P. A. movement,
"designed to preserve the priceless liberty of free speech."
While editor of the morning paper of that city I was in the
habit of writing a short sermon for the Sunday edition, for
the benefit of those who could not go to church, I supposed
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 133
that the ministers would sanction my clerical efforts, but
they didn't. They wanted no assistance in saving souls,
considered that they should be accorded a monopoly in that
line and were entitled to all the emoluments. They pro-
ceeded to thunder at me from the pulpit, and sometimes
three or four perspiring pulpiteers were pounding away at
me at the same time and incidentally making me very pop-
ular. I dropped into a swell church one Sunday morning
to get a little grace a building that cost up in the six figures
while people were living in $4 jackals and subsisting on 50
cents a week within sound of its bells and the minister was
holding a copy of the Express aloft in one hand and a Bible
in the other and demanding of his congregation: "Which
"will you take Brann or God?" Well, they seemed to think
that if they couldn't have both they'd best take God, tho'
some of the sinners on the back seats were a trifle subsequent
in making up their minds.
I kept hammering away preaching to my little congre-
gation of fifteen or twenty thousand readers every Sunday,
as I now do to ten times that many a month until finally the
Ministerial Association met, perorated, whereased, resoluted
and wound up by practically demanding of the proprietor of
the Express that I be either muzzled or fired. And all this
time the Catholic priests said never a word and San An-
tonio is a Catholic city. But the Baptist ministers were
running a sneaking boycott! Yet the Church of Rome is
the boa-constrictor that's trying to throttle the American
right of free speech !
The Y. M. C. A. invited me to lecture on Humbugs, and
that scared the Ministerial Association nearly to death.
They thought I was after 'em now sure, so they went to
the officials of the Y. M. C. A. and made them cancel the
date. And the only Protestant minister in the entire city
who did not join in this attempt to throttle free speech
was an Episcopalian and the Episcopalians are not
Protestants to hurt. Yet when these ministers, who are
now so fearful that the Church of Rome will muzzle
somebody, found that they couldn't drive me out of town ;
that they couldn't take the bread from the mouths of my
babes because I had dared utter my honest thoughts like
a freeman; that I was to continue to edit the Express so
long as I liked, they came fawning about me like a lot of
spaniels afraid of the lash ! But not one of them ever tried
to convert me. Not one of them ever tried, by kindly ar-
gument, to convince me that I was wrong. N'ot one of
them ever invited me to church or prayed for me, so far
134 BRANN, THE. ICONOCLAST
as I could learn. Perhaps they, thought I was past re-
demption.
Slattery cautions you not to send your children to con-
vent schools, declaring- that he ''never yet saw a nun who
was an educational woman." That statement, standing alone,
ought to convince every one blessed with a thinking ap-
paratus that Slattery's a fraud. Some of the best edu-
cated women in this world have entered convents. Wo-
men upon whose tuition fortunes have been expended are
now making convent schools deservedly popular with the
intelligent people.
He says ignorance is the correlative of Catholicism, and
points to Spain as proof of this startling assertion. There
was a time when Spain stood in the very forefront of civ-
ilization, in the van of human progress, the arbiter of the
world's political destiny, and Spain was even more
Catholic then than it is to-day. Nations and civilizations
have their youth, their lusty manhood and their decay,
and it were idle to attribute the decline of Spain to Catholi-
cism as the decadence of Greece to Paganism. The Catho-
lic church found Spain a nation of barbarians and brought
it up to that standard of civilization where a Spanish mon-
arch could understand the mighty plans of Columbus. It
was her Catholic Majesty, Queen Isabella, who took from
her imperial bosom the jewels with which to buy a world
who exchanged the pearls of the Orient for the star of
Empire. The Catholic church found England a nation of
barbarians and brought it up, step by step, until Catholic
barons wrung from King John at Runnymede the Great
Charter the mother of the American Constitution. It
found Ireland a nation of savages and did for it what the
mighty power of the Caesars could not brought it within
the pale of civilization. But for the Roman Catholic
Church Slattery might be wearing a breech clout, digging
roots with his finger nails and gorging himself with raw
meat in Ireland to-day instead of insulting the intelli-
gence of American audiences and wringing money from
fanatics and fools by warring upon the political institu-
tions of their fathers.
Slattery was horrified to learn that some of the nun.s
were inclined to talk about each other. I sincerely trust
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 135
that he will find none of the Baptist sisters addicted to
the same bad habit.
From what I could gather of his discourse, before I
was "put out" and from the report of his alleged wife's
lectures, I infer that this delectable twain impeach the
virtue of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods. Malice, like
death, loves a shining mark, and there is no hate so veno-
mous as that of the apostate. But before giving credence
to such tales, let me ask you : Why should a woman ex-
change the brilliant parlor for a gloomy cell in which to play
the hypocrite? Why should a cultured woman of gentle
birth deliberately forego the joys of wife and motherhood,
the social triumph and the freedom of the world and con-
demn herself to a life of labor, a dreary round of drudgery,
if her heart's impure? For shame!
Who is it that visits the slums of our great cities min-
istering to the afflicted, comforting the dying, reclaiming
the fallen? When pestilence sweeps over the land and
mothers desert their babes and husbands their wives, who
is it that presses the cup of cold water to the feverish lip
and closes the staring eyes of the deserted dead? Who
was it that went upon the Southern battle-fields to min-
ister to the wounded soldiers, followed them to the hospi-
tals and tenderly nursed them back to life? The Roman
Catholic sisterhoods, God bless them !
One of those angels of mercy can walk unattended and
unharmed thro' our "Reservation" at midnight. She can
visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the White-
chapel district. At her coming the ribald song is stilled
and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen crea-
tures reverently touch the hem of her garments, and men
steeped in crime to the very lips involuntarily remove
their hats as a tribute to noble womanhood. The very
atmosphere seems to grow sweet with her coming and the
howl of hell's demons to grow silent. None so low in the
barrel-house, the gambling hell or the brothel as to
breathe a word against her good name ; but when we turn
to the Baptist pulpit there we find an inhuman monster
clad in God's livery, saying, "Unclean, unclean !" God help
a religious denomination that will countenance' such an
infamous cur!
As a working journalist I have visited all manner of
places. I have written up the foulest dives that exist on
this continent, and have seen Sisters of Charity enter
them unattended. Had one of the inmates dared insult
them he would have been torn in pieces. And I have sat
136 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
in the opera house of this city boasting itself a center of
culture and heard a so-called man of God speak flip-
pantly of the Catholic sisterhoods, and professing Christ-
ians applaud him to the echo.
Merciful God ! if heaven is filled with such Christians,
send me to hell, with those whose sins are inhuman ! Bet-
ter everlasting life in a lake of fire than enforced compan-
ionship in Paradise for one hour with the foul harpies that
groaned "awmen" to Slattery's infamous utterances. God
of Israel ! to think that those unmanly scabs, those psalm-
singing vultures are Americans and our political brethren !
I know little about the private lives of the Catholic
priesthood; but this I do know: They were the first to
plant the standard of Christian faith in the New World.
They were the first to teach the savages something of the
blessings of civilization. I do know that those of them
who were once Protestants are not making a specialty of
defaming the faith of their fathers. I do know that neither
hardship nor danger can abate their holy zeal and that
hundreds of them have freely given their lives in the serv-
ice of the Lord. And why should a man devote his body
to God and his soul to the devil ? I do know that one of
them has given us the grandest example of human sacri-
fice for others' sake that this great world affords. Even
Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "If it be pos-
sible, let this cup pass from me;" but Father Damien
pressed a cup even more bitter to his own lips and drained
it to the dregs died for the sake of suffering mortals a
death to which the cross were mercy.
The Protestants admit that they are responsible for the
inoculation of the simple Sandwich Islanders with the
leprosy; yet when those who fell victims to the foul dis-
ease were segregated, made prisoners upon a small island
in the mid- Pacific, not a Protestant preacher in all the
earth could be found to minister to them. The Lord had
"called" 'em all into his vineyard, but it appears that he
didn't call a blessed one of them to that leper colony
where people were rotting alive, with none to point them
to that life beyond the grave where all the sins and cor-
ruptions of the flesh are purged away and the redeemed
stand in robes of radiant white at the rigfht hand of God.
I blame no man for declining the sacrifice. To set foot
upon that accursed spot was to be declared unclean and
there confined until death released you death by leprosy,
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 137
the most appalling disease in all the dreadful catalogue
of human ills, the most dreaded arrow in the quiver of the
grim Destroyer. Yet Father Damien, a young Roman
Catholic priest, left home and country and all that life
holds dear, and went deliberately forth to die for afflicted
barbarians. There he reared an humble temple with his
own hands to the God of his fathers, there, thro' long
years of confinement, he ministered to the temporal and
spiritual wants of the afflicted; there he died, as he knew
he must die, with his fingers falling from his hands, his
flesh from his bones, a sight to appall the very imps of
hell. No wonder the Protestant ministers held aloof.
Merciful God. I'd rather be crucified!
We are all brave men when the war-drum throbs and
the trumpet calls us to do battle beneath the eyes of the
world, when, touching elbows with our fellows and clad
in all the glorious pomp and circumstance of war we seek
the bubble of fame e'en at the cannon's mouth. When the
music of the battery breeds murder in the blood, the elec-
tric order goes ringing down the line, is answered by the
thrilling cheer, the veriest coward drives the spur deep
into the foaming flank and plunges, like a thunderbolt,
into the gaping jaws of death, into the mouth of hell ; but
when a man was wanted to go forth alone, without blare
of trumpet or drum, and become a life-prisoner in a leper
colony, but one in all the world could be found equal to
that supreme test of personal heroism, and that man was
a Roman Catholic priest. And what was his reward?
Hear what Thos. G. Sherman, a good Protestant, says in
the New York Post:
"Before the missionaries gained control of the islands
leprosy was unknown. But with the introduction of
strange races, leprosy established itself and rapidly in-
creased. An entire island was properly devoted to the
lepers. No Protestant missionary would venture among
them. For this I do not blame them, as, no doubt, I
should not have had the courage to go myself. But a
noble Catholic priest consecrated his life to the service of
the lepers, lived among them, baptized them, educated
'them, and brought some light and happiness into their
wretched lives. Stung by the contrast of his example, the
one remaining missionary, a recognized and paid agent of
the American Board, spread broadcast the vilest slanders
against Father Damien."
So it appears that the world is blessed with two Slat-
terys.
138 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
There are three kinds of liars at large in the land : The
harmless Munchhausen who romances for amusement, and
whose falsehoods do no harm ; the Machiavellian liar, whose
mendacity bears the stamp of original genius, and the
stupid prevaricator, who rechews the fetid vomit of other
villains simply because he lacks a fecund brain to breed
falsehoods to which he may play the father. And Slavery's
a rank specimen of the latter class. When he attempts to
branch out for himself he invariably comes to grief. After
giving a dreadful account of how Catholics persecute those
who renounce the faith, declaring that they were a disgrace
to the church while within its pale, he produced a certificate
from a Philadelphia minister to the effect that he the Phil-
adelphian had visited Slattery 's old parish in Ireland and
the Catholics there declared that he was a good and faithful
priest !' What Slattery seems to lack to become a first-class
fraud is continuity of thought. He lies fluently, even en-
tertainingly, but not consistently.
The apostate priest would have the various Protestant de-
nominations throw down the bars that separate them and
mark off their theological bailiwicks "with little beds of
flowers." The idea is a good one and I can but w r onder
where Slattery stole it. Still I can see no cogent reason for
getting all the children together in happy union and leaving
their good old mother out in the cold.
Throw down all the bars, and let every division of the
Great Army of God, whether wearing the uniform of Budd-
hist or Baptist, Catholic or Campbellite, Methodist or Mo-
hammedan, move forward, with Faith its sword, Hope its
ensign and Charity its shield. Cease this foolish interne-
cine strife, at which angels weep, swing into line as sworn
allies and, at the command of the Great Captain, advance
your standards on the camp of the common foe. Wage
war, not upon each other, but on Poverty, Ignorance and
Crime, hell's great triumvirate, until this beautiful world's
redeemed and bound in very truth,
"With gold chains about the feet of God."
TRILBY AND THE TRILBYITES.
The Trilby craze has overrun the land like the ''grip"
bacillus or the seven-year locust. Here in America it has
become almost as disgusting as the plague of lice sent upon
Egypt to eat the chilled steel veneering off the heart of
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 139
Pharaoh the fickle. Everything is Trilby. We have Tril-
by bonnets and bonbons, poses and plays, dresses and
drinks. Trilby sermons have been preached from promi-
nent pulpits, and the periodicals, from penny-post to preten-
tious magazine, have Trilbyismus and have it bad. One
\vould think that the world had just found Salvation, so
loud and unctious is its hosannah that Trilby was some new
Caaba-stone or greater Palladium floated down from heaven
on the wings of Du Maurier's transcendant genius; that
after waiting and watching for six thousand or million
years, a perfect exemplar had been bequeathed to the
world.
I have read Du Maurier's foolish little book as a disa-
greeable duty. The lot of the critic is an unenviable one.
He must read everything, even such insufferable rot as
"Coin's Financial School," and those literary nightmares
turned loose in rejoinder veritable Rozinantes, each bear-
ing a chop-logic Don Quixote with pasteboard helmet and
windmill spear. I knew by the press comments I had al-
ready surmised from its popularity with upper-tendom that
"Trilby" was simply a highly spiced story of female frailty ;
hence I approached it with "long teeth" like a politician
eating crow, or a country boy absorbing his first glass of
lager beer. I had received a surfeit of the Camillean style
of literature in my youth, before I learned with Ecclesiastes
the Preacher or even with Parkhurst that "all is vanity."
So far as my experience goes the only story of a fallen
woman that was worth the writing and the reading is that
of Mary Magdalen ; and it is not French. Her affaires
d' amour appear to have ended with her repentance. She did
not try to marry a duke, elevate the stage or break into
swell society. After closing her maison de joie she ceased
to be "bonne camarade ct bonne fille" in the tough de tough
quarter of the Judean metropolis. There were no more
strolls on the Battery by moonlight alone love after exchang-
ing her silken robe de chambre for an old-fashioned night-
gown with never a ruffle. When she applied the soft pedal
the Bacchic revel became a silent prayer. So far as we can
gather, the cultured gentlemen of Judea did not fall over
each other in a frantic effort to ensnare her with Hymen's
noose. If the Apostles recommended her life to the ladies
of their congregations as worthy emulation the stenograph-
ers must have been nodding worse than Homer. If the
elite of Jerusalem named their daughters for her and made
her the subject of public discussion, that fact has been for-
gotten. And yet it is reasonably certain that she was beau-
140 . BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tiful even more beautiful than Trilby, the bones of whose
face were so attractive, the pink of whose tootsie- wootsies so
irresistible. The Magdalen of St. Luke appears to have
been in many respects the superior of the Magdalen of Du
Maurier. She does not appear to have been an ignorant
and coarse-grained she-gamin who frequented the students'
quarter of the sacred city, posing to strolling artists for "the
altogether," being, in the crowded atelier like Mother Eve
in Eden, "naked and not ashamed." We may suppose that
the sensuous blood of the Orient ran riot in her veins that
she was swept into the fierce maelstrom by love and passion
and would have' perished there but for the infinite pity of our
Lord, who cast out the seven devils that lurked within her
heart like harpies in a Grecian temple, and stilled the storm
that beat like sulphurous waves of fire "within her snowy
breast.
"And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner,
when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's
house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at
his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet
with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head,
and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment."
How stale, flat and unprofitable the modern stories of
semi-repentant prostitutes beside that pathetic passage,
which shears down into the very soul penetrates to the
profoundest depths of the sacred Lake of Tears! And yet
this ultra orthodox age which would suppress the Icono-
clast if it could for poking fun at Poll Parrot preachers has
not become crazed over Mary Magdalen has not so much
as named canal-boat or a cocktail for her.
Du Maurier says of his heroine : "With her it was lightly
come and lightly go and never come back again. * * *
* Sheer gaiety of heart and genial good fellowship, the
difficulty of saying nay to earnest pleading * * * so little
did she know of love's heartaches and raptures and torments
and clingings and jealousies," etc. A woman, who had
never been in love, yet confessed to criminal intimacy with
three men and was not yet at the end of her string! Not
even the pride of dress, the scourge of need, the fire-whips
of passion to urge her on, she sinned, as the Yankees would
say, simply "to be a-doin' " broke the Seventh Command-
ment "more in a f rolicksome spirit of camaraderie than any-
thing else." That's the way we used to kill people in Texas.
Still I opine that when a young woman gets so awfully jolly
that she distributes her favors around promiscuously just to
put people in a good humor, she's a shaky piece of furniture
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 141
to make a fad of a doubtful example to be commended
from the pulpit to America's young- daughters. The French
enthusiasts once crowned a courtesan in Notre Dame as
Goddess of Reason and worshipped her; but I was hardly
prepared to see the American people enthrone another as
Goddess of Respectability and become hysterical in their de-
votion. I am no he-prude. I have probably said as many
kindly things of fallen humanity as Du Maurier himself, but
I dislike to see a rotten drab deified. I dislike to see a
great publishing house like that of Harper & Bros, so indif-
ferent to decency, so careless of moral consequences, that,
for the sake of gain, it will turn loose upon this land the foul
liaisons of the French capital. I dislike to see the mothers
of the next generation of Americans trying to "make up" to
resemble the counterfeit presentment of a brazen bawd. It
indicates that our entire social system is sadly in need of fu-
migation such as Sodom and Gomorrah received.
Trilby, the child of a bummy preacher and a bastard
bar-maid, was born and bred in the slum of the wickedest
city in the world. Little was to be expected of such birth
and breeding. We are not surprised that she regards forni-
cation as but a venial fault like cigarette smoking and
sins "capriciously, desultorily, more in a frolicksome spirit
of camaraderie than anything else." Girls so reared are apt
to be a trifle frolicksome. We are not shocked to see her
stripped stark naked in Carrel's atelier in the presence of
half a hundred hoodlums of the Latin quarter seeming as
unconcerned as a society belle at opera or ball with half her
back exposed, her bust ready to spill itself out of her corsage
if she chance to stoop. We even feel that it is in perfect ac-
cord with the eternal fitness of things when these wild
sprouts of Bohemia, "with kindly solicitude, help her on with
her clothes." We can even pause to admire the experienced
skill with which they put each garment in its proper place
nnd deftly button it.' That she should have the ribald slang
of the free-and-easy neighborhood at her tongue's end and
be destitute of delicacy as a young cow might be expected ;
but we are hardly prepared to see one grown up among such
surroundings so unutterably stupid as not to know when
her companions are "guying" her. Trilby croaking "Ben
Bolt" for the edification of les trois Angliches were a sight
worthy of a lunatic asylum. It was even more ridiculous
than the social performance of that other half-wit, Little
Billee, in Carrel's atelier. Stupidity covers even more sins
than charity, hence we should not judge Du Maurier's
heroine too harshly. As weak intellects yield readily to
142 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
hypnotic power, Svengali had an easy victim. I have no
word of criticism for the poor creature. I do not blame Du
Maurier for drawing her as he found or imagined her,
nor can I blame popular preachers, "able editors" and half-
wit women for worshiping the freckled and faulty grisette
as a goddess ; for does not Carlyle truly tell us that "what we
see, and cannot see over, is good as Infinity?" Still I can-
not entertain an exalted opinion of either the intelligence
or morals of a people who will place such a character on a
pedestal and prostrate themselves before it.
I confess my surprise at the phenomenal popularity of the
book among people familiar with Dickens, Scott and Thack-
erary, triune transcendent of fiction. I had hoped when
"Ben Hur" made its great hit that the golden age of flash
fiction was past that it could henceforth count among its
patrons only stable boys and scullions ; but the same nation
that received "Ben Hur" with tears of thankfulness thank-
fulness of a priceless jewel of spotless purity ablaze with the
immortal fire of genius has gone mad with joy over a dirty
rale of bawdry that might have been better told by a cheap
reporter bordering on the jimjams. Has the American na-
tion suddenly declined into intellectual dotage reached the
bald-head and dizzy soubrette finale in the mighty drama of
life?
I can account for the success of Du Manner's book only
on the hypothesis that "like takes to like" that the world
is full of frail Trilbys and half-baked duffers like Little
Billee, who, Narcissus-like, worship their own image. They
don't mind the contradictions and absurdities with which
the book abounds ; in fact, those who read up-to-date French
novels are seldom gifted with sufficient continuity of thought
to detect contradictions if they appear two pages apart.
The book is ultra-bizarre, a thin intellectual soup served in
grotesque, even impossible dishes and highly flavored with
vulgar animalism just the mental pabulum craved by those
whose culture is artificial, mentality weak, and morals mere
matter of form. The plot was evidently loaded to scatter.
It is about as probable as Jack and the Beanstalk, and is
worked out with the skill of a country editor trying to "cov-
er" a national convention. The story affords about as much
food for thought as one of Talmage's plate-matter sermons
is fully as "fillin' " as drinking the froth out of a pop-bot-
tle, and equally as exhilarating. Like other sots, the more
the literary bacchanal drinks the more he thirsts appetite
increased by what it feeds upon. We can forgive Byron
and Boccaccio the lax morals of their productions because
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 143
of their literary excellence, just as we wink at the little social
lapses of Sarah Bernhardt because of her unapproachable
genius ; but Du Maurier's book is wholly bad. It could
only have been made worse by being made bigger. It is a
moral crime, a literary abortion. The style is faulty and the
narrative marred if a bad egg can be spoiled by slang
lugged in from the slums of two continents with evident
labor. Employed naturally, slang may serve in a pinch
for Attic salt ; but slang for its own sake is smut on the nose
instead of a "beauty-spot" on the cheek of Venus sure evi-
dence of a paucity of ideas. A trite proverb, a non-transla-
table phrase from a foreign tongue may be permissible ; but
the writer who jumbles two languages together indiscrimi-
nately is but a pedantic prig. It were bad enough if Du
Maurier mixed good English with better French ; but he em-
ploys in his bilingual book the very worst of both obsolete
American provincialisms and the patois of the quartier latin
side by side. To the cultured American who knows only
the English of Lindley Murray and scholastic French, the
book is about as intelligible as Greek to Casca or the "dog-
latin" of the American school-boy to Julius Caesar.
His characters resemble the distorted freaks of nature in
a dime museum. They may all be possible, but not one of
them probable. Taffy and Gecko are the best of the lot.
The first is a big, good-natured Englishman who wants to
see his sweetheart married to his friend, weds another and
supports her quite handsomely by painting pictures he can-
not sell ; the latter a Pole with an Italian's temperament, yet
who sees the woman he loves in the power of a demon by
whom she is presumably debauched and makes no effort
to rescue her, is not even jealous. Svengali is the greatest
musician in the world, yet cannot make a living in Paris, the
modern home of art. He is altogether and irretrievably
bad despite the harmony in which his soul is steeped!
Think of a hawk outwarbling a nightingale of a demon
flooding the world with melody most divine ! We may now
expect Mephistopheles to warble "Nearer My God to Thee"
between the acts! Trilby can sing no more than a burro.
Like the useful animal, she has plenty of voice, and, like him,
she can knock the horns off the moon with it or send it on a
hot chase after the receding ghost of Hamlet's sire ; but she
is "tone-deaf" can't tell Ophelia's plaint from the perform-
ance of Thomas' orchestra. Svengali hypnotizes her, and,
beneath his magic spell she becomes the greatest cantatrice
in Europe. Hypnotism is a power but little understood;
so we must permit Du Maurier to make such Jules Verne's
144 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
excursions into that unknown realm as may please him.
Had Svengali made a contortionist of the stiff old Devon-
shire vicar we could not cry "impossible." The Laird of
Cockpen is a good-natured fellow to whom Trilby tells her
troubles instead of pouring them into the capacious ear of a
policeman. He is a kind of bewhiskered Sir Galahad who
goes in quest of Trilby instead of the Holy Grail, and hav-
ing found her, sits down on her bed and cheers her up while
she kisses and caresses him. As she is in love with his
friend, the performance is eminently proper, quite platonic.
The Laird advises Trilby to give up sitting for "the altogeth-
er;" yet Du Maurier assures us that "nothing is so chaste
as nudity" that "Venus herself, as she drops her garments
and steps on to the model-throne, leaves behind her on the
floor every weapon by which she can pierce to the grosser
passions of men."
Then he informs us that a naked "woman is such a fright
"that Don Juan himself were fain to hide his eyes in sorrow
and disenchantment and fly to other climes." How thank-
ful Cupid must be that he was born blind ! Still the most of
us are willing to risk one eye on the average "altogether"
model. Du Maurier who is a somewhat better artist than
author illustrates his own book. He gives us several por-
traits of Trilby, all open-mouthed, with a vacant stare.
Strange that he did not draw his heroine nude as she sat on
the bed hugging and kissing the Laird that he did not
hang up "on the floor every weapon" by which even Venus
herself "can pierce to the grosser passions of men." But
perchance he was afraid the Laird would "hide his eyes in
sorrow and disenchantment and fly to other climes." He
could not be spared just yet. Despite his plea for the nude,
I think he exercised excellent judgment in leaving Trilby
"clothed and in her right mind" such as it was while the
Laird roosted on her couch in that attic bed-room and was
to use a Tennysonianism mouthed an-d mumbled. Even
New York's "400" might have felt a little squeamish at see-
ing this pair of platonic turtle doves hid away in an obscure
corner of naughty Paris in puris naturalibus even if "there
is nothing so chaste as nudity."
Du Maurier says that Trilby never sat to him for "the al-
together," and adds : "I would as soon have asked the
Queen of Spain to let me paint her legs." If nudity be so
chaste, and Trilby didn't mind the exposure even a little bit,
why should he hesitate? And why should he not paint the
legs of the Queen of Spain or even the underpinning of the
Queen of Hawaii as well as her arms ? But if we pause to
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 145
point out all the absurd contradictions in this flake of ultra-
French froth we shall wear out more than one pencil.
Little Billee is a very nice young man who has been kept
too close to his mother's apron-strings for his own good a
girlish, hysterical kind of boy, who should be given spoon-
victuals and put to bed early. Of course he wants to marry
Trilby, fcr he is of that age when -the swish of a petticoat
makes us sea-sick. She is perfectly willing to become his
mistress although she had "repented 1 ' of her sins and been
"forgiven" but a few days before. She has sense enough
despite Du Manner's portraits of her to know that she is
unworthy to become a gentleman's wife, to be mated with a
he-virgin like Little Billee. But she is over-persuaded
as usual and consents. Then the young calf's mother
comes on the scene and asks her to spare her little pansy
blossom not to blight his life with the frost of her follies.
And of course she consents again. She's the great con-
senter always in the hands of friends, like an American pol-
itician. "The difficulty of saying nay to earnest pleading"
prevents a mesalliance. Trilby skips the trala and Little
Billee who has no chance to secure a reconsideration cries
himself sick, but recovers, comes up smiling like a cotton-
patch after a spring shower. He is taken to England, but
fails to find that "absence makes the heart grow fonder."
He gets wedded to his art quite prettily, and even thinks
of turning Mormon and taking the vicar's daughter for a
second bride, but slips up on an atheistical orange peel,
something has gone wrong with his head. Where his bump
of amativeness should stick out like a walnut there is a dis-
couraging depression which alarms him greatly, and "worries
the reader not a little. But finally he sees Trilby again, and,
the wheel in his head, which has stuck fast for five years,
begins to whizz around like the internal economy of an
alarm clock or a sky terrier with a clothes-pin on his tail.
Of course there is now nothing for Trilby to do but to
die. They could be paired off in a kind of morganatic mar-
riage ; but it is customary in novels where the heroine has
been too frolicsome, for her to get comfortably buried
instead of happily married, and perhaps it is just as well.
Even a French novelist must make some little mock con-
cession to the orthodox belief that the wage of sin is
death. So Trilby sinks into the grave with a song like the
dying swan, and Little Billee follows suit upsets the
entire Christian religion by dying very peaceably as an
atheist, without so much as a shudder on the brink of that
outer darkness where there's supposed to be weeping and
146 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
wailing and gnashing of teeth. Svengali has also fallen
by the wayside, a number of characters have been very
happily forgotten, so the story drags along to the close
on three not very attractive legs, Taffy, the Laird and
Gecko. It is a bad drama worse staged, with an ignorant
bawd for heroine, a weak little thing for leading man, an
impossible Caliban for heavy villain and atheism for
moral. Such is the wonderful work that has given this al-
leged land of intelligence a case of literary mania a potu,
set it to singing the praises of a grimy grisette more me-
lodiously than she warbled, "mironton, mirontaine" at
the bidding of the villainous Svengali. Such is this new
lion of literature who has set American maids and' ma-
trons to paddling about home barefoot and posing in pub-
lic with open mouths flattering themselves that they re-
semble a female whom they would scald if she ventured
into their back yard.
THE AMERICAN DRUMMER.
THE APOSTLE OF CIVILIZATION.
The "Drummer" is distinctively an American institu-
tion. If we did not invent we developed him. He is not
unknown to other lands, but the practice of "drumming
trade" has been brought to the highest perfection in this
hustling, pushing Republic of the West. The American
merchant, like Mahomet, will go to the mountain if the
altitudinous realty declines to skate over to him. Instead
of bestriding a gum stump, like Patience on a monument,
and waiting for some accommodating cow to back up to
the milk-pail, he sends his agents out to round up the pro-
crastinating bovine. He agrees with the poet that "all
things come to him who waits" including unpaid bills
and bankruptcy. The day has gone by when it were pos-
sible to build up a profitable business without hard and
persistent hustling and that's what the Drummer is here
for.
But he is more than an important trade factor ; he is an
apostle of civilization, nay, of religion itself the religion
of humanity. He penetrates every city, town and hamlet,
bringing the people of the various sections of our com-
mon country into closer fellowship, making stupid provin-
cialism impossible. He has wiped out Mason and Dixon's
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 147
line, and had he been so progressive and powerful a cen-
tury ago, would have prevented the growth of that sec-
tional bitterness which culminated in blood. He is a pub-
lic educator, a disseminator of new ideas, an inculcator of
tolerance for the opinion of others, which, with the fear of
God, is "the beginning of wisdom." He binds the people
of the North and the South, the East and the West, to-
gether with the golden chains of commerce, of mutual in-
terest, which are stronger than sentiment, paramount
even to patriotism. He carries into the country the polish
of the city, into the city the vigor of the country. With
all due respect to the "cloth," I believe that we could bet-
ter spare the D. D's for a thousand years than the Drum-
mers for one day. The labor of the first has a tendency
to produce faction, that of the latter to bring the entire
people into a common brotherhood. If the books were bal-
anced it would perhaps be found that every copper cent
contributed by the ministers of America to feed the or-
phan and shelter the widow has been covered by the
Drummers with a silver dollar. While the preacher has
prayed the commercial pilgrim has worked and "faith
without works is dead."
To catalogue the noble deeds of the American Drum-
mers would require a volume larger than Webster's Un-
abridged or the Bible. Their purses have ever been open
to the needy, they are the knights-errant of the new
civilization, ever ready to succor the distressed, to shelter
the weak and uplift the fallen. Nearly a score of them
have laid down their lives for others, not for relatives or
friends, but for men whose hands they had never pressed,
for children whose lips they had never touched, for wo-
men whose names they did not know. No cenotaph rises
to commemorate their sacrifice, no flowers are strewn by
a grateful nation upon their graves. No orator with lips
of gold commends their heroism, no poet with heart of fire
trills forth their praise the muse of history passes in si-
lence the lowly mounds where reposes the dust of men
whose names should be immortal.
It is a popular superstition that the life of the Drum-
mer is one dizzy round of pleasure that his time is about
equaly divided between paying attention to charming
young ladies met on the train and picking his teeth in
front of swell hotels, drawing on his house and being en-
tertained by progressive merchants who are delighted to
see him, and who give him carte blanche to stock 'em up.
I dislike to bring the Drummer down from that ecstatic
148 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
empyrean where public opinion has placed him ; but
really, the road angel's wings were not intended for
Icarian flights. Should he go sailing "up among the little
stars, all around the moon," he'd soon get a note from the
head of his house intimating that he might as well fly
across the ocean, birdie. He is expected to keep very close
to the grass, but to avoid its growing under his feet. Will
Carleton's catalogue of the qualities necessary to make a
competent editor aptly summarizes those of a successful
Drummer.
"Is your son an unbound edition of Moses and Solomon both?
Can he compass his spirit with meekness and strangle a natural oath?
Can he courteously talk to an equal and browbeat an impudent
dunce ?
Can he keep things in apple-pie order and do half a dozen at once?
Does he know how to spur up his virtue and put a check-rein on
his pride?
Can he carry a gentleman's manners within a rhinoceros' hide?"
The prospective purchaser who's the pink of politeness
cannot pay his bills, while the cash customer's a veritable
porcupine who must be approached by siege and parallel.
The railway sandwich and gutta-percha pie smite him by
day, while the pestilence that walketh in darkness crawls
out of its lair and besieges him by night. One day he
fares as sumptuously as Dives ever did, and he next dines
on bull beef, stale bread and Pefferian butter, then biv-
ouacs in a stuffy room, furnished with a three-legged
chair and mouldy bed that smells like a second-hand coffin
from a nigger cemetery. One day he is cared for like a king
and charged two dollars, the next he is required to cough
up three-cart wheels for being treated as an intruder
and fed like a tramp. The servants in one hotel are paid
by the proprietor, required to show guests every possible
attention and told to use their Trilbys if caught angling
for a tip ; in the next they are mere slot-machines into
which the Drummer is expected to drop four-bits to get a
second-class dinner for which he's afterwards required to
pay a dollar. Just about the time he gets his stomach
educated to accept anything- without a protest, and has
become able to sleep on a corn-cob mattress without get-
ting kicked out of his pajamas by a prowling nightmare,
he falls in love with some sweet-faced girl, and the
thought that he can visit her but once in 90 days, while
his rival's fluttering about her four times a week, makes
his heart as heavy as his sample-case at the subsequent
end of a summer's day. Finally he is wedded and at once
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 149
begins to look forward to the time when he can leave the
road and enjoy the shade of his own vine and fig tree
where he can hear the whistle of a train at 2 o'clock in the
morning without instinctively reaching for his clothes;
but he now has a valuable trade established, which as a
man of family he cannot afford to sacrifice. So he kisses
the semi-widowed wife and the babes who regard him
almost as an alien, and goes plodding over the old route,
ever longing for the day of his emancipation, which too
often comes only with a summons to exhibit his samples
to St. Peter.
Comparatively few Drummers are to be found in Amer-
ican prisons, which proves that even the semi-homeless
life they lead has not demoralized them, as it would the
majority of men. In fact, were they not men of sterling
honesty, brains and culture they could not retain their
present responsible positions. I think it will be conceded
by all careful students of sociology that the intelligence of
the commercial travelers, as a class, is higher than the
average in any other occupation. This is not the result of
accident; it is the natural effect of a well-defined cause.
There was a time and especially here in the South
when the tendency of the best intelligence was to the pro-
fessions and politics. The class spirit inherited from Eu-
ropean ancestors was still strong within us, and the
"tradesman," no matter how cultured or prosperous, was
assigned to a lower position than the veriest mutton-head
among professional men. The learned professions consti-
tuted the nobility of the New World, and, as Pride is
ususally the handmaid of Intellect, drew to them the best
minds of the Nation. Socially the merchant ranked with
the mechanic, the mechanic the laborer, and all the jour-
nalist, who was regarded as a ne'er-do-weel a mere lit-
erary scullion. But class distinction, grounded on voca-
tion, was a European cult, in nowise adapted to the Amer-
ican atmosphere, which vibrated to the cry of "liberty,
equality and fraternity." It perished, and for a nobility
founded on occupation was substituted one of brains, and
now men are expected to adorn their vocation instead of
vice versa. Not only has the "tradesman" been placed on
a social equality with his professional brother, but the me-
chanic has also taken his place in the "American house of
lords," the once despised journalist become a multi-mil-
lionaire and, in his own opinion at least, arbiter of the des-
ISO BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tiny of the Nation. Our successful merchants and miners,
inventors and journalists are even crowding the D. D's,
M. D's and LL. D's for social pre-eminence. The rewards
of commerce are greater than those of the professions, and
the better intelligence of the country, being in nowise in-
different to the almighty dollar nor restrained by social
scruples, "goes into trade" and prospers, instead of hang-
ing its shingle on the outer wall and sitting down to semi-
starvation. And the very best and brightest minds that
commerce can command are put "on the road." There's
where they are needed. The most stupid blockhead may
learn routine duty in a great mercantile establishment;
but the man sent out in these days of sharp competition
and close margins to extend trade, must not only know a
hawk from a handsaw and the cost of each, but have an
accurate knowledge of human nature. He must be a
strategist be able to win the confidence, even friendship
of men of antithetical dispositions, tastes and habits, for
the proverb that "there's no sentiment in trade" is far
from true. Other things being equal, our custom and our
affections keep close company. Pope was probably
viewing the Drummer with prophetic eye when he de-
clared that, "The proper study of mankind is man."
We have carried the division of labor too far for the per-
fect intellectual development of the race. If it once took
nine tailors to make a man, it now requires even more "spe-
cialists." Each devotes himself to some particular line,
whether it be the curing of corns or the expounding of con-
stitutional law, and follows it so assiduously that he usually
knows little of anything else. It now requires about a
dozen different kinds of doctors to keep the human mechan-
ism in perfect running order each of the important organs
must have its specialist and the same rule of subdivision
obtains in every trade and profession. The specialist usu-
ally becomes a one- faculty man instead of a fully developed
intellectual athlete. One may know comparatively noth-
ing beyond theology, or some single division of law or med-
icine, and become wealthy and distinguished if he but know
that one thing well; but the drummer who attempts to do
business without a good supply of general information is
going to get strung at the quarter-pole. It is an important
part of his stock-in-trade he must be able to interest the
prospective purchaser, no matter what his hobby. Shake-
speare assures us that "home-keeping youths have ever
homely wits." However that may be, certain it is that the
intellect of man is sharpened by frequent contact with his
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 151
fellows, is strengthened by that stubborn "battle of life" in
which the weakest go to the wall.
The Travelers' Protective Association of America was or-
ganized in 1882, "For the purpose of furthering the interest
of commercial travelers, by giving them better hotel accom-
modations, cheaper rates of travel and greater allowance of
baggage." It got considerably in debt after eight years' ex-
istence, and at the convention in Denver in 1890, St. Louis
merchants offered to pay the indebtedness, amounting to
$2200, if the headquarters were located in that city, and this
offer was accepted. That year the annual membership fee
was raised from $2 to $10 and an insurance feature added,
allowing $3000 in case of death by accident and $15 a week
in case of partial disability. At the reorganization Texas
had about four times the membership of any other state.
It was, in fact, greater than all the rest combined. Texas
was "the banner state" at the close of the first year after re-
organization, when the total membership of the National
Association amounted to some 1800. Next year the con-
vention met at Little Rock, and the membership approxi-
mated 2500. The following year it was held at Old Point
Comfort, Va., and the membership was about 3000. In 1893
it was held at Peoria, 111., and the membership had increased
to nearly 4000. The death indemnity was raised to $4000
and the weekly indemnity, in case of disability 'resulting
from accident, made $25. In 1894 the National convention
was held at Milwaukee, Wis., and the membership had in-
creased to over 7000. The death benefit was raised to
$5000, the weekly indemnity remaining as before, $25. It is
believed that the membership now exceeds 11,000 a mighty
army of "hustlers" marshalled beneath the banner of Com-
merce, keeping step to the music of Progress.
The National Convention of the T. P. A. will be held this
month in San Antonio, the metropolis of Texas, the most
interesting city on the American continent. The "boys"
will fall in love with San Antonio, because, like themselves,
it is broad-gauged, hospitable, little addicted to the vice of
hypocrisy. Many of them who come from the older states
will probably expect to find a wild and woolly frontier town,
where bad whisky's four-bits a drink and the festive cowboy
chases the elusive longhorn through the principal streets,
shoots out the kerosene street-lamps, and rides his broncho
up to the bar when yearning for a compound of tarantula-
juice and creosote ; to be met at the train by a deputation of
152 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
leading citizens who wear their pants in their boots and boy-
cott their barbers, and welcomed by Mayor Elmendorf from
the hurricane deck of a cayuse with an oration somewhat as
follows :
"Well, fellers, y're at the end o' the trail. We've got y'
corraled an' we're agoin to treat y' white. That's what.
We've laid in two dozen skins o' mescal fur the occasion,
histed the American flag an' fixed to hang a horsethief fer
your amusement. After he's swung off and has quit kick-
ing we'll rope a steer jist to show you how it's done, have a
bull-fight in Main Plaza an' then adjourn t' the saloon of
Alkali Ike an' enjoy a fandango. If any o' youens feel like
chancin' yer pile y'll find the squarest poker game at Ike's
you ever sot into. Play 'er stiff as y' like. Make your-
selves t' home. If Broncho Pete or Grizzly Bill goes to
shootin' holes in yer plug hats without an invite jist report
t' me, alcalde of the burg, an' me'n Bryan Callaghan '11
straighten the cusses out in two shakes of a maverick's tail.
We'll now have some music by the Jewsharp quartette, with
Mesquite Charlie workin' in the lead. You'll then take a
drink with his-zonner, which is me, after which we'll ad-
journ to my hacienda over on the Nueces and hist in a few
slugs o' Kansas bacon and biled yerbs."
But those who come expecting to "rough it" will be hap-
pily disappointed. They will find a cultured city possess-
ing all the modern improvements, including a municipal
debt a grand old commonwealth gleaming in the glorious
sunlight of West Texas, a jewel pendant from the fringe of
Civilization's robe. They will find there, as nowhere else
in the New World, a romantic blending of the past and
present the Sixteenth and Nineteenth centuries existing
side by side "in harmonious discord." They will find that
San Antonio is not so ultra-progressive as some of her sister
cities that her people have not yet cast aside humanity and
anointed themselves with hypocrisy, like ancient runners
with oil, for that race whose guerdon is gold. San Antonio
puts on few frills. Her hospitality is of the old-fashioned
sort that may be felt as well as seen. She does not give the
stranger a stereotyped two-for-a-quarter smile, an ice-cream
handshake and expect to be repaid with a paean of praise
that will send the price of real estate up ten per cent. If
he is worthy she takes him to her great warm heart and
treats him so well and so often that, like the worn voy-
ageurs in the lotos-eaters' land, he's loth to longer roam.
Of course there are whining Uriah Keeps with itching fin-
gers, and hypocrites with frappe hearts in the Alamo City,
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 153
as elsewhere; but she has put them on a "Reservation,"
figuratively speaking", with other disreputable characters
banished them to a social trans-San Pedro, so to speak, and
franied her rule of conduct without their assistance.
San Antonio possesses for the poet, the philosopher and
the student an inexpressible charm. Its skies are brighter
than those of France, its airs softer than those of Italy.
There Anglo-Saxon chivalry rose to its glorious zenith.
There was fought America's Thermopylae, there Ben Milam
led his Spartan band against the fortifications and five-fold
force of General Cos, and fell, crowned with the victor's
wreath. There was planted the standard of Christian faith
when Texas was peopled by wild beasts and still more sav-
age men. On the ancient battlements of San Antonio have
floated^ the banners of six nations, and through her streets
for an hundred and fifty years has ebbed and flowed the
crimson tide of war.
We must have several days and nights for sight-seeing
in San Antonio. We must dream about the ruined mis-
sions where, before our grand-sires' day, the savage was
taught to humble himself before the sacred cross ; about the
Alamo, that charnel house of chivalry. We will be shown
a dozen different places where Bowie bled and Crockett
died; but no matter it's all holy ground. We must have
a Mexican supper in the open air and a talk with the chile
queens. We must have hot tamales, with ice cold beer on
the side to temper the internal fires, listen to the music in
Alamo Plaza and witness the Battle of Flowers. And above
all, we must see San Antonio by moonlight see it from the
roof of some tall building when, bathed in the silver flood
it becomes a veritable vision of beauty, the apotheosis of
romance, a fairy city which, like the baseless fabric of a
dream, we expect to fade from sight with the coming of the
sun. Beneath the magic rays of the southern moon the
grimiest adobe is transformed into Parian marble, the mean-
est jacal becomes an Edenic bower. The turreted postofHce
looms up a mighty mediaeval castle, the placid river a
tangled ribbon of burnished silver, a magic mirror, reflect-
ing the unreal. A brace of mocking-birds call to each other
from the depths of umbrageous foliage, then pour forth
a flood of melody such as Orpheus never equaled ; the fire-
flies gleam in the cool gardens; there comes the rhythmic
pulse of dancing feet on oaken floors ; the sensuous perfume
of dew-bespangled flowers hangs heavy in the air and sinks
into the blood like voluptuous music, while overhead rides
serene the silver Queen of Night, midway between the
154 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
sleeping- earth and "the star-domed City of God." But, as
the governor of North Carolina remarked to the chief exe-
cutive of Here's hopin'.
I once attempted to become a road angel, but found the
flying a trifle too laborious for my feeble wings. I had
attained to the mature age of seventeen years when I deter-
mined to become a knight of the grip and go forth conquer-
ing and to conquer. I noticed that they usually wore good
clothes and rode in the ladies' coach ; so, with a sigh, I
surrendered my cherished ambition to become President of
this great Republic and pass my name down to posterity as
one of the numerous stepfathers of my country, and devoted
all my energies to the accomplishment of my new destiny.
I secured a position with an Indianapolis printing house
on commission and sallied forth into the small towns. I
was a Drummer at last and felt, with Monte Cristo, that
the world was mine. But it wasn't at least not just yet.
The first merchant I tackled seemed delighted to see me.
His "What can I do for you to-day," was unctious as the
Song of Solomon, as oily as a keg of cotton seed butter;
but my reply seemed to freeze the genial current of his soul.
His encouraging smile faded like artificial beauty in a pic-
nic shower, his suavity slipped its trolley-pole, his milk of
human kindness shrunk from a gallon an hour to half a pint
a day. I talked to him and he listened with the ennuied air
of a man to whom life is a burden and heaven not his hope.
I learned that he was a Presbyterian, and rung in a few
impromptu remarks on original sin without seeming to
interest him. Even a short disquisition on foreordination
failed to fetch him. I persuaded him to examine my samples
and he finally gave some faint signs of life, gradually grew
interested and asked for prices. After an hour's seance I
was sure of a big C. O. D. order, but he was called to serve
a customer, and I waited trembling on the verge of my
first triumph. I was glad that I hadn't killed him during
the first ten minutes. I said to myself that with patience for
a lever and good-nature for a fulcrum I could move the
world. While I was congratulating myself my prospective
patron slipped out the back door and went to dinner,
leaving a stuttering clerk in charge, who tried to tell me
what had become of the boss, but sprung his pneumatic-tire
at the half-way house and had to withdraw. When the
merchant returned with his surcingle extended a notch or
two he told me that he had more stationery than he knew
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 155
what to do with had no intention of placing an order.
Then I was sorry that I hadn't killed him when 1 could have
proved justifiable homicide. As I slowly packed my sam-
ples I resolved never to be polite and patient again and
I haven't. I began to inspect the clothing with which his
tables were piled. He at once became interested. Did I
want to buy a suit? I hardly knew. I became distant, re-
served, and he set to work to thaw me out. I asked for
prices and his politeness fairly oozed out at the pores his
milk of human kindness increased momentarily in geometri-
cal ratio. I was persuaded to try on various suits became
well nigh enthusiastic in the matter of dress. For two
'hours he perspired and tumbled his stock, trying to find
something that would satisfy my McAllisterian taste, then
I told him I was overstocked with clothes had no intention
of ordering more, and departed, feeling that I had tied in
the ears of an unconscionable ass a double bcw-knot that
wouldn't come out in a hurry. By working hard the rest
of the day I managed to take one order for a pack of
visiting cards. I told the merchant that I would ship them
f. o. b. and draw on him in 30 days. Then I threw my
sample-case in the river and hoofed it home. If I ever
become a successful Drummer it will be as a member of
the Salvation Army.
CASH VS. COIN.
Coin, a free silver advocate, and Cash, a hardshell gold-
bug, have been conducting suppositions schools for the in-
struction of the common people in the so-called "science
of money." When first informed that their foolish little
books were having an extensive sale, I supposed that the
people regarded them simply as satires and read them to be
amused; for not even a controversy between Mesdames
Partington and Malaprop across the back-yard fence anent
the proper method of making soft-soap or skinning eels
could be more excruciatingly funny. But I learned some-
what to my surprise, that many people take them seriously
-even study them with attention, hoping to gain valuable
information therefrom. I would not now be surprised to
hear that Munchausen and Mother Goose had been adopted
as text-books by our universities. Coin should be soundly
spanked for his presumption and placed in the A B C class
of economics, and Cash sentenced to the dunce-block for
156 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
at least a dozen years. There is some hope for the first
he may outgrow his vagaries; but the latter signs a dozen
certificates to his own irremediable idiocy. He begins with
a false premise and closes with a stolen currency plan. He
brazenly makes misleading statements, then appears to take
a fiendish delight in exposing his own falsehoods. Not
being a metallist, I might be expected to regard the merry
war now raging between the gold and silverites much as the
old woman did the controversy between her husband and
the bear; but of two evils there is always a least. If we
must have a money that will either scale the mighty fortunes
of the millionaires or ruthlessly despoil the pantries of the
poor, in God's name give us the first. A depreciating cur-
rency is always an evil. It has ever been the bete-noire of
the ultra conservative economists ; but I defy them to point
to one nation it has irremediably ruined, to one people it
has hopelessly impoverished. Yet the strand of Time is
thick-strewn with wreck and ruin wrought by an appreci-
ating currency, a currency that concentrated the wealth
of mighty nations in the hands of a favored few and made
of Mie masses miserable bondmen compelled them to
choose between the bread of charity and the blood of revo-
lution.
The free and unlimited coinage of silver would be a mis-
take per se, but wisdom personified compared with gold
monometallism. It would not induct the toiling millions
into an economic millenium; but it would constitute a step
in the emancipation of the industrial Israel. It were better
to wander forty years in the monetary wilderness, and at
last reach a fair Canaan, than to content ourselves with
Egyptian bondage and the making of bricks without straw.
Such being the case, it were well to look with a tolerant eye
on the "mistakes of Moses" who means well and align
our batteries full upon old Pharaoh. I have no doubt that
selfish monarch and his obsequious ministers talked to the
groaning Israelites much as the money kings of to-day talk
to the slaves of our industrial system. I can easily imagine
them saying:
"What would ye; leave the flesh-pots of Egypt whose
savor ye are permitted to smell and take to the desert?
Would ye follow to your certain destruction this bewhisk-
ered fanatic, this foolish Midianite whose calamity clacking
hath made ye discontent? Behold the plagues already
brought upon the land by him ! See how much better off ye
are than was labor four centuries ago. Why, we can prove
it by the government statistics ! Jacob and his sons lived in
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 157
tents and came near starving to death, while ye inherit
houses which ye have builded for yourselves, and for which
ye pay rent and there's a free soup joint in every city.
Talk about being oppressed ! Why, the value of farm prop-
erty has doubled, and there was never a time when ye
could purchase so much with a talent of gold if ye have
the talent."
The continual cry of the plutocrats through their news-
papers and bipedal phonographs that the condition of labor
is better to-day than in times past, is calculated to give sen-
sible people a chronic case of ennui. It should be better
much better. The workman of today can create more
wealth in a week than could his grandsire in a month, and
the more he creates the more he should enjoy. The con-
dition of the laborer, the farmer and the mechanic should
have improved more than 300 per cent during the past cent-
ury. But has it? A century ago there was work for all
and labor was sure of its reward. There was no such thing
as able-bodied pauperism. How is it to-day? The Chicago
Tribune, an ultra-conservative paper of the gold-bug school,
estimated not long ago that a million American workmen
were out of employment subsisting on the crumbs that fall
from Dives' banquet-board and accepting his cast-off cloth-
ing with obsequious thankfulness.
Cash opens his school with an object lesson intended to
be very impressive. He informs us by means of diagrams
that the wage of labor well-nigh doubled and its purchasing
power almost trebled from 1860 to 1892. I had no idea
the workman *was getting along so well ! If he keeps up
that lick for a few years he will be living in brown stone
fronts and clipping bond coupons instead of going hungry
to bed and wondering where in the Devil's name he is to
get the money to meet the interest on his mortgage or make
the monthly payment on the little jag of cheap furniture
he purchased on the installment plan. With Cash's dia-
grams before us it is difficult to understand how it chanced
that a million men were taking up their belly-bands a notch
for breakfast, dining on free soup and sucking their breath
for supper. The average of wages is higher to-day than in
1890, but lower than in 1870. From 1875 to 1892 the
average advanced one-half of one per cent then dropped
fully 15 per cent? You can hire labor cheaper to-day than
a quarter of a century ago, and there are more men waiting
for jobs. Yet in a quarter of a century the wealth- creating
power the value of labor has almost doubled. Does not
that clearly demonstrate that there's something radically
158 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
wrong? Despite the fact that the wealth-creating power of
labor has more than trebled during the century, the fact
remains a fact as gross to sense as the sun at noon to-day
that never before in the history of this nation, barring the
acute stages of two or three panics, was it so difficult for
the laborer, the mechanic and the farmer to make an honest
living, or for the debtor to discharge his obligations. The
gulf that separates Dives and Lazarus is wider than ever
before and this despite the fact that the average of wages
is higher and their purchasing power greater than forty
years ago. As civilization advances the standard of living
rises. Our ancestors lived on roots and raw meat, inhabited
caves and hollow trees and attired themselves in a streak,
of red paint for winter overcoat and a few freckles for sum-
mer ulster; but as the world made progress from pure
animalism the luxuries of one generation became the neces-
sities of the next a fact which Cash has not dreamed of in
his philosophy. He assures us that the principal cause of
the panic of 1893 was "the decreased cost of production."
In other words, when the people discovered that they could
produce two bushels of wheat and two bolts of cloth with
the expenditure of the same energy that was required in
former times to produce one bushel of wheat and one bolt
of cloth, they became panic-stricken were so badly scared
that they proceeded to go naked and hungry! He first
points to the increased purchasing power of wages as a
boon enjoyed by the workingman, then assures him that
the decrease in the cost of commodities was what turned him
into a tramp! It seems almost like cruelty to animals to
criticise such a consummate idiot. It is only a lurking
suspicion that Cash is more knave than fool that he has
been duly employed to pull wool over the eyes of the ignor-
ant that leads the Iconoclast to dignify his ridiculous book
with this review. I have some respect for an honest ignor-
amus, but when a man possessing the faintest adumbration
of intellect employs it in assisting Greed to despoil Need,
he deserves to have his shirt-tail set on fire.
Cash "admits that we are in the midst of a great financial
and industrial depression" precipitated by an increased
ability to create wealth but would not have us become
discouraged. He assures us that "this panic will not always
last." Let us hope not; but if we may judge the future
by the past and cuckoo economics still prevail it will
scarce have blown itself out before another is ripe. In
twenty years we have had three panics, and the depression
which follows these crashes usually lasts from three to seven
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 159
years. In other words, the workman can depend upon being
employed at fair wages and the planter confidently expect
to purchase with his cotton enough Paris green to poison
the worms, about one year in four! And it is the occasional
oasis in the industrial desert which Cash employs to prove
that labor is fairly reveling in Lucullean luxury that those
who are striving to emancipate it from poverty are a pack
of pestiferous demagogues. To illustrate how rapidly the
man with the hoe is becoming a gold-plated plutocrat, he
points out that the increase of the value of farm property
in Minnesota during the past ten years amounts to more
than $176,000,00x3, while the mortgage debt increased but
$4,000,000 during the same time. He neglects, however,
to mention that Minnesota is a new state, that the immigra-
tion, has been very large and the increase in farm values
chiefly due to augmented population. According to his
figures the increase in land values represents about five-
sixth of the total, but as he fails to state how much of this
represents improvements and how much "unearned incre-
ment" his statistics are utterly worthless. The increase in
land values may be entirely due to increase in population
for aught he shows to the contrary, which would leave
about $30,000,000 to represent the reward of labor in one of
the greatest agricultural states for a period of ten years.
Had Cash been seeking the truth instead of something to
bolster up a preconceived theory, he would have taken for
illustration one of the older agricultural States. He might
as well have selected Oklahoma and argued from the rapid
increase of farm values that the American agriculturalists
are becoming veritable Astors ! Having given the increase
in farm debt, he should have given the amount of mortgage
foreclosure. There is nothing in his statistics to show that
half the arable area of Minnesota has not passed into the
ownership of Eastern capitalists during the decade. Fig-
ures do not lie, to be sure, but to quote from Cash "they
are the best friends a financial liar ever had."
He tells us, and quite truly, that "the credits of the coun-
try are based on the property of the country" that the debts
of the country are paid with the products of the soil and
the handicrafts of the people." To the query, How can we
repay the wealth we have borrowed from John Bull, he re-
plies : "We will send the Englishman something to eat
and to wear." That being the case, what has our currency
to do with our foreign trade? Yet he tells us to reject cur-
rency plans "when they propose a money good enough to
use at home, but which the foreigner will not take." Did
160 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
we ever make a money that the foreigner would "take?"
Has the foreigner made money since the establishment of a
purely American currency system that we would "take?''
If Cash had a hatful of British guineas he couldn't buy a
beer with them in the entire city of Chicago. He could
doubtless find some one to purchase them by weight, just as
he could go on the market and dispose of a carload of pork
or pig-iron.
Cash undertakes to demonstrate to a doubting world
that gold, instead of increasing, is actually decreasing in
value. He assures us that a day's labor is the measure of
value, in fact the only one declares that "it will buy
more than one and a half times as much gold as it would
forty years ago, and closes with the triumphant cackle of
an old hen that, by laborious effort, has succeeded in lay-
ing a new egg. Accepting a day's labor as the best pos-
sible measure of value, what does Cash, prove by it?
Simply that gold, instead of having diminished in value,
has greatly increased. His assumption that a day's labor
will buy a third more gold than it would forty years ago
might be easily disproved ; but granting that his premise
is correct, his conclusion is wrong. Labor is valuable only
as it is productive, and Cash assures us that a given
amount of human effort will produce three times as much
wheat and more than three times as much cotton cloth as
it would forty years ago. We know that the same rule ap-
plies to almost every line of human endeavor because
Cash has told us so. What does this signify? Simply that
in forty years labor has about trebled in value; yet a
given amount, instead of buying three times as much
gold, will purchase but a trifle more than one and-half
times as much. Does Cash catch the idea? If his conclu-
sion that gold has decreased in value more than 50 per
cent in forty years be correct, I submit that as a measure
of value it is a miserable failure and we had best find a
better one.
A suspicion that gold and paper currency bottomed
thereon do not constitute the best possible exchange me-
dium seems to have occurred to Cash, for he suggests one
composed of greenbacks "convertible into a 2 per cent
government bond an intercontrovertible bond which
may be exchanged for the greenbacks again upon the de-
mand of the holder/' then adds: "The proposed credit
money would constitute a flexible currency which would
always answer the demands of business. It would in-
crease and decrease according to demand, and no cur-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 161
rency famine could occur so long as there were outstand-
ing bonds."
Cash has appropriated, without so much as by-your-
leave, the currency plan which I proposed in the Icono-
clast for December, 1891, and elaborated in a widely
circulated pamphlet entitled "Dives and Lazarus," pub-
lished June i, 1894. It was this plan which the financiers
of Germany discussed and approved at Berlin in 1893. I
would feel highly gratified by an endorsement of my in-
terconvertible bond-currency plan by the spokesman
put forward by the American gold monometalists had he
not taken the precaution to spoil it by stipulating that
we "keep as the standard of value the gold dollar of pres-
ent weight and fineness" which he assures us has fluctu-
ated more than 50 per cent in forty years! Still I am
grateful for the direct admission by the gold-bugs that it
is not necessary to bottom our paper money on metal, and
for the tacit admission that a currency so constituted can-
not possibly be a flexible currency, answering to the de-
mands of business and preventing money famines. But
just how we are to retain the fluctuating gold dollar as
the standard of value when we have a currency in nowise
dependent upon the yellow metal is beyond my philoso-
phy. L fear that Cash has brooded over the money prob
lem until his little think-tank has got full of logical wig-
gletails. If the bond-currency plan works it will soon be
adopted by all enlightened nations and the monetary oc-
cupation of gold will be gone. The decreased demand will
cause a slump in price greater than Cash figures out has
occurred in the last forty years.
To emancipate our measures of value from the laws
which govern commodities and make it as immutable as
the multiplication table, I suggested the plan which Cash
seems unable to comprehend. For his benefit I will re-
state it as briefly as possible :
Let the government sell just as many one per cent inter-
convertible bonds as the people desire, the proceeds con-
stituting a redemption fund. Any one having United
States currency of any kind could exchange it for these
bonds redeemable on demand. Add full legal tender
treasury notes to the volume of currency just so long as
the increase will remain in the channels of trade. When
people are buying bonds the currency is redundant ; when
they are selling bonds the volume of currency is too small
to properly serve the ends of commerce. In the bond re-
demption fund we have an infallible indicator of the cur-
162 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
rency requirements of the country. When the volume of
currency is too small its purchasing power increases un-
til equal to the work required of it; when redundant its
purchasing power decreases until all is employed. By this
system the volume of currency would adapt itself auto-
matically and infallibly to the requirements of commerce
and our measure of value remain immutable."
Cash lays it down as a fundamental principle that "in-
trinsically valuable money only is a measure of value,"
yet commends a currency plan that would either prove a
flat failure or drive all intrinsically valuable money out of
existence. He prides himself on ''disagreeing with all the
great economists of the world" regarding the quantitive
theory of money, yet approves a currency plan based ex-
clusively upon that theory. The bond-currency plan would
make our measure of value a theoretical dollar purely a
trade tool. Its value would not depend upon cost of pro-
duction but on utility on supply relative to demand.
Cash has something to say about "the science of
money." They all do. It is supposed to be something very
esoteric, quite beyond the comprehension of the hoi polloi.
The metalists prattle of "redemption money," and "money
of final payment," and "gold as a standard of value,"
until, like a half-baked sophist, they become completely
lost in a fog of their own making and proceed to inflict a
suffering public with books filled from imprimus to finis
with foolish contradictions and self-evident absurdities.
I have neither space nor inclination for a dissertation on
money, but will drop the befuddled Cash a line to enable
him to find his way out of the labyrinth in which he is
lost. Should he inadvertently hang himself with it after-
ward "the science of money" will not have lost much. A
dollar, whether it be of gold, silver or paper, is simply
a check which the people in their official capacity gave
against the entire wealth and credit of the nation. Unless
it be redeemed on demand in the necessaries or luxuries
of life it is absolutely worthless. There can be no "money
of final payment." When you exchange a paper dollar
for a gold dollar you have simply traded one government
check for another the gold dollar awaits redemption in
commodities. One dollar is simply a figure of speech by
which we express the commercial relation which one com-
modity bears to others. Every exchange made is upon
this basis, but by using metal as an exchange medium all
deferred payments become speculations deals in futures.
One great fault of Cash is jumping at conclusions, sprain-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 163
ing his logical sequence in mid-air and landing on both
sides of the goal. He has heard that the "per capita cir-
culation of money is approximately two and one-half
times as much in France as it is in England, while the
prices of the great staples do not vary very much in the
two countries." That is what causes him to joyfully
bestride the celluloid collars of "all the great economists
of the world" on the quantitive theory of money. It is
another sad illustration of the axiom that "a little learn-
ing 1 is a dangerous thing." Cash has heard of improved
machinery in agriculture and the industrial arts, but is
evidently not aware that in some portions of the world
it is applied to exchange. A given quantity of currency
will do double the money work, in England that it will
in France, perhaps ten times what it- will in China. Ex-
changes to the amount of hundreds of millions sterling
are effected without the handling of a single coin or the
passing of a pound note. If we would abolish our banks
and clearing houses here in the United States we would
require a currency of at least $250 per capita to expedi-
tiously transact our present volume of business. In every
civilized country money is becoming ever less an ex-
change medium, while retaining its attribute as a meas-
ure of value. If we could so perfect our exchange system
as to transact all our business without the use of money
there would be no need of the interconvertible bond-
currency plan, for the very thing at which it aims to
take currency altogether out of the control of politicians
and place it in the hands of commerce would be accom-
plished.
But this is probably as large a lesson as Cash can
digest in a single year. When he has thoroughly mas-
tered it I will explain to him, in words adapted to his
understanding, that while the free and unlimited coinage
of silver is an awkward and uncertain step, it is still a
step forward ; but that gold monometalism is an unequiv-
ocal step backward. The first is a misdirected blow for
liberty ; the last a strengthening of the chains that bind
America's industrial slaves.
164 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
TEXAS AND INTOLERANCE.
CRANFILL SUPERSEDES CHRIST.
A subscriber at Savannah, Ga., sends me a newspaper
containing an account of the attempt made by the min-
isters of Hoboken, N. J., to prevent Col. Robt. G. Inger-
soll delivering a lecture in that city, and asks, "Can't you
touch up those intolerant Jerseyites?" I could, and it
would afford me some satisfaction to do so ; but it would
be firing away ammunition without effect. Professing
Christians who believe that God Almighty needs their
guardianship that he can be injured by the ablest agnos-
tic on the earth are not amenable to reason, and the
Iconoclast is not so well provided with pearls that it can
afford to cast them before iswine. 'When ministers
imagine that the religion planted by the toil and watered
by the tears of the Immaculate Son of God can be up-
rooted by a single scoffer; that it cannot stand the fierce
light which beats upon Reason's forum and defy all the
ballistae and battering-rams of human logic ; that it must
be sheltered from the puny attacks of mortal men lest
they prove it a fraud and make it a by-word and a shaking
of the head to the nations, their faith must be wofully
weak or their lives a brazen fraud. Truth does not hide
away in dark corners, but seeks the garish light of the
noonday sun. It does not fear the attacks of Falsehood,
but stands ever in the world's arena, courting the con-
flict. The Christian religion is true or it is false. It is of
God or it is of the devil. If true it will stand the severest
test. If of God it is indestructible as the law of gravita-
tion. Then why do its ordained defenders take refuge
behind long forgotten laws born of brutish ignorance,
and with the policeman's bludgeon strive to close the
mouth of honest criticism? The poet assures us that
"Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just" ; yet the
leaders of the armies of the Lord will not fight, even on
compulsion. Instead of meeting logic with logic and the
fallible reason of man with the authoritative decrees of
God, they answer every attack of infidelity with a tirade
of foul calumny, then appeal to the laws of the land to
protect them in their pitiful weakness. They shriek "in-
fidel" when it was infidels whom Christ toiled and suf-
fered to save. They howl "blasphemer," when their great
Master forgave even those who nailed him to the cross
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 165
and mocked his agonies. The tactics adopted by the
church to crush those who presume to question or dare
to differ is making infidels by the million. The day has
gone by when men of intelligence were content to close
their eyes, open their mouths and swallow without ques-
tion every foolish assertion of clerical fatheads. Formerly
they builded their Reason on their Faith; now they are
grounding their Faith upon their Reason that infinitesi-
mal fragment of Godhood which burns, more or less
brightly, in every human brain. They are demanding
that the Christian religion be cast into the crucible where
every assumption of science is tried by fire, and either
comes forth in deathless splendor or is relegated to the
rubbish heap.
Yes, it were a real comfort to "touch up those intolerant
Jerseyites" ; but my correspondent must excuse me.
There's an old adage to the effect that those who live in
glass houses should not throw stones and Texas can
furnish forth more hidebound dogmatists, narrow-brained
bigots and intolerant fanatics in proportion to population
than can any other section of these United States. That
is why the Iconoclast located in Texas. It came, not to
call the righteous, but sinners -to repentance. When it
has thoroughly reformed the Texas ministry it will be
time enough for it to tackle that of other States. We are
somewhat inclined to sneer at the old-time Puritans of
New England and the exuberant cranks of Kansas. Ever
and anon some able editor mounts to the roof garden of
his donjon keep and thanks God that we are not as other
people ; but the cold hard fact remains that Massachusetts
and Kansas combined cannot furnish so large a contin-
gent whom it were unsafe to trust with power to perse-
cute for religious opinion's sake. Of course Texas has
many as broad-gauged and progressive people as any land
or clime can boast ; but she is cursed with a grand army of
Me-and-god creatures of the Cranfillian type, who would,
if invested with plenary power, establish a strict censor-
ship of the press and permit nothing to be published that
was not considered ultra-orthodox that did not begin
with hypocritical groans and end with blasphemous
"amens"; who would require Jews and Catholics to
recant on pain of death and place heretics under harrows
of iron. In most States the church has made grand prog-
ress, broadened, become more tolerant, more Christ-like
calling science, art and education to its aid while cast-
ing non-essentials aside ; has realized that
166 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
"New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth ;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth."
But the Texas division seems to have become hopelessly
stuck in the Serbonian bogs of a brainless bigotry. It is
not content to care for the spiritual welfare of man, but
insists upon usurping the functions of the State and pro-
viding for his temporal well-being also. It would make
him devout, not by God's love, but by due process of law.
Having made it a criminal offense for him to pursue his
usual vocation on Emperor Constantine's "holy Sabbath, "
it now aspires to close all fairs and other places of in-
struction on that day, and we may soon expect it to send
a constable after those who fail to attend divine service
and cannot furnish a doctor's certificate of inability so to
do. It has banded itself together in a political party with
the avowed purpose of dictating; what man shall drink,
and will doubtless next prescribe the cut of his clothing
and limits his library to Slattery's and Sam Jones' ser-
mons, a Protestant Bible and the "Baptist Standard."
And the most remarkable phase of it all is that Cranfill
has become infinitely more sacred than Christ, the politi-
cal tenets of the church militant holier than the Ten
Commandments. You may declare the Garden of Eden
episode a myth, and even hint that the Immaculate Con-
ception is but an old pagan legend in a new dress, and
be allowed to live ; but one doubt regarding the efficiency
of Prohibition were sufficient to damn you, while to sug-
gest that either Cranfill, Jones or Slattery are out for the
long green and have as little religion as a rabbit, were
rankest blasphemy a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Fortunately the liberal element dominates in Texas, as
it does in every civilized country, and the fiendish wolf
of fanaticism can only tug at its chain and show its
venomous teeth. Not being permitted to put men and
women to the torture for uttering their honest convic-
tions in a land of so-called religious liberty; to flay them
alive for daring to dissent from some ridiculous dogma
cooked up by half-crazed dunderheads during the Dark
Ages; to drag them at the cart's tail and bore their
tongues with hot irons in the name of a beneficent Deity,
these professed followers of the Man of Galilee resort
to sneaking boycotts, petty annoyances and cowardly
calumnies. They prove in every way possible that their
hearts, instead of being full to overflowing with the grace
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 167
of God and the catholic charity of Christ, are bitter little
pools in whose poisonous waters and fetid scum writhe
and wriggle unclean reptiles such as Dante saw in t the
desolate regions of the damned. That the picture is not
overdrawn every one who has chanced to provoke the
ire of the ultra-religious element of Texas knows too
well. It were equivalent to invading a den of rattlesnakes
or stirring up a rabid skunk. Tom Paine was a devout
Deist. At the shrine of the Most High God he humbly
bowed the knee. He never penned an irreligious line nor
uttered an immoral sentiment. He was an intellectual
Colossus, towering head and shoulders above even the
Titans of his time. He was the unfaltering champion of
freedom, the guide, philosopher^ and friend of the new-
born nation. But for his fearless pen, whose path of fire
led on to liberty, the sword of Washington might have
slumbered in its sheath. Paine did more than all the
preachers of his day to nerve the eagle's wing for its
imperial flight to fling Freedom's banner, like a burst of
glory, into the leaden sky. But he chanced to disagree
with the orthodoxy of his day, and for a hundred years
he has been denounced and damned as an enemy of God
and a curse to mankind. Even his dying bed has been
heaped with brutal lies, and across his grave still beat and
break the accursed waves of "Christian" calumny. In
many portions of the country the church has ceased to
belittle and belie Tom Paine ; but the ultra-orthodox of
Texas still insist that he was an atheist and an outlaw
who repented of his foul crimes too late to escape the
horrors of hell.
The New England Puritans who hanged witches and
persecuted Quakers felt that they were discharging a disa-
greeable duty. They were the creatures of an ignorant and
superstitious but God-fearing age, and their cruelties, which
have left so dark a stain upon the annals of the Christian
church, were performed more in sorrow than in anger. If
they inflicted tortures in the name of religion they were will-
ing to suffer death in its most terrible form in defence of
their faith. With them religion was a serious thing and
morality its synonym. If ignorant they were honest, and
if brutal they "were brave. They despised the rewards of
this world, trampled its frivolities beneath their iron-shod
feet, loved God with their whole hearts and hated a liar and
a hypocrite as they did the imps of hell. How is it with
the Texas intolerants? Instead of fixing their eyes stead-
fastly upon the Kingdom of God, they are the most per-
168 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
sistent seekers after the almighty dollar, the most eager for
social preferment and political advancement of 'any class in
the commonwealth. They will give blows, but will not
stand to receive them, and instead of regarding with kingly
contempt that man who would swerve one iota from the
truth to preserve his life, they have made of lying a power-
ful lever "with which they hope to overthrow religious liber-
ty, transform the state into a theocracy and force free-born
American citizens to submit to the petty slavery of sumptu-
ary laws. Their preachers, instead of serving without
salary and looking forward to a heavenly reward as did the
Apostles, are ever seeking "calls" to fatter financial pas-
tures. When the legislature is to select a brace of chaplains
to insult Almighty God with perfunctory prayers paid for
at the rate of $5 a minute by men glad of an opportunity to
earn a dollar a day there's a wild rush of the sanctified
time-servers to the capital city, and the methods they adopt
to corral the succulent sinecure would disgrace a railroad
lobby or cause a bunco-steerer to blush. They have di-
vorced morality from religion and substituted unadulterated
gall for the fear of God. Had the religious fervor of the
Puritans dominated the world we would have had men of
mistaken methods but of iron mould ; should the fashionable
politico-religiosity of Texas prevail we would have, to bor-
row from Macaulay, "the days of dwarfish talents and
gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds,
the golden age of the coward, the bigot and the slave."
Unquestionably there are many worthy church commu-
nicants in Texas, as elsewhere; but they appear to be in a
hopeless minority a few grains of sound corn in a pile of
compost. There are broad-gauged men in the Protestant
ministry here men who serve the Lord in spirit and in
truth, and by their kindly acts, progressive ideas and noble
tolerance dignify his cause; but they are the exception in-
stead of the rule and are almost invariably unpopular with
the great body of church communicants, whose ideal ap-
pears to be a preacher "with just ability enough to deceive
and just religion enough to persecute." During the recent
Prohibition campaign in McLennan county a minister of the
gospel, believing sumptuary laws violative both of the spirit
of the Christian Bible and the American constitution, spoke
and worked against it. What happened? Did a commit-
tee of his brethren in Christ wait upon him and strive by
kindly argument to convince him that he was wrong? Did
the other preachers offer up public prayers that he be
brought within the pale of their political party? Not a bit
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 169
of it. They poured out upon him the seven vials of their
wrath attacked him with the vindictive hatred of a pack of
demons torturing a lost soul, or a drove of mangy jackasses
kicking a dead lion. They belabored him from the pulpit
and the rostrum, and turned the sectarian press into a reek-
ing sewer that emptied upon him the foulest filth. These
"Christians," these professed followers of the meek and
lowly Nazarene, who was all love and charity and gentle-
ness, reached for his vitals with beaks and claws like fam-
ished vultures, then served him as the unclean Yahoos did
the hapless Gulliver when they found him beneath their
roost in Houyhnhnm land. And so they serve every man
who declines to permit them to do both his religious and
political thinking for him ; who refuses to take his place
among the intellectual goslings and trail blindly in the wake
of some flat-headed old ministerial gander, squawking when
he squawks and fluttering when he flies. There are min-
isters occupying prominent Texas pulpits who haven't orig-
inated an idea in forty years, and who would not recognize
the Incarnate Son of God if they met him in the road. It is
not necessary that a man should possess an iota of intellect
to become a popular preacher. In fact, brains are but in
his way, for in orthodoxy there is absolutely no room for
reason. He needs only to become a prohibitionist not nec-
essarily a teetotaler cultivate a sanctified whine calculated
to curdle milk, grab the crank of some pitiful little gospel
mill and begin to grind. Let him but select the heavenly
turnpike on which he suspects there will be the most travel,
set up his little toll-gate, do the Jeremiah act and he'll soon
have a mob of sanctified nonentities about him who shame
the devil at his own game on week-days and try to bunco
the blessed Saviour on Sunday. I have noticed that those
who were most fearful that I would commit the awful sin
of blasphemy, or "desecrate the Christian Sabbath" by play-
ing ball with the boys or dancing with the girls were the
people I had to watch closest in a trade; but those who sat
up nights to agonize lest the young be led astray by some
awful atheist, could tell the smoothest falsehood with the
straightest face ; that those who wept the most copiously be-
cause the heathen of foreign lands had no Bible, were a
trifle backward in supplying the heathen right here at home
with bread; that those who cried "awmen" the loudest at
camp-meetings were usually expert circulators of calumnies.
If we could trade our ham-fat preachers for Good Samari-
tans at a ratio of 16 to I, our brass-collar orthodoxy for
pure morality, and about three hundred thousand brainless
170 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
bigots and canting hypocrites for a yaller dog and lose him,
Texas would be infinitely better off.
A DAMNABLE DECISION.
The decision of the Supreme Court in the income-tax
case has placed this nation twenty years nearer a revolu-
tion that may terminate in a Reign of Terror. It has
issued to the plutocrat a patent of nobility declared that he
belongs to a privileged class in nowise amenable to the
laws that govern the proletarian. It has erected a barrier
between Dives and Lazarus, drawn the line of battle be-
tween the Cormorant and the Commune. It has trans-
formed the Federal Constitution from a palladium of liberty
into an instrument of oppression, the tool of tyranny. That
decision is a challenge to destiny, a red blanket in the face
of an infuriated bull, a mockery of Samson by foolish
Philistines as he stands, blind and desperate, his brawny
arms encircling the pillars of our political temple. It is a
crime against the common people, a poisoned dirk driven
into the very vitals of the American Republic, a foul blas-
phemy of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the terrestrial
Trinity of our fathers.
Doubtless the occupants of the Supreme Bench resemble
Brutus in that they are "all honorable men ;" but if such a
halting, illogical and every way infamous verdict had been
brought in by a petit jury there would have been more than
a suspicion of bribery. The decision as handed down by
Chief Justice Fuller reads like the special pleading of a jack-
leg lawyer, employed to defend a rich but notorious robber
caught despoiling the pantries of the poor. Talleyrand de-
clares that language was made to conceal thought ; but even
the opaque verbal flood in which the decision floats like a
grisly skeleton in a sea of slime, cannot conceal the fact that
Fuller knew the ruling was both dangerous and damnable.
Like the lady in the play, he doth protest too much con-
sumes an hour in a dismal failure to establish a radical dif-
ference between tweedledum and tweedledee. It reminds
one of the plea of Queen Elizabeth that she possessed a
cavalry regiment of which neither horse nor man could be
hurt, viz., a regiment of tailors on mares. He is too evi-
dently arguing to his own conscience, which, like the dead
Banquo, will not down.
The four dissenting justices did not accuse their asso-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 171
ciates of corruption ; but they did charge them with having
committed a crime with having instituted a despotism of
wealth, with having deliberately endangered the existence
of the American government by an abortive science of defi-
nition. Never before in the history of the Supreme Court
did the dissenting justices express such indignation over a
decision or intimate so plainly that their associates were
either fools or knaves. The vigorous, almost insulting
protests of the dissenting justices; the tremendous mone-
tary interests at stake, together with the scholastic hair-
splittings, argumentative writhing and illogical twistings
and turnings that distinguish the decision, may mean much
or little according to the strength of the critic's confidence
in the incorruptibility of the court. For my own part, 1
do not believe that the betrayal of the people was the result
of direct bribery, as in the case of Benedict Arnold ; but I
do believe that such pressure was brought to bear by the
plutocracy upon our court of last resort as to shamefully de-
feat the ends of justice. All men are more or less malle-
able, and several members of our Supreme Court excep-
tionably so veritable Trilbys in pants, who find it "difficult
to say nay to earnest pleadings."
The decision is simply an official notification that upon
the shoulders of the poor must continue to rest the burthen
of taxation. The court decided, by a vote of 5 to 4, that a
tax on income arising from interest or rent is ''direct," there-
fore unconstitutional unless apportioned among the several
states on a basis of population; while a tax on income de-
rived from labor, professional service or merchandizing is
"indirect" and may be imposed at the pleasure of Congress
and without apportionment. The gross injustice of such
a ruling is too palpable to require comment, while its utter
absurdity must be evident to every man capable of reason-
ing from a premise to the simplest conclusion. A has an
annual income of $1,000,000, derived from the rental of real
estate or interest on capital invested in securities ; B has an
income of $1000, derived from the occupation of merchant
or machinist, butcher or baker. Congress, according to
the Supreme Court, may, by a simple "Be it enacted," tax
the petty income of B, but is forbidden to touch the colossal
income of A, except by apportionment, when it becomes the
province of each State to say how its pro rata shall be pro-
vided. A tax on the individual earnings of B is "indirect,"
while a tax on the revenues of A, drawn second-hand from
the efforts of others, is "direct" perhaps on the theory
that "two negatives make a positive." The Federal gov-
172 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ernment can shove its hand as deeply as it likes into the
pocket of labor, but cannot touch one penny in the thousand
pounds in the overflowing coffers of the capitalist. So
says the court. How is that for the fundamental law of
a land that poses in the face of heaven as "the refuge of
the world's oppressed?"
And what is the reply to this complaint? "Apportion-
ment." Apportion hell between the West and South!
Justice Harlan truly says that "No such apportionment can
possibly be made without doing monstrous, wicked injustice
to the many for the benefit of the favored few in particular
States." Do those "able editors," short-horse politicians
and other intellectual animaculae now echoing the word
like lost burros braying for company, know what constitu-
tional apportionment of the public burden means? It
means that when the Federal government desires to raise a
sum of money by such method each State must contribute
thereto, not in proportion to its taxable wealth, but accord-
ing to its population, no matter how poverty-stricken its
people. It means that one state must put up as much for
a mechanic out of employment, or a farmer with a mort-
gaged crop, as another for a Rockefeller or a Gould. The
privilege of taxing the great incomes by the method of ap-
portionment simply means that labor is at perfect liberty to
bite off its nose to spite its face, then leap from the frying
pan into the fire. No political party will ever dare per-
petrate such an infamy as the apportionment of the income
tax. Not even the Supreme Court that pitiful cat's-paw
of the plutocracy had the audacity to indorse it.
While a portion of the law was declared constitutional, it
was all killed the tail was permitted to go with the hide.
The law was aimed at large incomes, many of which are
drawn neither from rent nor interest; but the court denied
the axiom that "half a loaf is better than no bread." It
practically decided that should the government draft two
men for war, and one escape, it would hasten to discharge
the other, instead of mustering him in and sending a ser-
geant after the runaway. The decision means that we can-
not compel men to contribute to the support of government
according to their means until we have a constitution which
the plutocrat, with friends at court, cannot possibly pervert
or the people decide that patience has ceased to be a
virtue. It means that Wealth has decreed that Consump-
tion- shall bear the burden that tariff reform and reduced
excises are, for the present at least, "an irridescent dream."
It means that no matter how imminent the peril of the gov-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 173
ernment, or pressing its need, it is powerless to compel the
plutocrat to contribute of his means to the defense of our
flag. It means, as Justice Brown expressed it, "The sub-
mergence of the liberties of the people in a sordid despotism
of wealth." It means that the people who have ever looked
to the Supreme Court for protection from outrage and
oppression, will henceforth regard it as the slave of their
enemies. It means general dissatisfaction and growing un-
rest, until, despairing of righting his wrongs in the name of
reason, the Titan will put forth his terrible strength, and the
government of the United States of America will thence-
forth live "only in the tomb of the world's history."
A BIBLICAL BEAR STORY.
The Bible is fruitful of snake and fish stories, replete with
dreadful tales of ghosts and goblins, giants and chimerae
dire; but no biblical narrative possessed for my childhood
such absorbing interest as that of Elisha and his brace of
anthropophagous bears. In early youth, as in later years,
I resembled the Lord in that I was no respecter of persons.
There may have been other points of resemblance, but they
were not sufficiently pronounced to excite remark. I had a
bad habit of giving "back talk" to my elders, believing that
youth has some rights which even age is bound to respect;
hence I was frequently warned to beware the sad fate of
those bad little boys who made ribald remarks anent Elisha J s
seldom hair.
This interesting animal appears to have long been
Elijah's under-study, his man Friday, so to speak. Like
Mary and her little lamb, everywhere that Elijah went
Elisha was sure to go. He stuck to him like a cockle-burr
to a merino buck, or an importunate creditor to a bankrupt.
I rather suspect that Elijah went on that celestial excursion
to get rid of him. I think that I would have ridden in a
chariot of fire, or even straddled a streak of lightning to
cut such bad company. Elijah tried to side-track his
prophetic shadow at Gilgal, but it was no go. Elisha
trotted along to Beth-el wherever that may be to Jericho
and beyond the Jordan, despite the express orders of his
master, much as a persistent pup trails its expostulating
human property, but whether for genuine love of Elijah, or
to appropriate his garments when the latter put on celestial
raiment, deponent saith not. He got his master's mantle
174 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
when the latter was swiped by a marauding- whirlwind, and
seems to have been well content, to have shed no tears
over the enforced absence of its former occupant. Several
other people who witnessed the ascension were quite sure
that Elijah was the victim of an infant cyclone and insisted
on searching for the body, but to this Elisha strenuously ob-
jected. He may have considered it wasted effort; and,
again, he may have feared that it would endanger his story
anent that chariot of fire which had inadvertently escaped
the notice of the other eye-witnesses.
Having parted the river Jordan with his second-hand
mantle the waters fleeing affrighted from the unusual vis-
itor he was accepted by the simple people of Jericho as
Elijah's legitimate successor and honored accordingly. He
had tramped so long, however, that the spirit of the pro-
fessional hobo as well as the spirit of prophesy was upon
him, and he longed to be jogging along the dusty lanes and
foraging his fodder, so he set out for Beth-el afoot. He
does not appear to have had any business in Beth-el, but
that was all the more reason why the old vagabond should
go there. The prophets of his time were not in the habit
of tarrying very long in one place, but kept swinging round
the circle and living on the country, much like the modern
evangelists.
The children of Jericho appear to have resembled the
Nineteenth century youngsters in their unappeasable ap-
petite for fireworks. They had heard about Elijah going
up like a Fourth of July rocket, but had not been permitted
to witness the pyrotechnic display. They knew that Elisha
had fallen heir to the business and raiment of the original
aeronaut, and naturally watched him with considerable in-
terest, fully expecting that he would eventually take a
header into the blue empyrean with a pair of flaming horses,
scattering a stream of sparks behind them. But Elisha
has packed his red bandana and is leaving the city they are
about to be disappointed. They cannot surrender the long
anticipated circus without a protest, at least an appeal, so
they follow him beyond the gates of the city, crying in
their shrill treble.
"Go up, thou old baldhead ! Go up, thou old baldhead !"
They doubtless do not mean to be disrespectful, but are
dreadfully eager to see the show. They have discussed it
and dreamed of it for many days, have trailed every little
whirlwind to see if it was hunting for Elisha and scrutinized
each horse headed in his direction, to see if it was on fire.
They have heard that Elijah went out into the wilderness
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST. 175
beyond Jordan to make his ascent instead of doing the
aeronautic act from the market-place and getting all the
caravans to give excursion rates, and they suspect that
Elisha is sneaking out to board a whirlwind at some obscure
way-station. What wonder that they grow clamorous and
cry:
"Go up, thou old baldhead !"
But the duly ordained prophet of God does not take the
curtain calls of the gallery in a kindly spirit. He is evi-
dently sensitive about his scarcity of hair and considers their
remarks not only an affront to his dignity but an insult to
the Deity. Perhaps while dozing at the town pump the
godless gamins had painted a face on the rear elevation of
his cranium, so that it was difficult for people to determine
in what direction the prophet was steering. Or the ped-
dlers of hair rejuvenators may have persecuted him until
his naturally sunny disposition had soured. Anyway, the
allusion to his opera bouffe certificate was too much for his
Christian charity. Instead of gathering the little gamins
about him and explaining the significance of Elijah's trans-
lation, instructing them to lead worthy lives and thereby
become an honor to their parents and a blessing to the
world ; instead of carrying with him to Beth-el the love and
best wishes of the little ones and praying God to protect
them from evil;
"He turned back and looked on them, and cursed them
in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she-
bears out of the wood and tare forty and two' children of
them."
Then Elisha continued on his mission of love, recking
not the blood of the butchered babes left the poor little
bodies for the bears and buzzards. Forty and two little
children lie torn and mangled in the wild-wood, their white
faces upturned to an angry God. There is woe and wail
in Jericho as the sun goes down that day, mothers weeping
for their children and refusing to be comforted because they
are not : men who have led the forlorn hope and looked un-
awed into the lion's angry eyes, are prostrate in the dust,
bewailing their first born ; the Lord of the universe is brand-
ed as a bloodthirsty beast, whose company a self-respecting
devil would decline to keep, but the bald head of Israel's
peripatetic prophet is avenged!
I sincerely trust that I will not be burned as a heretic, or
even expelled from the church if I declare my doubts anent
the Rev. Mr. Elisha's bear story. It is just possible that
such a personage existed ; tho' there does not appear to have
176 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
been any necessity for his creation. It is conceivable that
the gamins of Jericho regarded him as a harmless half-wit
hobo, used him for their support until they got him "raw."
It may be that while they were plaguing him a brace of
ravenous bears set upon them. I can scarce blame the
prowlers for preferring the tender children to the tough old
prophet; still I regret that they didn't dally with him long
enough to abate the insufferable nuisance. Elisha's bear
story is one of those barbarisms which I shall cut out of the
Bible when I re-write it, as I intend one of these days to do.
It is not only a criminal libel of the Creator, but an insult to
common sense.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
OR THE LADIES AND THE APOSTLE.
[A synopsis of Mr. Brann's address to the Ladies' Reading Club,
San Antonio, Texas.]
I have been asked to lecture to the ladies of the Reading
Club, but shall do nothing of the kind. That were to admit
that you require improvement, and I would not have you
better than you are. We would have to clip your wings
or keep you in a cage. Besides, I never saw a woman
whom I could teach anything she already knew it. I have
been going to school to the ladies all my life. My mother
carried me through the kindergarten, lady preceptors
through the intermediate grade, and my wife is patiently
rounding off my education. When I graduate I expect ^to
go direct to heaven. As near as I can figure it out, the in-
habitants of the New Jerusalem will consist of several mil-
lion women and just men enough to fill the municipal
offices.
"I would not live always, I ask not to stay."
No lecture then, but an informal talk, without text or sub-
ject a vagrant ramble thro' such fields as tempt us. If
we should find fruit, or even flowers, let us be thankful. If
we encounter only briars, it will not be the first half hour
we have wasted.
The fact that you are members of the Reading Club indi-
cates that you are seeking knowledge. I trust that you are
finding it, that every stroke of the intellectual pick turns
up a golden nugget; but do not make the mistake of sup-
posing that all the wisdom of the world is bound in calf.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 177
You may know all that was ever penned in papyrus or
graved on stone, written on tablets of clay or preserved in
print and still be ignorant not even know how to manage
a husband. As a rule people read without proper discrim-
ination, and those who are most careful often go furthest
astray. I once knew a woman with no more music in her
soul than a rat-tail file, who spent three laborious years
learning to play the piano, then closed the instrument and
never touched it again. One day I said to her:
"Mary, what good did all the patient practice do you?"
"Lot's o' good," she replied ; "I used to be dreadfully
ashamed to have people know that I couldn't play." And
a great deal of laborious reading is undertaken on the same
principle that Mary learned to play the piano and is of just
as little benefit. Many people are with books as with med-
icine imagine that whatever is hardest to get down will do
them the most good. No mortal man and, as the preach-
er correctly stated, the men embrace the women ever yet
got any permanent good out of a book unless he enjoyed its
perusal. Jno. J. Ingalls says that everybody praises Mil-
ton's Paradise Lost, but nobody reads it. Ingalls is mis-
taken. Everybody making any pretension to culture has
read the book as a disagreeable duty; but that man don't
live at least outside of the lunatic asylum who can quote
a dozen lines of it. Same with Dante's Divine Comedia
and a host of other books with which people are expected to
inflict their brains. Read few books and those of the very
best, books that you enjoy. Read them thoroughly;
make them your very own then forget them as soon as
possible. Having submitted to the mental or moral disci-
pline of another, decline to lean on him, but stand up in your
own independent individuality. Don't be a copy. There is
on earth no more pitiable person than
"The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head."
Do not interpret too literally. What I warn you against
is the habit, all too common, of imagining ourselves rich be-
cause we have counted the golden hoard of others. One
may admire the Medicean Venus without becoming a sculp-
tor, or have Plato at his fingers' ends and ever remain a fool.
Were I an artist I would study with attention the works of
all the great masters ; but when I put my hand to my own
task I would turn my back upon them all and my face to
nature. My work would then be a "creation," not a copy.
Did I aspire to be truly learned I would study the words of
178 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the world's wisest then dig for wisdom on my own behoof,
I would thus become a philosopher instead of a parrot.
I have been frequently called an iconoclast, and bad as the
title is popularly supposed to be, I trust it is not altogether
undeserved. I have striven to break foolish idols and shat-
ter false ideals, to hurl unclean gods from their pedestals in
the public pantheon. A work of destruction is not, I ad-
mit, of a high order. Anybody may destroy ; it requires
genius to build up. The wonder of the ancient world sank
to ruin irremediable beneath the torch of a morbid dude who
had rather be "damned to everlasting fame" than altogether
forgotten. A hungry wolf may destroy a human life which
Almighty God has brought to perfection thro' long years of
labor. But destruction is sometimes necessary. The seas
must be cleared of pirates before commerce can flourish ; the
antiquated and useless building must come down before the
schoolhouse or business block can occupy the site. In the
great cities are men who do nothing but destroy old build-
ings professional wreckers of those works of man that
have outlived their usefulness. They build nothing; but
are they, therefore, to be condemned? So in the social
world, a man may be a professional wrecker, without the
constructive ability to build a political platform on a pie-
crate, and still be useful, indispensable. The wrecker of
bad buildings does not contract to put good ones in their
places; nor is the iconoclast under any obligation to find a
heavenly grace for every false god that falls beneath his
hammer, a saint for every sinner he holds up to scorn, a new
truth for every old falsehood he fells to earth. He may, if
he thinks proper, leave that labor to others and go on, with
brand and bomb, bludgeon and bill-hook, wrecking, destroy-
ing playing John the Baptist to a greater to come after.
A great many good people have taken the trouble to in-
form me that I am a pessimist. Perhaps so; but I am not
worrying much about it. A pessimist is a person somewhat
difficult to define. The fool who smokes in powder-house,
or believes that his neighbors always speak well of him be-
hind his back ; the wife who encourages her husband to pay
court to other women on the supposition that no harm can
ensue; the banker who accepts a man's unsecured note be-
cause he is a church member and powerful in prayer, and the
servant girl who lights the fire with kerosene then goes
to join the angels taking your household goods and gods
with her are certainly not pessimists ; they are only idiots.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 179
It is easy enough to say that a pessimist is a person af-
flicted with an incurable case of mulligrubs one whom
nothing in all earth or heaven or hades pleases ; one who us-
ually deserves nothing, yet grumbles if he gets it. But we
should not forget that every reform this world has known ;
every effort that has lifted man another notch above the
brute level ; every star in our flag of freedom ; every line and
letter in our constitution of human liberty; every gem of
knowledge that gleams in the great world's intellectual
crown of glory ; every triumph of science and religion, phil-
osophy and mechanics was the work of pessimists, so-called
of men who were not satisfied with the world's condition
and set determinedly to work to better it. They strove
with their full strength against those conditions panegyrized
and poetized by the smirking optimists of their time, and
thereby incurred the enmity of pedants and self-sufficient
purists, were denounced and denied, belittled and belied.
But, says the enthusiastic optimist, things are not what
they used to be. When a college of cardinals gave Galileo
to the gaoler for maintaining that "the world do move;"
when Christ cast forth the money manipulators and purged
the porches of the temple of the disreputable dove dealers;
when Luther raised the standard of revolt and the Puritan
packed his grip there were cruel wrongs to right. But look
at us now ! We've got a constitution and a Confession of
Faith, prize rings and Parisian gowns, sent missionaries to
Madagascar and measured Mars' two moons. Of course
we've made some mendicants, but please admire the multi-
farious beauty of our millionaires ! Who can doubt that
we've triumphed over the world, the flesh and the devil?
Have not the Spanish inquisition and the English Court of
High Commission gone glimmering? Do we bore the
tongues of Quakers or amputate the ears of non-conformists
as in Auld Lang Syne? Do we not run troublesome wives
into the divorce court instead of into the river, as was once
our wont, scientifically roast our criminals with electricity
instead of pulling their heads off with a hair halter ? Do we
not fight our political battles with wind instead of war clubs ?
Have not our great partisan paladins substituted gall for
Greek fire ?
Progressing we certainly are, but the devil has adapted
the Fabian tactics and is leading us a wild dance thro' un-
profitable deserts. While we have been shattering ethnic
images he has been building new idols. While we have
been dragging the Phalaris Bull from its pedestal the Golden
Calf of ancient Israel has reached maturity and maternity
180 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and its progeny is now worshipped in a thousand panthe-
ons.
Everywhere the false and the true, the good and the evil,
the lambent light of heaven and the sulphurous shadows
of hell meet and blend. Nowhere, yet everywhere, floats
the white veil and flaming ensign of the modern Mokanna
and we stand wrangling about the proper cut of a collar ; de-
bating whether the Gadarenes, whose swine the outcasc
devils drowned, were Jews or Gentiles; dogmatizing anent
the proper form of baptism ; doubting with which hand we
should tip the hat; wondering if Joseph's coat were a sack
or a swallow-tail ninety-and-nine out of every hundred
wasting upon childish trifles the strength given us to do the
work of demi-gods and every foolish breath, every heart-
beat bearing us across Time's narrow sands into the broad
bosom of that sea which hath no shore !
What does the all-seeing sun that has for so many cen-
turies glared down upon this wretched farce-tragedy, think
of it all? And yet man boasts that he is the mortal image
of immortal God ! It was for this trifling, straddling biped,
intent only upon getting his goose-head above other foolish
geese, that the Regent of the universe suffered ignominy
and death! I sometimes think that had the Almighty cast
the human horoscope he would never have given Noah a
hint to go in out of the wet.
I am no perfectionist. I do not build the spasmodic sob
nor spill the scalding tear because all men are not Sir Gala-
hads in quest of the Holy Grail, and all women angels with
two pair o' reversible wings and the aurora borealis for a
hat-band. I might get lonesome in a world like that. I
do not expect to see religion without cant, wealth without
want, and virtue without vice ; but I do hope to see the hu -
man race devote itself to grander aims than following the
fashions and camping on the trail of the cart-wheel dollar. I
want to see more homes and fewer hovels, more men and
fewer dudes. I want to see more women with the moral
courage to brave the odium of being old maids rather than
the pitiful weakness to become loveless wives. I want to
see more mothers who would rather be queens of their
homes than the favorites of fashionable circles ; women who
would rather have the love of their husbands than the in-
solent admiration of the whole he-world women who do
not know too much at 15 and too little at 50.
I want to see more men who are not a constant reminder
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 181
of a monkey ancestry. Some philosopher once remarked:
"As between men and dogs, give me dogs." I have been
often tempted to indorse the sentiment and I am not much
of a lover of dogs either. I want to see men who are not
fops in their youth, fools in their prime and egotists in their
old age a race of manly men to whom life is not a lascivi-
ous farce; whose god is not gold; who do not worship at
the shrine of the Pandemian Venus nor devote their lives to
the service of Mammon, "the least erect of all the angelic
host that fell from heaven." I want to see men who scorn the
pusillanimity of the policy-prayer, who, like Caesar, dare
tell greybeards the truth e'en tho' it cost a crown ; men of
leonine courage, men of iron mould, men strong of hand and
heart, who defiantly throw down the gage to destiny who
can trample hell itself beneath their proud feet, even while it
consumes them.
The dream may be Utopian, I much fear it will never
be made a blessed reality by either philosophy or religion.
We have had both for forty centuries, yet the fool has be-
come ever more offensive and the liar has overrun the land.
Yet we imagine that because we no longer live in caves and
fight naked with the wild beasts of the forest for our food
we are away up at the head of the procession, with Greek civ-
ilization distanced and all the other times and half times
nowhere.
Human development, like the earth, the sun, the stars-
like all things brought into being by the breath of Omni-
potent God travels ever in a circle. Savagery and ignor-
ance, barbarism and ambition, civilization and sybaritism,
dudeism and intellectual decay; then once more savagery
and ignorance proclaim the complete circle, that we have
traveled from nadir to zenith and from zenith to nadir
when once again we begin with painful steps and slow to
repace the path which carries us to the very verge of
godhood and wreathes our brows with immortal bays, then
brings us down even while we think we mount until
we touch a level beneath the very brute. Such has ever
been the world's history, and such it will ever be until a force
is found that can transform this circle into a straight line
that can blend the rugged manhood of the barbarian with
the graces of our higher civilization and give us wisdom
without weakness and culture without cowardice; that can
incorporate us as corpuscles in the social organism without
eliminating every spark of God-like individuality, making
182 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
us helpless dependents upon social, political and religious
precedent.
If the Car of Progress travels in a circle and history says
it does; if neither science, philosophy nor religion can de-
flect it from its seemingly predestined path and the condi-
tion of their birth-place proclaims their failure so to do
where is hope ? Must the human race forever go the weary
round of birth and death, like Buddhist souls wandering
thro' all that's fair and foul, until it finds Nirvana in the
destruction of the world? Not so, for there is a hope a
blessed hope that like
"A poising eagle burns above the unrisen morrow."
That hope is in the union of all the mighty forces that make
for the emancipation of mankind, a union of religion and
philosophy, science and woman. And of these the first is
the last and the last is the first in point of power and im-
portance.
When I reflect that until within comparatively recent
times women were slaves, I don't much wonder that the old
civilizations went to the dogs that the millennium is not
yet due. Trying to make a civilization that would stick
without the help of woman were like building a cock-tail
with a basis of buttermilk. God gave her to man to be an
helpmeet, not a plaything. I don't think that she can help
him much by going into politics, or becoming a crusading
she-Peter-the-Hermit while her own children need her care ,
but I do believe that the wife and mother that erstwhile
ignorant drudge, raised by God's great mercy to royalty
made Queen of the home, and thereby absolute Empress of
the great round earth is to be the dynamics of a new and
grander civilization that can never recede ; that the woman-
ly woman, self-poised as a star, pure as the polar snows, fit
companion for the true nobleman of nature, is to be the
Providence that will lead humanity, step by step, ever on-
ward and upward, until our cruel age of iron is transformed
into an age of gold in which there'll be neither millionaire
nor mendicant, master nor slave in which Selfishness will
be considered the worst of crimes and Love the all-powerful
law.
Such, ladies, is my dream of the future. You see, with
true mannish instinct, I throw the work o? the world's salva-
tion upon the women. I don't know, however, but it's re-
tributive justice. If you got us fired out of the first Para-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 183
disc it is your duty to find another and put us in possession.
But really with all due respect to Sacred Writ, I could never
accept that serpent story without considerable salt. My
observation and experience has been that men are much
more addicted to the snake habit than are women. I gath-
er from Genesis that after the Edenic reptile had done the
damage it was condemned to go upon its belly all the days
of its life. That indicates that it was not only a good conver-
sationalist, but had legs. Now I submit it to you in all
seriousness : which member of the original family was most
likely to see such a serpent as that? I think I should have
given Adam the Keeley cure, then crossexamined him a
little before laying the burden of the blame on Eve. If the
latter was really the tempter she was probably trying to
reach the heart of her hubby by that direct route, the stom-
ach lost heaven for love, as too many of her daughters
have since done. The fact that Adam was not willing to
father her fault proved him unworthy his wife, and the bad
example he set is too often followed by many of his sons
who attribute all their trials and tribulations to the patient
wives whose watchful care keeps them out of the peniten-
tiary. Whatever may have been Eve's fortune, Adam was
no great loser by being ejected from Eden, for the man who
possesses the love of a good woman carries Paradise with
him wherever he goes. A woman's love can transform a
hovel into a heaven and fill it with supernal sunshine and
her scorn can make perdition of a palace and put in all the
fancy touches.
Woman is the only thing extant, if Genesis be believed,
that was not evolved from a solid slug of nothing. That
I presume, is why she amounts to something. Nothing
was good enough raw material of which to make the father
of mankind; but when the Almighty came to create our
common mother he required something more substantial
than a hole in the atmosphere.
I always bank on a boy who has a good mother, regard-
less of what the old man may be. The fathers of philoso-
phers have sometimes been fools, but their mothers never.
A wise man may beget dudes or a good man practical poli-
ticians; but it's his misfortune, not his fault. The good
Lord expects no man to gather grapes of thorns or figs of
thistles. I have yet to hear of a single man who became dis-
tinguished in any line of human endeavor according to his
father the credit for his greatness. Character is moulded
at the mother's knee, and in the light of her loving eyes is
born that ambition which buoys man up in a sea of troubles
184 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
that drives him on thro' dangers and difficulties, straight
to the shining goal.
The Nineteenth century marks the culmination of an era
of human triumphs, a brilliant coruscation of victories over
the cohorts of Ignorance and Prejudice; but its crown of
imperishable glory is the recognition that woman was creat-
ed to be man's companion and co-laborer instead of his
chattel, his joint sovereign of the earth instead of his slave.
Fronting the dawn of a grander day, her hand ungyved and
her brain unfettered ; with broader opportunities for useful-
ness and boasting a nobler beauty than during the dark and
dreary centuries that lie behind her like a hideous dream
such is the woman of the Nineteenth century, and upon the
shapely shoulders of this new Pallas I hang my second
Providence, to her loving hands I commit the destiny of the
race, to her true heart the salvation of the world.
PUGILISM VS. HYPOCRISY.
The announcement that Corbett and Fitzsimmons will
meet in the fistic arena at Dallas to determine which is the
better man, has, as might have been expected, provoked a
veritable deluge of sanctified "gush" and sentimental "rot."
The press and pulpit of Texas were immediately seized with
moral jimjams and began to cut fantastic capers before high
heaven. One would suppose from their doleful jeremiads
and frantic protests that the bottom was about to be knocked
out of the Christian cosmos, mortality sent careening over
the ropes, civilization swiped from the face of the shrinking
earth and chaos come again. Consistency is a jewel not
found in the casket of the latter-day Jonahs. For years
past slugging-matches have been of frequent occurrence in
Texas, and have provoked scarce a protest from those
goody-goodies who are now having a conniption fit every
fifteen minutes over the Corbett-Fitzsimmons affair. It is
a well-known fact that the less science fistic combatants
possess the more liable they are to dp each other serious
bodily harm. A "mill" between unskilled sluggers resem-
bles nothing so much as a kicking match between a brace
of vicious mules, in which the beast that can stand the
most punishment wins the battle, while a contest by well-
trained athletes were like the fine sword-play of expert
fencers. The pending bout is not likely to be nearly so
"brutal" as many "mills" fought in Texas during the past
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 185
half-dozen years, and duly reported by the very papers that
want the visiting champions put in the penitentiary. The
professional "moral element" is entirely too subsequent in
getting its Ebenezer up, and I suggest that it be pulled
down before a disgusted world expectorates upon it. Hav-
ing swallowed a whole herd of mangy camels, the self-
styled "moral element" should not employ a brass band to
call attention to the fact that it is now straining so hard at
a gnat that its umbilical cord is in danger of collapse. The
abuse heaped upon the progressive city of Dallas because it
made a bid for the great contest, is but the dishonest vapor-
ings of a canting hypocrisy, accentuated by morbid minds
and bilious livers. If Dallas were making deliberate prepa-
ration to violate a well-established law of the land it were
well enough to criticise her; but the statute anent prize-
fighting, like many other enactments by Texas legislatures,
is not considered by competent lawyers as one whit more
reliable than a camp-meeting certificate of conversion. And
it is reasonable to suppose that if the law in question would
stand the crucible of the courts, those busy little souls who
consider themselves pious because they dislike to see other
people enjoy themselves, would have clamored for its en-
forcement long ere this.
The Iconoclast is not the apologist of pugilism. Its voice
is ever for peace peace in its most virulent form. I have
had a sneaking respect for Grover Cleveland ever since he
sent a substitute to fight the Southern Confederacy while
he remained at home to play pinocle with the pretty girls.
It proved that while he may not be much of a statesman in
time of peace, there's no picnic ants on his judgment in
time of war. But I do insist that if we are to have prize
fights here in Texas they should be contests between expert
boxers instead of awkward clowns who pound each other
to a pulp to make a hoodlum holiday. Nor is a fistic
encounter between first-class athletes altogether an unmixed
evil. It inoculates our young men with a desire for physi-
cal development, and is a splendid object lesson 'in the very
necessary art of self-defence. Every boy should learn to
box; it is a manly accomplishment, necessary to the per-
fect physical development of the race. It is infinitely better
that a boy should get a black eye or a bloody nose occa-
sionally, and grow up masculine and self-reliant, than run
to chrysanthemums and creased twousahs, flash dickeys and
effeminate dudeism. Those who make super-goodness a
paying profession sneer at the claim that pugilism is a
"manly sport." However that may be it is certainly pre-
186 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ferable to employing brazen apostates to defame Catholic
nuns or raping infants in Baptist universities. Nothing
is more conducive to continence than severe athletic train-
ing: hence it might not be a bad plan to make a hot whirl
with the gloves a part of the daily devotional exercise of
all professing he-Christians. While boxing does not insure
morality, it is infinitely more profitable than empty dogma-
tizing. While the world may not fully approve of Corbett
and Fitzsimmons facing each other in the "squared circle"
like contending Titans, it will certainly esteem them above
the cymling-headed lollipops whose highest .accomplish-
ment is the nursing of canes. The proposed '"mill," while
not so elevating, perhaps, as a slumgullion editorial in the
Houston Post, or an official $5-a-minute prayer, is calculated
to inspire respect for nature's weapons and thereby assist in
relegating the six-shooter to the rear. Personal encounters
will be of occasional occurrence so long as man inhabits the
earth; hence it might not be amiss for even "Christian
Texas" to take an occasional lesson in the art of self-defense
from men who do not gouge out eyes, chew off ears or be-
stride the brisket of a fallen foe and pound his face to a
pumice. Whatever may be said against the "ring," it is
one place where a man gets absolutely fair play, and that is
more than can be said of the journalistic arena or a mob of
Baptist brethren assembled to hear one of their number
back-cap his betters and descant upon the awful iniquity of
the Church of Rome.
Striving to eliminate these contests of strength and skill
were much like trying to tie up John Barleycorn with a
Prohibition string. Man is naturally combative. As far
back as we can trace his history he has rejoiced in trials of
physical force. The Greeks of Homer's day fought with
the terrible cestus ; when Rome ruled the world every citi-
zen was expected to be a soldier ; the English could not get
fighting enough in the tented field and resorted to tilt and
tourney. Despite our so-called civilization man is very
much a savage. "The glory of the young man is his
strength," just as it was when Solomon sat upon the throne
of ancient Israel, and it is well. There is hope for a war-
like and aggressive people. Such are the characteristics of
an advancing civilization, while dudeism is certain evidence
of decay. That man who doesn't relish a rattling fight
e'en tho' it be only a dog fight should be put in petticoats
and his place in the world's economy supplied by the "com-
ing: woman." He is better qualified to lead a pug around
with a pink ribbon and deodorize diapers than to sway the
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 187
sceptre of American sovereignty. Half those who damn
prize-fighting in public would swim a river to obtain a news-
paper containing a write-up of an important "mill" by
rounds. When Sullivan bested Kilrain I chanced to be
stopping with a devout deacon who was particularly severe
on pugilism. He said an editor who would print an ac-
count of a prize fight ought to be put in the penitentiary
meaning me; yet on the morning after the mill I found
that good old man with his nose buried in a newspaper, and
he wasn't reading the religious column, either. He was
fairly wallowing in counters and uppercuts, stingers and
stand-offs. He swooped down upon it like a hungry hen-
hawk on an unripe gosling, read it through to the last line,
then rolled his eyes to heaven like a calf with the colic and
wondered what this wicked old world "was coming to. Had
I declined to print it he would have written me a compli-
mentary letter and transferred his patronage to some other
paper.
There must be some vent for the combative spirit which
permeates the American people, and the glove contest is the
most satisfactory and the least dangerous yet discovered.
Statistics prove that a dozen men are killed and as many
crippled at football where one is seriously injured in the
fistic arena. At inter-collegiate football games it is cus-
tomary to have a surgeon present to care for the wounded ;
but I have yet to see one in attendance in his official capac-
ity at a prize fight. In view of these facts the sanctified
hullabaloo now heard because of the pending event in the
world of pugilism is calculated to make sensible people long
for the coming of the fool-killer.
ANTONIA TEIXEIRA.
The Iconoclast is not in the habit of commenting on par-
ticular social ulcers and special sectarian scandals. It pre-
fers to deal with broad principle rather than individual of-
fenders. To even catalogue the sexual crimes of professing
Christians and people of social pre-eminence to turn the
calcium for even a moment into all the gruesome closets of
"respectability" and upon every sectarian cesspool redolent
with "the odor of sanctity" would consume the space of
such a periodical, while proving about as profitable as point-
ing out each festering pustule on the person of a Hot
Springs habitue trailing blindly in the wake 'of the Pande-
188 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mian Venus ; but once or twice in a decade a case arises so
horrible in conception, so iniquitous in outline, so damnable
in detail that it were impossible to altogether ignore it. Such
a case has just come to light, involving Baylor University,
that Bulwark of the Baptist Church. I fain would pass it
by, knowing as I do that a criticism, however dispassionate
and just, will be misconstrued by those good Baptist breth-
ren who tried to muzzle me while ex-Priest Slattery foully
defamed me, and whose religion teaches them that "with
what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged ; and with what
measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again." But
on this point they have naught to fear. Had they, for every
sneaking lie they have told about me, spawned a thousand ;
and had "Brother" Slattery, in the fullness of his Baptist
Charity, branded me as a horse-thief and proved it, I could
not, tho' vindictive as Thersites and gifted with the vocabu-
lary of a Carlyle, do even and exact justice to the case of
Antonia Teixeira. Crimes similar in some respects have
been committed in White Chapel and on Boiler avenue;
but, to borrow from Macaulay, "When we put everything
together sensuality, poltroonery, baseness, effrontery, men-
dacity, barbarity the result is something which in a novel
we should condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture
to say, no parallel can be found in history. It is a case
wherein "the qualities which are the proper objects of ha-
tred, and the qualities which are the proper objects of con-
tempt," preserve an exquisite and absolute harmony. Three
times I have essayed to write of this enormous iniquity, this
subter-brutish crime against the chastity of childhood, and
thrice I have laid down my pencil in despair. As there is
a depth of the sea to which the plummet will not descend, so
are there depths of human depravity which mind cannot
measure. Language hath its limits, and even a Dante could
only liken the horrors of hell to earthly symbols. It were
as impossible to describe in print the case of Antonia Teix-
eira as to etch a discord or paint a stench. Before justice
can be done to such a subject a new language must be in-
vented a language whose words are coals of juniper-wood;
whose sentences are woven with a warp of aspics' fangs and
a woof of fire.
We all remember the coming to Texas of Antonia Teix-
eira, the dove-eyed heteroscian, and the brass-band display
made of the modest little thing by the Baptist brethren,
whose long years of missionary labor in Brazil had snatched
her from the Papal power a veritable brand from the burn-
ing. A tardy consent had been wrung from her widowed
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 189
mother that Antonia should be brought to Texas. The
child was to be given five years' schooling, then returned to
her native land to point out to her benighted Catholic coun-
trymen the water route to the Celestial City. Relying upon
this promise, the simple Brazilian woman consigned her lit-
tle wild-flower to the bosom of the Baptist church. Five
years ! What an eternity ! How they would miss her at
home how they would count the days until she returned to
them, a cultured lady, as wise even as the strange priests
who spoke the English tongue ! It must be for the best, she
thought ; so the poor woman crushed her heart in the name
of Christ and took up her cross. And Antonia? How
bright the world before her ! To be educated, and useful
and honored both in this world and the world to come, in-
stead of an ignorant little beggar about the streets of Bahia.
Bearded men prayed over her and sentimental women wept
to know that she was saved saved from the purgatorium
of Popery ! And then she was "consecrated" and began her
studies at Baylor, the duly ordained "ward of the Baptist
church." Not yet 13 years old, and such honors paid her
what might she not expect in the years to be? How the
poor little heart must have swelled with gratitude to the
good Baptist brethren, and how she must have loved every-
thing, animate and inanimate, that the good God had made.
But ere long she found herself in Dr. Burleson's kitchen in-
stead of the class-room. Instead of digging Greek roots
she was studying the esculent tuber. Instead of being pre-
pared for missionary work, this "ward of the Baptist church"
was learning the duties of the scullion and Dr. Burleson
has informed the world through the public prints that as a
servant she was not worth her board and clothes. But
then she was not brought hither to sling pots, but to pre-
pare for the saving of souls. Surely the blessed Baptist
church will provide its little "ward" with board and clothes.
Perhaps the poor child thought that scrubbing floors and
playing under-servant was part of a liberal education, for
she made no complaint to her self-constituted guardians.
After some three years of the kitchen curriculum she was
examined in the office of a secular official and it was there
found that she had not made much progress toward effective
missionary work. She had heard something of the Prot-
estant faith and salvation by water, but did not understand
it. And in two years more her "education" would be com-
plete the promise made to her mother redeemed! But
suddenly it was discovered that the "ward of the Baptist
church" was about to give birth to a babe. Day by day this
190 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mournful fact became more in evidence, and finally her
dish-rag and scrub-broom studies were suspended because
of a press of more important business. She was sneaked off
to a private house and nothing said about her condition to
the secular authorities no steps taken to bring the destroy-
er of this child in short dresses to justice. But the meddle-
some officials concluded to look after the "ward of the Bap-
tist church" a little, and the poor child told them, reluctant-
ly enough, how she had been dragged from her culinary
class-room, drugged and three times criminally assaulted
how she complained, "but nothing was done about it." A
medical examination demonstrated conclusively that she
had been the victim of foul play. What did the aged presi-
dent of Baylor, that sanctum sanctorum of the Baptist
church, do about it? Did he assist in bringing to justice
the man who had dared invade the sanctity of his household
and despoil the duly ordained "ward of the Baptist church?"
Not exactly. He rushed into print with a statement to the
effect that the child was a thief and "crazy after the boys"
that he had "prayed and wept over her" without avail. Are
prayers and tears the only safeguards thrown around four-
teen-year-old girls at Baylor ? They do those things differ-
ently in Convent schools supplement prayers and tears
with a watchful care that makes illicit intercourse practical-
ly impossible. No matter how "crazy after the boys" a girl
in short dresses may be, she is not permitted to go headlong
to the devil to be torn to pieces and impregnated by some
lousy and lecherous male mastodon. Dr. Burleson con-
sidered the idea that Antonia had been ravished as ridicu-
lous, yet the doctors declare it one of the most damnable
cases of outrage and laceration within their knowledge
and in matters of this kind a wicked and perverse genera-
tion is more likely to believe doctors of medicine than doctors
of divinity. The students at Baylor declare that instead of
being "crazy after the boys" Antonia was particularly mod-
est and womanly. But had she been the brazen little thing
which Dr. Burleson hastened to brand her, what were his
duties in the premises : to guard her with especial care, or
give the "boys" an opportunity to work their will, then turn
her out with a Baptist bastard at the half-developed breast ?
Enciente at 14, among strangers who had promised her
mother that no harm should befall her. A mother while
still in short dresses, and branded in the public prints as
a bawd by people who worship One who forgave Mary
Magdalen! We might have expected the very devils in
hell to weep for the pity of it, but "Christian charity" had
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 191
not yet reached its ultima thule. Another Baptist reverend
had to have his say. He was somewhat interested in the
matter, his brother having been named by Antonia as her
ravisher. This reverend gentleman tried to make it appear
that the father of her unborn child was a negro servant and
her accepted paramour. Had this been true, what an "ad."
for Baylor University that fourteen-year-old girls com-
mitted to its care conceived children by coons! But even
Baylor did not deserve the terrible censure of Dr. Burle-
son's pious son-in-law, and Antonia replied to this insult
added to injury by putting a white child in evidence a child
with the pale blue eye and wooden face characteristic of
those who thus defamed her. When the girl's condition
became known the men about town "publicans and sin-
ners" such as Christ sat with, preferring their society to that
of the pharisees raised a handsome purse to provide for
her and the young Baptist she was about to bring into the
world, while those who should have guarded and protected
her were resorting to every artifice human ingenuity could
devise to blacken her name, to forestall pity, prevent chari-
ty and make an impartial trial of the case impossible.
While men who never professed religion, who never expect
to wear feathers and fly thro' Elysian fields, could not talk
to each other about the case without crying, those wearing
God's livery were eager to trample her down to the deepest
hell to preserve the credit of their denomination. If there
is anything on earth calculated to make a public prostitute
of an unfortunate girl it is the treatment the Baptist brethren
have accorded Antonia Teixeira.
At this writing (June 27) the preliminary trial awaits the
convalescence of the child mother. I would not pre-judge
the case. I know not who is the guilty man ; but I do know
that this child was brought from her faraway home by men
who promised to protect her and transform her into a cul-
tured and useful woman, and who so far neglected their duty
that she was debauched at Baylor University and her young
life forever blighted. Better a thousand times that she
should have remained in Brazil to say her pater nosters in
the Portugese tongue; better that she should have wedded
a water-carrier in her native land and reared up sturdy sons
and daughters to the Church of Rome, than to have been
transported to Texas to breed illegitimate Baptists. I do
know that at the very time "Brother" Slattery was writing
us against the awful dangers of convent schools and im-
peaching the chastity of the Catholic sisterhoods and the
Waco Baptists were crying "awmen" this 14-year-old girl
192 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
was growing great with child at Baylor University! I do
know that while we were being assured that among all the
nuns there was not one educated woman not one compe-
tent to superintend the education of a child a girl was
completing her third year in the greatest educational insti-
tute the Baptists of Texas can boast, and in all that time she
had learned but little, and that little she could have acquired
almost as well in "Hell's Half-Acre." I do know that An-
tonia is not the first young girl to be sent from Baylor in dis-
grace that she is not the first to complain of criminal as-
sault within its sanctified "walls. I do know that should
a girl meet with a mishap at a convent school the Catholic
priests would not turn against her and insult her family
and her race by trying to fasten the fatherhood of her un-
born babe upon a negro servant. I do know that instead
of trying to drive the unfortunate girl to the "Reservation"
with cowardly calumnies, they would draw around her the
sacred circle of the Church of Rome, and if there remained
within her heart one spark of noble womanhood it would be
fanned by the white wings of love and charity into ethereal
flame. I do know that if Antonia Teixeira was a Catholic
instead of a half-baked Baptist, every man within that
church would be her brother, every woman her sister, that
every church bearing the cross would be her house of
refuge. I do know that so far as Baylor University is con-
cerned the day of its destiny is over and the star of its fate
hath declined; that the brutal treatment the Brazilian child
received at its hands will pass into history as the colossal
crime of the age, and that generations yet to be will couple
its name with curses deep as those which Roman matrons
heaped on the head of Sextus Tarquinius "he that wrought
the deed of shame."
DANCING TO THE DEVIL.
THE GRSAT SALTATORIAL SIN.
Just at present many "progressive" preachers are bring-
ing all their powers to bear upon what they denominate the
dance evil. Even before Sam Jones began to blackguard
the ball-room in his so-called sermons, various Protestant
divines were vociferously denouncing this species of divert-
isement as a worship of that trinity of wickedness the
World, the Flesh and the Devil ; but the Cracker peddler
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 193
of pseudopiety is the recognized Peter-the-Hermit of the
anti-saltatorian crusade.
There was a time when it was considered a mortal sin
to be merry when professing Christians refrained from
harmless jest and healthful laughter lest they displease the
Deity. Some ultrapietistic people eschewed ornament, wore
unbecoming clothes and cultivated an expression such as
pertains to those afflicted with cramp colic or torpid livers.
The idea appears to have been that by making themselves
and everybody else unnecessarily miserable in this world
their ecstacy would be enhanced in the great hereafter.
The theater was tabooed, the ball-room placed under the
ban, the euchre-deck banished and young people expected
to do their courting with a solemnity befitting the making
of contracts in a coffin-factory. All the joy and sweetness
was crushed out of life by the iron hand of a pessimistic
orthodoxy; the sunshine of the heart turned into clammy
London fog by spectres born in the chaotic brain of pious
fools ; the pleasant valleys and purple hills transformed into
monster-bearing deserts, the refreshing springs into bitter
pools, the fragrant flowers into cruel throngs by those too
blind to see that the cult of Christ is the law of love, the
unfailing fount of joy, the bloom of eternal spring, the song
of birds and the merry laughter of men and maids.
But eventually the world rebelled against the pessimistic
brand of piety concessions were made, perforce, to the re-
naissance of reason. Gradually the dark clouds fled from
the hills and the dismal mists from the valleys ; the crash of
cymbals and the rythmic pulse of dancing feet supplanted
groans and moans again birds sang, flowers bloomed and
perfumed fountains cast their grateful spray in Hie terrestrial
vineyard of our God. It was no longer a crime to be happy,
laughter ceased to be a sin a sunny face came to be regard-
ed as an outward evidence of an inward grace. Toleration
born of intelligence budded and burgeoned like the prover-
bial green bay tree, and men whose fathers thought a fiddle
but another Red Piper to lure souls to hell, felt their hearts
swell with paternal pride as they looked on happy sons and
graceful daughters marking time with nimble feet to music
that swept with Orpheus-figures every chord of the human
heart.
But as there still be men who believe the world is flat,
so are there others, even in this enlightened age, who take it
for granted that a loving God revels in the sweet incense of
sighs, is pleased with a paean of groans that a beneficent
Deity looks with dire displeasure on every bright oasis
194 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Life's worn voyageur finds between the cradle and the
grave. They are preachers and teachers who have failed to
keep pace with the procession who can not realize that
religion, like all else called into being by the Creator, must
be progressive. Poor preterists, with their faces to the past,
they would repace every step in the path of human progress,
and across the sunlight of the noon cast the shadows of the
night.
Most of these anti-dancing dominies make uncompromis-
ing war upon the so-called evil in all its forms, from the
stately minuet to the Irish jig, from the stomach contortions
of the Midway Plaisance to the nervous "jerks" of the
Methodist camp-meeting ; but the latest preacher to declaim
against the ballroom is not quite so bigoted as his crusading
brethren. We gather from the Galveston News that Rev.
J. W. Lowber has been holding forth on the subject in the
Central Christian Church of that city, and some of his pious
observations may be worth attention by this, the ministerial
organ of Texas. We approach him with considerable cau-
tion, however, for, by whatever name they are known
whether as Christians, Disciples or Campbellites the mem-
bers of that disorganized organization are great " 'sputers,"
and relish nothing so much as an interminable debate,
whether anent forms of baptism or the shortcomings of
other sects. Parson Lowber is evidently harboring the hal-
lucination that when he has eliminated dancing, as now in-
dulged in by the sons and daughters of men, the world will
be redeemed and the millennium due. Like the Prohibi-
tionist who approved of punch if the spirits were left out, he
can tolerate dancing if each sex will but indulge in terpsi-
chorean exercise by itself. He has ascertained, in some mys-
terious manner which he does not divulge, that when
Miriam, the sister of Moses, tripped the light fantastic she
had no partner to caress her patent health corset, and that
David, the son of Jesse, indulged in the stag-dance. That
would appear to most people about as unsatisfactory as a
single-handed game of baseball or a boxing bout with one's
own shadow pre-eminently stale, flat and unprofitable.
Parson Lowber has decided, in the goodness of his heart,
to permit that kind of gayety, but when
"youth and beauty meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet,"
he becomes alarmed for the morals of the community and
relieves Jeremiah of his job. He assures us that "if men
and women will dance apart no harm can ensue." We fear
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 195
the worthy parson is theorizing in utter ignorance of con-
ditions that he has never accompanied Dr. Parkhurst in
his nocturnal visits to the Tenderloin district, and witnessed
the can-can as danced for the special delectation of doctors
of divinity. Evidently he has never participated in the hila-
rious "stag-party," observed the
"Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity,"
that characterize these gatherings, and compared the wild
orgies with the Chesterfieldian courtesy and princely bear-
ing of the same men when subjected to the mild censorship
of woman's eyes. Each sex values the good opinion of
the other, and right acting begets right thinking. The cor-
rectness of this premise conceded, the conclusion is plain
that the good of the race demands that the sexes be brought
together as much as possible, whether at work or play that
it were unwise if not unsafe to leave either to its own re-
sources.
Parson Lowber assures us that "the modern dance is a
great waste of time and money." Perchance he has never
heard that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
has not suspected that some preachers toil so hard to attain
a little cheap notoriety that they can not comprehend the
plain teachings of Christ. Is time expended in social pleas-
ures really wasted ? Is it not rather true that time is wasted
when devoted to the attainment of wealth in excess of our
needs, to foolish dogmatizing, to denouncing a harmless
custom as old as the human race while children are suf-
focating in the slums of our great cities, men are hesitating
between beggary and crime, and the face of the world is
wet with tears ? Oh ye pitiful triflers who would be teachers
heaven-ordained doctors who give a moribund world
bread pills to ward off the Black Death ! Ye Davids of the
new Israel, are there no Goliaths of Gath, that ye must
stone sheep?
These soldiers of the Lord who are valiantly charging
down upon the dance and euchre-deck remind me of a
hound with which I once hunted wolves. His lust for blood
before we flushed our quarry was terrible to contemplate,
and every cow and calf along his route was made to feel his
fangs ; but when the great black beast turned savagely at
bay the hound would neither bark nor bite. So some
preachers assail society's venial faults with fury, but when
the host of hell stands forth beneath the blood-red banner
196 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of Greed, these lions of the Lord ''roar as softly as suck-
ing doves."
Is money wasted when employed to bring elasticity to the
limb, brightness to the eye and happiness to the heart? A
greater than Parson Lowber has assured us that "the spend-
thrift saves, the miser is prodigal." The man who devotes
every shining hour to the service of Mammon, "the least
erect of all the angelic host that fell from heaven," begrudg-
ing every moment claimed by the goddess of Joy, is the real
spendthrift. He squanders, not his substance, but his life
turns his back upon the fond delights of the Vale of Tempe
and wanders to the end of his days in the burning desert. I
fear that Parson Lowber is more pedant than philosopher
that he has overlooked the true significance of life. While
doctors of medicine are beseeching us to abate that unre-
mitting toil which wears out hand and heart and brain
before their time, here is a doctor of divinity reproving us
for every breathing spell in the "demnition grind." While
philosophers insist that a life ungemmed with social pleas-
ures is not worth the living, here is a preacher pleading that
every hour is "wasted" if not burthened with a care.
Parson Lowber objects to the sexes dancing together be-
cause it has, he thinks, a tendency to sensuality and is a
severe strain on the Seventh Commandment. That a man
should take hold of a young lady's hand, touch her waist
with his finger tips and guide her thro' the mazes of the
dreamy waltz, fills the good doctor's head with foolish
dreams of a world forever lost in the wild chaos of lust.
He has somewhere heard of mesmerism, and fears the
dancer will exercise that strange power on his fair compan-
ion to her hurt. If he will but reflect a little he may con-
clude that there's infinitely more danger in the "sitting-down
waltz" in a darkened parlor than in the salutations of the
brilliantly lighted ball-room. Dancing may be of the devil,
but there is no intimation in Holy Writ that the Prince of
Darkness ever danced. He did not cause the downfall of
Mother Eve by the "arm-clutch" or the poetry of motion.
According to Milton, Ithuriel found him "squat like a toad,"
distilling poison in the ear of Adam's credulous mate,
and we may safely assume that most of the wreck and ruin
since wrought among the gentler sex has been by the quiet
distillment of poison by human toads in the ears of confid-
ing maids.
The truth is there is a tendency to sensuality in most
things which minister either to the physical or spiritual life
of men. Even that good living of which the average
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 197
preacher is so fond inflames the passions, and the sacred
music which throbs thro' our great churches makes volup-
tuaries as well as votaries. While it is true, as Parson Low-
ber points out, that some girls trace their downfall to danc-
ing, others attribute it to singing in fashionable choirs and
the hypnotic influence of popular preachers. The ancient
Greeks recognized two kinds of music that which makes
soldiers and that which makes sybarites. The savagery in
man may be refined away by education and religion; but
sensuality grows with civilization's growth and strengthens
with its strength. Generally speaking, that which tends to
make man less a servant of Mars tends to make him more
a slave of Venus. No savage nation was ever noted for
licentiousness that is the curse of civilization.
The bewildering beauty of a summer night's high noon;
the melody of a half-awakened mocking-bird calling to its
mate ; the sensuous perfume of dew-bespangled flowers,
were lost upon the savage, solely animal ; but they sink into
the supersensitive soul like Cleopatra's mad'ning kiss and
burn within the blood with celestico-infernal fire. In
such moods when the whole being is ablaze with passion,
half demoniac, half divine man climbs Parnassus' rugged
steeps and stands, poised in mid-heaven, like a star. In
such moods the orator is gifted with lips of gold and in the
poet's heart there rings the melody of the spheres. In
such moods man hears the still small voice of Omnipotent
God giving a new message to mankind, and lo! another
sacred book is born another Mecca established as finger-
post for toiling millions treading, with bleeding feet, the
path of Life! But not every man may drive Apollo's
steeds and safely guide the chariot of the sun. The same
strange power that lifts man to the highest heaven may dash
him to the deepest hell. Love that should illume the
world may become lawless as that of a Grecian god, and
Promethean fire perverted is a destructive brand the Star
of Bethlehem becomes a blighting thunderbolt and man a
demon instead of a demi-god.
Clearly we cannot exterminate everything which causes
the sexes to gravitate to each other, else were the Song of
Solomon hushed, beauty banished, poetry forbidden and the
grander rhythm of the great prose masters that sensuous
tide which bears us away on its bosom
"O'er the ocean wild and wide "
placed under the ban. The great sun itself that parent
and perennial store-house of passion were blotted from the
198 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
heavens, and a lawless universe reduced to cosmic dust go
floating once more thro' space in snow-cold purity !
Marriage is a good or it is an ill. If good, those things
which lead man to choose a mate and rear up sons to per-
petuate his name, should be encouraged rather than re-
pressed. If the dance drives some to lawless love, it must,
in the very nature of things, impel more to matrimony. If
contact of the sexes in the waltz, the music, the mesmeric
touch of hands and wild thrill of heart pulsing against heart
arouse those longings common to all animate nature, then
indeed is the ball-room the enemy of celibacy and the
builder of homes ; for we must concede that in a country pro-
fessedly Christian and which sends missionaries to the
heathen the procreative passion will go right as the rule
and wrong as the exception. I know that it v/ill be urged
by some pseudo-psychologists who have but a vague sus-
picion of what really ails them that love and passion are as
distinct as the daylight and the dark ; that, to borrow from
Plato, there is a Uranian as well as a Pandemian Venus.
Love purified of all earthly dross is a pretty conception,
but it's a barren ideality. ''Love is love forevermore," and,
refine it as we may, disguise it as we will, the basic principle
of that force which draws the sexes together is the procrea-
tive passion. When drunk with the perfume and beauty
of the blush-rose we think not of the compost in which its
roots lie buried. When the wine of Samos sparkles in the
crystal cup, or the must foams
"'Round the white feet of laughing girls"
we forget the mouldering bones that nurtured the purple
clusters. But compost and bones are there, and right well
the gardener knows that but for them the great white light
of the moon and the red glory of the sun would beat and
break in vain that the rose would not enrich the vagrant
air, nor the vine pour its empurpled tide into the veins
of kings. We think not of the Creator's divine com-
mand to be fruitful and multiply nor of the method he em-
ploys to compel obedience when, amid a wilderness of
flowers, the fair bride and gallant groom accept the sacred
vows ; but the command is there, and the wedding-bells send
answer back "God's will be done." The sexes must be
brought together under circumstances mutually agreeable
ere Hymen's torch be lit at glowing eyes and fanned to
flame with the soft sighs of desiring souls; so "On with
the dance."
Having formally taken the ministers of America under
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 199
my apostolic protection, I feel that I am, in some degree,
responsible for their errors that it is my duty to give
Brother Lowber a little gratuitous advice. If all other
ministers who are denouncing dancing and kindred social
customs whose significance they cannot comprehend
should hear and heed, so much the better. I have thought
seriously of calling them together for a course of lectures
on the mortal sin of trying to nullify the teachings of the
great Nazarene ; but the time is not yet opportune.
Do not take it for granted that whatever pleases the peo-
ple originated in perdition. As the whole is greater than
a part, so is it wiser. The cumulative wisdom of sixty
centuries the customs of both savagery and civilization
approves the dance as a healthy method of diversion. True
piety does not consist in preventing other people enjoying
themselves. If you realize that you cannot indulge in pro-
gressive euchre without becoming a shoe-string gambler or
bunco-steerer, or visit a ball-room without contracting an
uncontrollable desire to see what Parkhurst saw and feel
what Parkhurst felt, just spread your pin-feathers and fly
from temptation instead of imitating the Son of Man by val-
iantly facing and overcoming it ; but bear ever in mind that
in the making of man the Almighty employs more than one
kind of clay. Instead of wasting your strength trying to
abolish the ball-room an institution whose good equals its
evil turn your batteries upon those which are wholly bad.
Battle against Frauds and Fakes, Hypocrites and Hum-
bugs. Assail Poverty, Ignorance and Crime, hell's great
triumvirate. When these arch-angels of evil are driven from
the earth it will be time enough to abolish the social dance,
burn the euchre-deck, destroy the stage and protect the
Christian Sabbath from "desecration" by peddlers of hokey-
pokey and popcorn balls. Doubtless the devil sometimes
lurks in the ball-room ; but before seeking him there, oh my
brethren, let us be sure he is riot snugly ensconced in the
church, unctuously crying amen to the utterances of some
perspiring pulpiteer who is trying to lead the armies of Is-
rael off on a wild chase after some harmless jack-o'-lantern
while the legions of evil overrun the earth. Don't make
grand-stand plays from the pulpit. Notoriety may be nec-
essary to an actor, but does not increase the sphere of use-
fulness of a Campbellite preacher. If you really desire to
enlarge the Lord's vineyard so as to include the unprofitable
soil of Galveston Island and are quite sure the Wharf com-
pany will not seize the Ship of Zion in part payment of the
dockage squeeze the groans and moans and chronic heart-
200 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
aches out of your faith and fill it to overflowing with sun-
shine and with flowers. Millions of tender-hearted people
remain away from church simply because they cannot bear
to witness the chronic gloom of those who have made their
peace with God the unhappiness of those poor creatures
who are doomed to inherit an orthodox heaven. Preach
that God is love ; that our Father in Heaven, who watches
over the very sparrows, wants his children to enjoy them-
selves even here on earth, and gives the means if they will
but wisely employ them. Teach the religion of good liv-
ing, which is also right living the religion of beauty and
joy and use. Hitch your chariot to a star instead of to a
mole, and fill the land with light instead of darkness, with
hope instead of despair. Think you the Creator poured his
splendors forth on land and sea for eyes all dimmed with
tears? that he filled the bul-bul's pulsing throat with mel-
ody divine and composed old ocean's never ceasing anthem
for those deafened with their own moans ?
I wouldn't preach five minutes to a man who looked as
tho' his religion was hurting him who seemed sorry he was
going to be saved. When I deliver the "glad tidings of
great joy" to a fellow mortal I want him to act like a poor
miserable pariah who's just drawn the capital prize in a lot-
tery, instead of treating the message as tho' it were a pro-
tested draft. And when I get thro' pumping saving grace
into him I want him to go out into the world and add to its
gladness instead of its gloom. I want him to object to bear-
baiting because it hurts bruin, and not because it pleases
the boys. No matter whether I make a Campbellite of him
or a sure-enough Baptist, I want him to recognize a brother
Christian in every man who is trying, in spirit and in truth,
to serve the Lord. And having expended my time and en-
ergy to snatch him as a brand from the burning and for-
mally enroll him in the army of Israel, if I find that he's such
a consummate ass as to keep blazing away with his little
escopeta at progressive euchre, the arm-clutch, the stage,
ball-room and other unimportant social beetles, while the
legions of Lucifer, with visors down and spears in rest are
crowding us to the wall, I'll take a club and kill him.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 201
THE A. P. A. IDIOCY.
DEFAMATION OF AMERICAN DAILIES.
Perhaps the most ominous of the signs of the times, so
far as this Republic is concerned, is the birth of that organi-
zation known as the American Protective Association. True,
the order is not formidable as yet is of but little impor-
tance in the world of politics ; but history teaches that the
more ridiculous a craze or foolish a fad, the more readily it
finds a following-. Of course the A. P. A. cannot long
survive. It's a child of Darkness and must perish with the
coming of the Dawn. There is no valid reason for its ex-
istence, and the law of social as well as of physical evolution
makes it imperative that the useless and unfit should perish
from the earth. So perished Know-nothingism, and so will
pass this new avatar of religious bigotry and political folly
which has found a temporary lodgment in a land boast-
ing liberty of conscience, beneath the flag of the free. But,
though the days of the A. P. A. be few and full of trouble,
it may, like the cholera scourge, or an epidemic of diarrhoea,
do an infinite deal of harm before it is eradicated. Its ten-
dency is to promote a religious war and wreck the mightv
political fabric bequeathed us by our fathers, to crush reli-
gious liberty and turn back the hands on the dial of time a
thousand years. Its avowed object is the practical dis-
franchisement of Catholics, not only in this country, but
throughout Jhe world. The movement has already become
"international," if we may credit the boasts of its leaders,
which proves that it was not begotten of American patriot-
ism, as at first pretended, but born of religious bigotry. The
following paragraph, taken from the illiterate and intolerant
address of the president of the supreme council of the order,
delivered at Milwaukee last May, is suggestive:
li coming generations are to be secure in the enjoyment of their
liberties, we must drive the enemy not from the United States to
Canada, nor from Canada to the United States not from the new
world to the old, nor from the old to the new we must drive
them off the face of the earth; must destroy the devil's brood, root
and branch, by the mighty power of A. P. A.ism.
Think of an "international," of an "universal American
Protective Association" of Americans, interested only in
preserving intact the liberties bequeathed them by those
sworn enemies of monarchy, the Revolutionary heroes, as-
sisting the Czar of Russia to preserve his crown and the Ak-
202 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
hoond of Swat his harem! The movement is not "Ameri-
can ;" it is Protestant, pure and simple. Its raison d'etre
is religious instead of political. Its object is not the en-
forcement of the fundamental law of the land, which de-
clares that "No religious test shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office of public trust under the United
States ;" but, by uniting all Protestant denominations in an
"anti-Papist" crusade, to "destroy the devil's brood, root
and branch" to "drive them off the face of the earth." Un-
less all signs be misleading and the utterances of its duly
accredited leaders mere doting jargon, it is the spiritual
rather than the supposed temporal power of the Pope that
is troubling the A. P. A. That organization is warring upon
Roman Catholic theology far more vindictively than upon
"Roman Catholic corruption" in politics. Its agony is fully
as great when a Protestant sends his child to a convent
school as when "Papal emissaries" capture a municipal gov-
ernment. Pat's sister in a nunnery gives it as much con-
cern as Pat himself on the police force. It harangues with
far more gusto of the immortality of some unworthy priest
than of the election of a "Papist" constable in a Catholic pre-
cinct.
Patriotic Americans have much to say anent the necessity
of suppressing such blatant anarchists as Herr Most and
Lucy Parsons ; yet the doctrines enunciated by the A. P. A.
are infinitely more dangerous to the peace and perpetuity
of the Republic. Their avowed object is the division of the
American people into two hostile classes and Christ as-
sures us that "Every kingdom divided against itself is
brought to desolation." If this be true, either the A. P. A.
or the government born of our fathers' blood and sanctified
by our mothers' tears, must be destroyed. If we accept
the dicta of the Deity we must class the A. P. A. organizers
with Johann Most and Benedict Arnold. Nor are these
enemies of the American government willing to wait for the
disfranchisement of their Catholic fellow citizens by due
process of law the change of the federal constitution by
peaceful methods and passage of a disabling act by a fanat-
ical congress. They are already preaching war a war of
extermination ! Here is a paragraph clipped at random
from the most pretentious A. P. A. journal extant, the
official organ of the order at San Francisco :
In Rochester, New York, a bad A. P. A. man shot and killed a
good Catholic. The chief regret is that he had not a magazine gun
instead of a single shooter.
A thousand similar expressions might be culled from the
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 203
utterances of A. P. A. orators and editors, signifying that
the Protestant who murders a Catholic pleases God and
renders his country a service that having killed one Cath-
olic he should be encouraged to slaughter more. Evident-
ly we would have a delightful Christian love-feast should
the A. P. A. become strong enough to safely embark in the
wholesale butchery business in the name of a loving
Christ and the federal constitution! But let an American
citizen who sees the plan of salvation thro' a different tele-
scope and who has a sister or daughter in a convent
shy a brick at some foul-mouthed blackguard for calumniat-
ing the Roman Catholic sisterhoods, and forthwith a terri-
ble wail goes up from this "noble order of Christian pa-
triots" that the Pope is trying to throttle free speech by
means of a pretorian guard of brutal bulldozers. The A.
P. A. willfully and with malice prepense provokes the Cath-
olic until forbearance ceases to be a virtue, then points to
his violence as an evidence of Papal iniquity. A large pro-
portion of American Catholics are of the combative Irish
blood. The terrible injustice which Ireland has for centu-
ries suffered at the hands of orthodox England has not made
them particularly friendly to the Protestant faith; yet so
deeply are they imbued with American ideas; such respect
have they for the right of free speech, that A. P. A. orators
and editors may defame them in every possible manner
may question their patriotism and revile their religion and
do so in comparative safety. The patience of the American.
Catholics under the jeers and sneers, the willful calumnies
and cowardly insults of the A. P. A. has no parallel in reli-
gious history since the persecutions suffered by the primi-
tive Christians. Why they do not procure a few "maga-
zine guns" and fill the hides of their persecutors so full of
holes that they couldn't be stuffed with stove wood, I am
unable to understand.
In the greatest exponent of A. P. Aism in which Pro-
testant Christianity and American patriotism are supposed
to be united for the attainment of salvation here and hereaf-
ter, we find such headlines as the following: "Pap for
Papist Pugs ;" "A Specimen Catholic Brute ;" "Fearful Ro-
man Catholic Immorality ;" "Papists and False Oaths ;"
"Jerked to Jesus ;" "Illegitimacy in Rome ;" "Romanists Lie
with Impunity," etc., and the articles are worthy of their
captions. Such is religious toleration and Christian charity
as interpreted by the A. P. A. such its idea of the cult es-
tablished by Christ for the purpose of securing "peace on
earth, good will to men." The proceedings of every ecumen-
204 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ical council, the official acts of every Pope, the utterances of
every writer of Roman Catholic theology for a thousand
years have been scanned for evidence that the Mother Church
is the enemy of both civil and religious liberty and that by
men who would disfranchise American citizens for worship-
ping God according to the dictates of their own conscience,
and murder them with "magazine guns" because of a dif-
ference of opinion anent the Real Presence ! I am not much
in favor of a press censorship nor the abridgement of the
right of free speech ; but I do think that men who persist in
a deliberate attempt to precipitate a civil war should be
hanged for treason. My bump of veneration is not so ab-
normal that it wears holes in the steeple crown of my Mex-
ican hat ; still I hold that the orator or editor who flagrantly
defames and systematically vilifies any religious cult con-
sidered sacred by millions of law-abiding men, is a blasphe-
mous brute, and that it would be entirely consistent with the
American idea of liberty to clap a cast-iron muzzle on him
and lose the key.
It has been charged by the A. P. A. that the Iconoclast
is a "Baptist periodical," hence "its utterances should be re-
garded with suspicion by all patriotic Americans/' Of
course every journal that declines to act as cat's-paw to pull
political chestnuts out of the fire, for the "Ape/' is trying to
supplant an American President with an Italian Pope. I
am not surprised that, having demonstrated their ignorance
of the history of the Church of Rome and their utter inabil-
ity to comprehend the genius of the American government,
the A. P. A. bosses should accuse a journal bearing the
suggestive title of Iconoclast of being a "Papal periodical."
A Catholic Iconoclast w r ere almost as great a curiosity as a
feathered elephant or an English organization for the pro-
tection of American liberties! With the controversy be-
tween Protestantism and Catholicism I have no more to do
than with that between Buddhism and Brahmanism. I
care never a copper whether a man takes his theology from
the Pope or Dalai-Lama, John Calvin or Joseph Smith, so
long as he doesn't persist in mixing it with American poli-
tics. But when one religious body presumes to monopo-
lize the honors and emoluments of this government to the
exclusion of another ; when an attempt is made in the name
of any religious cult or creed to override the constitution of
our common country; when a conspiracy is entered into by
malicious busy-bodies and aspiring demagogues to disfran-
chise worthy American citizens because of their religious
opinions, somebody is going to get the iconoclastic gaffles
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 205
driven into them so deep that the protruding points may be
utilized as a hat rack.
But the Iconoclast does not stand alone to receive the
destructive thunderbolts and sizzling scorn of that "noble
order of Christian patriots" which proposes to play smash
with the Pope and "destroy the devil's brood, root, and
branch" by a combination of "open Bibles" and breech-
loaders. The leading article in the A. P. A. Magazine for
July whose politico-religious mission is ladling out a very
disgusting brand of 'Tap for Papist Pugs" is an "Address
by Rev. J. Q. A. Henry, San Francisco." From it I clip
the following paragraph :
Time forbids that I should give the extent to which the Papacy
has subsidized the press. There is scarcely a daily of note through-
out the entire country whose staff is not controlled by the Jesuits.
At the elbow of reporter and editor sits the Jesuitical inquisitor to
see that nothing is reported or published detrimental to the Papal
church. It is shocking how unfair to Protestantism and diabolically
sectarian the press has become. It cringes in the presence of the
hierarchy, and enforces its unscrupulous bidding with the servility
of a whipped spaniel.
I dislike very much to say anything disrespectful of a
preacher; still, respect for "the cloth" does not overcome
my suspicion that the reverend gentleman is an unmitigated
liar. In fact I know from personal experience in daily
journalism that such is the case. I have served on nine
daily papers ranging in importance from the St. Louis
Globe-Democrat to the Houston Post; have occupied every
position from police reporter to editor, and never did a
Catholic priest attempt to shape one sentence of the ten
thousand columns that have passed from my pencil into
print. I have treated of many questions in which Catholics
\vere deeply interested, and never did I catch a glimpse of
that "Jesuitical inquisitor." Never did Catholic priest or
layman suggest what I should say or leave unsaid; but I
have had the Protestant inquisitors at my elbow often
enough, God knows. They have been persistent, meddle-
some, dictatorial ; and whenever I declined to allow them to
manage my department they tried to get me discharged. In
all my journalistic experience I was never told by a Catho-
lic priest of a scandal in a Protestant church; but just let
a Catholic priest go wrong, and four-fifths of the Protestant
preachers make it their business, not only to inform the
press, but to insist that the affair be "shown up" in its most
unfavorable aspect. These are facts with which every daily
newspaper man is familiar. Call up the editors and report-
206 BRANtt, THE ICONOCLAST
ers of this country and they will tell you that the Catholic
priests and Jewish Rabbis meddle with their work but little;
but that, with the possible exception of the pot-house politi-
cians and crank scribblers, the Protestant clergy is the
greatest nuisance with which they have to deal. That poli-
ticians and monopolists sometimes subsidize a daily paper
is doubtless true; but this corruption is not carried to the
extent popularly supposed. The press is often foolish, but
usually honest. Of course there are corrupt men on the
press, as w.ell as in the pulpit. I have 'heard jackleg re-
porters boast of tips received from Protestant preachers to
secure spread-eagle reports of their sermons ; but never did
I hear either editor or reporter intimate that he had re-
ceived a dollar from a priest except in the way of legitimate
business that would bear the light of publicity. Of course
this does not prove that priests never influence the utter-
ances of the press ; but it does signify that the preachers are
not in a position to point the finger of scorn.
My opinion is that the Rev. Jeremiah Querulous Ana-
nias Henry is guilty of a deliberate calumny, and were I now
editing a daily paper I would have him indicted for criminal
libel and put into the penitentiary where such reckless liars
and assassins of reputation properly belong. Such a gratu-
itous insult offered the American press simply proves that I
sized the order up correctly when I labeled it the
Aggregation of Pusillanimous Asses. No organization
that has undertaken such a herculean task as the practical
disfranchisement and reduction to political peonage of one-
seventh of the American people, will, if it possess as much
sense as an acephalous louse, deliberately antagonize a pow-
er that can ridicule it out of existence, that can drive it off
the earth with goosequills despite its "magazine guns."
The A. P. A. has taken plenty of rope, and! if it have suffi-
cient sense to tie a knot will inevitably hang itself. And
the daily press will, if it possess one glimmering spark of
American manhood, assist at the obsequies. Here is an
organization which has defied its power and spat in its face.
What will the daily press do about it? Will it play the
"whipped spaniel" and lick the feet that trample upon it?
Or will it hit this politico-religious monstrosity one biff be-
tween the eyes and send it back to the foul shades of hell
from which it sprung?
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 207
GROVER'S NEW GIRL.
BABIES AND BOOT-LICKS.
We gather from the press dispatches that "at precisely
4:30 p. m. by the doctor's watch," on the seventh day of the
seventh month of the year of grace, 1895, a third girl baby
was born to President and Mrs. Cleveland. Regardless of
the Malthusian theory of population and the existence of
more girls in America! than can reasonably hope to acquire
dutiful husbands we hasten to extend congratulations.
It is possible that a male heir would have better pleased our
"liege, lord and sovereign born ;" still, the man who holds
three queens in the game of life with the privilege of call-
ing for cards should feel encouraged. The new addition
to the President's household appears to have taken the
Nation by surprise, and it is but now slowly recovering from
the shock.
The Clevelands have evidently learned something by ex-
perience. They have learned that many daily newspapers
have no appreciation of the sanctity of the family circle or
respect for the modesty which is the glory of motherhood
that common decency demands that these literary vultures
and foolish Boswells be kept resolutely at bay. Ere Pres-
ident Cleveland had been married six months, the daily press
that "professional educator" and self-styled "moulder of
public opinion" began to speculate on paternal possibili-
ties. It was recalled that before becoming President he
had acquired a procreative record of which he appeared not
a little proud, and that he was not a man to weary in well-
doing: hence, if by any chance, a Peeping Tom reporter
caught a glimpse of Mrs. Cleveland clad in a maternity
gown, or even a hot-weather Mother Hubbard, the great
American Commonwealth was thrown into a state of pain-
ful expectancy bordering hysteria. The family physi-
cian was beset by interrogation points wherever he turned,
while seamstresses and house-servants were subjected to
rigid cross-examination by enterprising Washington corre-
spondents who should have been humanely killed. If a
midwife or obstetrician was seen about the premises the
world was advised thereof by wire. If a haberdasher's boy
delivered a p'ackage at the White House he was fairly
mobbed by reporters eager to learn if it contained safety-
pins or material available for diapers. The physique of the
"first lady of the land" was observed as closely and com-
208 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mented upon, as freely as that of a Blue Grass brood-mare,
and the slightest tendency to embonpoint called forth col-
umn telegrams, editorial leaders and "smart" paragraphs.
Speculation anent the probable sex of the new-comer was
freely indulged in by papers of professed respectability, 'and
the approaching accouchement became the subject of con-
versation alike in the gilded drawing-room and the dingy
"doggery." I am told that bets were laid on the sex -of the
babe to be, and pools sold on the date of its debut.
Time after time the wiseacres of the press were disap-
pointed, but that only redoubled their vigilance. It is said
that a watched kettle never boils; but to even this rule,
there are exceptions, and the Cleveland household was
eventually blessed with a babe a fuzzy-wuzzy little barba-
rian, in no wise distinguishable from a thousand other babes
born on the same day. But if the little bundle of bawl that
lay mewling and puking in its nurse's arms h'ad been a rein-
carnation of the Buddha, or even the Christ re-born in a
mansion instead of a manger, of pseudo-patrician instead of
unquestioned proletarian parentage* the American press
could not have expressed more concern. Hourly bulletins
informed the awe-struck universe of the condition of the
mother, the state of mind of the father and progress made
by the young* pilgrim.
"Baby Cleveland awoke at 11.30 and wept softly."
"The baby smiled intelligently and coo-cooed to her happy f ather."
These are specimen bits of the intellectual goose-liver pie
served up by our journalistic caterers to a public boasting
itself "heir of all the ages and foremost in the files of time."
What caused Baby Ruth to indulge in that soft wailing cry
which echoed and re-echoed round the world by wire, has
never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps some faint
adumbration of 'an idea that, through no fault of hers, she
had been precipitated into a world where fools predominate
broke her heart. Her "coo-coo" remains as much a mys-
tery as her tears, the attempt of etymologists to prove it an
infantile form of "cuckoo" having signally failed. By unre-
mitting attention to duty, the doctors manager to save both
mother and child even pulled the old man through with-
out much difficulty; but for a long time the general public
languished. The strain upon its nervous forces had been
abnormal; but the wonderful recuperative powers of nature
at length asserted themselves and society was safe. Had
the first Cleveland baby been a boy, excess of joy might
have proved fatal to a nation founded by those who taught
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 209
the equality of men and held kings in contempt. Had it
been two boys the sun would not only have stood still upon
some occidental Gibeon and the moon in a cisatlantic valley
of Ajalon, but have stuck fast and refused thenceforth to
shine upon the other half of the earth. That Mrs. Cleve-
land did not. die of vexation, nor the male progenitor of the
young "princess" go gunning for various press correspond-
ents, "able editors" and other purveyors of such godless
gush over an accomplishment to which most married
couples are equal, argues a patience beside which the patii-
arch of Uz were but a querulous dyspeptic. The third can-
didate for colic and carpet tacks to appear in the "Stuffed
Prophet's" household was not heralded by "scare" head-
lines. No pools were sold on the day it would appear, no
sesterces laid by chivalrous American soverigns on the
question of its sex.
"Silently as the daylight comes when night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek grows into the great sun,"
the little wanderer from No Man's Land entered this vale
of tears and unostentatiously took up life's trials. The
sacred pre-natal secret was guarded as closely as tho' it were
some hideous crime, lest the reporters once more come pry-
ing about kitchen windows, "pumping" garrulous serving-
maids and listening at key-holes to catch the first faint cry
of a new-born babe. A modest matron dislikes to have a
tribe of hoodlums measuring her girdle and speculating on
the probabilities of parturition; so it was not until a do-
mestic, finding the secret too hard to hold, "told a neigh-
bor's girl" of the new arrival that the press correspondents
realized that another crisis in the world's history was at
hand. But although the public was spared the vulgar spec-
ulation and barbaric horn-blowing that preceded the arrival
of other babes "born in the purple," it could by no possible
precaution on the part of the modest mother escape the de-
luge of post-natal ditch-water and disgusting hog- wash.
Kere is a specimen, clipped from that owl of American
journalism and representative "public educator," the Dallas
News :
Cosy Gray Gables was batned in warm sunlight to-day and the
early existence of the new Miss Cleveland, the personage in whom
the residents of Buzzard's Bay are most interested, is marked by
bright, pleasant weather. Dr. Bryant reported that Mrs. Cleveland
and the little one are resting quietly and that everything is progres-
sing finely. He will add nothing except that the newcomer is a "fine
little girl." In company with Joseph Jefferson, Mr. Cleveland spent
nearly all day trout fishing at East Sandwich, where Mr. Jefferson
210 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
has a private stream. The party left early in the day and did not
return until nearly 6 o'clock. Ruth and Esther did not drive with
their nurses to the village this noon, as they have done almost every
day since their arrival at Gray Gables, nor were the horses sent to
the postoffice ; but a messenger was dispatched on foot after the
mail. The children remained at their play, often chattering as they
ran about the piazzas and lawn over the little sister so recently in-
troduced to them. Both children seem delighted with the idea of
having another little one in the household.
The existence of "warm sunlight" on a July day will
strike the average reader as a phenomenon well worth re-
cording even wiring across the continent. Warm sun-
light and wet water prove that nothing is impossible in Na-
ture. We are pleased to learn that the omens were auspi-
cious at the birth of the Cleveland babe, portending pros-
perity and a life all whose paths are peace. Had one J. S.
Hogg been born while the warm sunlight gilded the pa-
ternal cabin with supernal glory and rested like a benedic-
tion upon the softly murmuring pines, instead of in the
midst of a March storm that knocked the pillows out of
broken window panes and piled the cow-path with broken
boughs and general rubbish until it resembled an interior
view of Riggins' head, or the English language after a cri-
minal assault upon it by " J. K. Street, journalist" who-
ever that may be, what a, world of woe and worry, trials
and tribulations might have been spared the Lone Star
State ! That Dr. Bryant declines to give it further informa-
tion than that the babe may some day wear bloomers and
"everything is progressing finely" is the apology which
the press offers the public for not furnishing full particulars.
The doctor's curt refusal to divulge all the delicate secrets
of the sick-room to be exploited in dduble-leaded type is
probably a great disappointment to many people ; still it en-
titles him to the eternal gratitude of every mother, present
and potential. The same spirit of morbid curiosity which
caused crowds to assemble to see le Grande Monarque dress
and undress himself largely prevails even among the Ameri-
can people, where it has been SO' prurient that the daily
press finds it profitable to violate the canons of common
decency. That President Cleveland should almost immedi-
ately leave the house, not to devote a few moments to im-
portant public business, but to spend the entire day trout-
fishing in a play-actor's "private stream" (where is Henry
George?) while his new-born babe was battling for a hold
on life and the mother far within the pale of danger, would
suggest subterbrutishness to any but a press correspondent.
But then we must not judge by the highest altruistic stand-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 211
ard a man who runs largely to bowels and little to brains.
The gander carefully guards his unfledged goslings, the
tiger keeps watch and ward over his pur-blind progeny,
but who ever saw Taurus take an active interest in the new-
born bovine?
But more important than all else, perhaps, is the informa-
tion afforded us by an enlightened public press to the effect
that Ruth and Esther did not drive to the village with their
nurses, as was their wont, but remained at play, "chattering
as they ran about the piazzas and lawn over the little sister
so recently introduced to them." (Lindley Murray being
already dead, the architect of the foregoing sentence in our
"great public educator" cannot be indicted for homicide.)
We might have expected them to discuss Mother Goose's
Melodies, Coin's Financial School, the latest society novel
and other light literature adapted to nascent minds. The
fact that they preferred to talk of something tangible to
discuss conditions rather than theories proves that they
have risen above that photoplasmic or rudimentary state of
the mental faculties occupied by the Trilbyites, the patrons
of the Houston Post and those semi-vegetable polyps who
absorb a kind of intellectual circus lemonade with a sock
in it from that great tank of orthodox wiggletails yclept
the Baptist Standard. We are pleased to learn that Ruth
and Esther approved of the newcomer. Had they decided
that it was de trop of course it would be instantly killed or
perhaps consigned to the tender care of Baylor University
to be "educated for Baptist missionary work in Brazil."
We are further informed that "the horses were not sent
to the postoffice, but a messenger was dispatched on foot
after the mail." How fortunate that in raking the great
round earth for rubbish, the Associated Press that busy
collector of compost caught this important item! Other-
wise, should the world wobble in its orbit and "planets and
suns flame lawless thro' the sky," we might never suspect
the reason. Given a cause, even Dr. Burleson might figure
out an effect. We know now that the nigger employed at
Gray Gables to go errands actually hoofed it to the post-
office and "toted" the presidential mail-pouch, instead of
driving that he did not even ride a bike or bestride a brin-
dle mule. Thus day by day does the diurnal press add to
the mighty domain of human Knowledge and drive the
monster Ignorance further into the desert. Knowledge is
power, if we may believe the old copy-books, and the Archi-
medean lever may yet move the world.
But why criticise the press for performing its legitimate
212 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
function 'that of industriously catering to a depraved public
appetite for toads ? If the people did not crave and pay for
such intellectual ditch-water it would not be collected at
great expense and pumped into them much as the Lagado
doctor inflated the colicky canine!"
The birth of babies in the Cleveland household is of no
more importance than the appearance on this planet of what
a high official of the present plutocratic administration calls
"the spawn of the wayside cabin" of which Lincoln was an
example. In fact, if we may judge the future by the past,
the "spawn" is likely to fill a larger niche in this world's
economy <than is the offspring of My-Policy Presidents; yet
the press of this country where every man is supposed to
be a sovereign indulge in more unmitigated gush over
a Cleveland babe than does that of Russia over the
birth of an hereditary Tsar. In Great Britian when a
woman is confined whose kid, by any possibility short of a
revolution, may come to the crowd, a high state officer is re-
quired to attend the accouchement, while the people testify
their loyalty to the reigning family by votes of thanks for
the unavoidable and a liberal largesse to the young prince-
ling or dukeling who, if born in a manger like the Man of
Galilee, might eat grass. We have not quite reached that
state of intellectual servility where we pension the babes of
our political boss, but are tending rapidly in that direction.
From the Penobscot to Jim WelFs town on the lower Rio
Grande, toadyism is rapidly taking the place of American
independence, and in this respect at least the public press
is "in the vanguard of human progress." It is comforting
to reflect that there was no typographical fanfaronade when
Shakespeare and Burns were born that Grant and Na-
poleon stormed their first breastworks without attracting
the attention of the press. Even the coming into the world
of the Immaculate Son of God was not at the time consid-
ered nearly so important as the birth of Cleveland's last
baby. But then his Father was not in politics did not ap-
point postmasters nor dispose of public bonds to syndicates
on private bids.
BAYLOR IN BAD BUSINESS.
The case of Steen Morris, charged with outraging the 14-
year-old "ward of the Baptist church" while she was an in-
mate of Baylor College, has been heard in the lower court
and the defendant held to await the action of the grand
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 213
jury. It is not difficult to predict the final outcome of the
case. The complainant is a stranger in a strange land, an
ignorant child despite her three years at Baylor deserted
by that pious crew of hypocrites who persuaded her to leave
her faraway Brazilian home and commit herself to the ten-
der care of the Baptist church of Texas. The defendant is
brother to the pious son-in-law of Baylor's president, and
all the power and "pull" of that institution are being exerted
to save him from the penitentiary. It is a case of weakness
vs. strength, of ignorance vs. knowledge, the good name of a
fatherless girl vs. the reputation of a powerful denomination
and a pretentious college. Antonia Teixeira cannot cast
a single vote; the Baptist church holds the political destiny
and offices of this judicial district in the hollow of its
hand. Of course she may get justice but it's a 100 to I
shot.
It may be presumed that all the important evidence for
both prosecution and defense was introduced at the prelim-
inary trial. It simply amounted to an accusation by the
one and a denial by the other. No corroborating testi-
mony of any importance was introduced by either. It is
simply the word of a child-mother against that of a modern
Joseph. That the girl acquired a contract to raise a kid
while she was being equipped for Brazilian missionary
work in Dr. Burleson's kitchen, and that the party of the
first part was not a coon, as the Rev. S. L. Morris, in the
plenitude of his Baptist charity tried to make it appear, but
some lecherous white man who was allowed to range at
will among the female inmates of Baylor, is all that has been
established beyond the peradventure of a doubt.
Steen Morris may be innocent ; but the question naturally
arises: If he never had carnal intercourse with the child
why does she accuse him of being the father of her illegiti-
mate babe? What has she to gain by shielding the real
criminal and accusing an innocent man of the terrible crime ?
She is evidently not seeking to recover pecuniary damages,
for Morris has no money. She cannot expect to coerce
him into marrying her, for he is already a benedict. Her
accusation is evidently not the result of enmity, for she en-
tered no complaint against him until requested by the court
to disclose the author of her disgrace. Why then did she
accuse the defendant and stick to her story despite the ef-
forts of the Burlesons and the Morrises to bluff and bully-
rag her into a recantation? Men of wealth or distinction
are sometimes wrongly accused of' sexual crimes by brazen
adventuresses ; but Morris is neither wealthy nor distin-
214 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
guished, and it is inconceivable that a child in short dresses
should learn to play the adventuress in a Baptist college
or even in Dr. Burleson's kitchen.
Of course the public may be wrong in denouncing
Morris as the guilty man. He may be a veritable Sir Gal-
ahad or he-Dian. He may be physically incapable of such
a crime ; or the girl whom Dr. Burleson would have us be-
lieve was "crazy after the boys," may have caught the good
young man and ravished him vie et armis. We really cannot
be certain of anything in this world. The Iconoclast would
not prejudice the case of Morris. It simply desires that
justice be done. If he is proven to be innocent it will
gladly record that fact; if he is proven guilty it will insist
that he be hanged. If he is guilty it goes without saying
that there is a conspiracy to shield a criminal regardless of
the good name of the girl, and its principals should be made
to feel the strong hand of the law. Whether the child was
outraged or freely gave her consent to carnal intercourse
matters much from a legal, but none from a moral stand-
point. She was 14 years old when ruined, and at that time
the law raising the age of consent to 15 was not in effect.
What would be a capital crime to-day might have been sim-
ple seduction a year ago; still the fact remains that, what-
ever the law of the land, a lecherous brute who will ruin a
child of 14, with or without her consent, should not be al-
lowed to live. He should first be subjected to the surgeon's
knife, lashed naked thro' the streets with a whip of scorpions,
then hanged higher than Haman and his foul carcass fed to
the buzzards.
Whether Steen Morris be guilty or innocent ; whether he
be convicted or acquitted, Baylor College will have to an-
swer at the bar of public opinion for its brutal and unchris-
tian treatment of the Brazilian girl. She was committed
to its care, a child of 13, unversed in this world's wicked-
ness. She was utterly alone, and Baylor was to be father
and mother, sister and brother to her until she developed
into noble womanhood and was safely returned to her kin-
dred across far seas, consecrated to the cause of Christ In-
stead of being carefully educated she was consigned to the
kitchen. Instead of being tenderly guarded she was per-
mitted to become enciente it was at first said by a "coon."
Instead of being kindly cared for after this dire mishap and
an effort made to bring her back into the fold granting
that she willfully went astray she was bundled out of Bay-
lor like so much carrion and never an effort made to bring
her destroyer to justice. When compelled to disclose him
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 215
the aged president of Baylor denounced her as a thief and
branded her in the public prints as a bawd. During her
confinement she was shown less consideration by Baylor
than is clue a wolf about to become a mother and she the
duly ordained "ward of the Baptist church !" There is not
water enough in all the oceans to wash the dark stain from
the escutcheon of this Baptist college; there are not words
enough in the English language to convince the American
people that Baylor is a proper custodian for their daughters.
The credit of the Morris family may be preserved ; Steen
may escape the penitentiary ; the unfortunate girl and her
Baptist bastard may disappear from the face of the earth, but
Baylor college will stink forever in the nostrils of Christen-
dom it is "damned to everlasting fame."
Since the above was put in type the defendant has carried
his case by habeas corpus before the district judge, and that
official a worthy Baptist brother has rendered a Scotch
verdict and ordered the release without bail of the alleged
rapist. One judicial tribunal, after an exhaustive hearing
of the case, decided that the girl was telling the truth and
ordered the defendant held ; another, after a cursory exam-
ination of the matter, and without calling the complainant
to combat the witnesses for the defense, ordered that he be
discharged. So ends the suit. No one will be punished
for the ruin of Antonia Teixeira, the "ward of the Baptist
Church." The grand jury will understand that it were use-
less to take cognizance of the case that it will get no assist-
ance from her self-constituted guardians in rounding up the
criminal. Somebody is guilty, but he'll go scot free ; for in
the eyes of these good people female virtue seems of little
worth and lawless venery but a venial fault. Baylor con-
siders that it has done its duty by the innocent child com-
mitted to its care in establishing, to the satisfaction of the
court, not who is, but who is not responsible for her ruin.
And . Waco's morning paper one of those "great public
educators" of the Baptist school fairly chortles in its joy
because no one will suffer for Antonia's shame evidently
thinks the debauchment of a child a matter of little impor-
tance which "prejudice has stirred into a great stink !"
Right royally are Tom Ochiltree's kind of men "standing
together!" Well has it been said that there may be much
religion and no morality, tomes of law and little justice.
Poor Antonia ! Miserable little waif, adrift among the Bap-
tist wolves ! She can now beg money of publicans and
216 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
sinners to carry her back to her native land, and there lay
her ill-begotten babe on her old mother's breast as her
diploma from Baylor! She can seek sanctuary in the
Catholic church which her fond parents left to tread a
primrose path to Christ and there find help and human
sympathy; or she can take herself to the Reservation and
there pursue that "missionary work" for which three years
in a Baptist college have so eminently qualified her. What-
ever her future, the great world will go on much the same.
Dr. Burleson will doubtless continue to "weep and pray"
over erring girls then pillory them in the public press.
The Baptists will continue to send missionaries to Brazil to
teach the heteroscian heathen what to do with their young
daughters, and the godly people to rail at prize-fighting as
a public disgrace while Antonia Teixeira clasps her father-
less babe to her childish breast, bedews its face with bitter
tears and wonders if God knows there's such a place as
Texas.
THE JURY SYSTEM.
ANOTHER VENERABLE NUISANCE.
There is at present almost as much talk of reforming the
jury system as of reforming the tariff. Why ''reform" the
jury system? Why not abolish it altogether?
The jury system, like the habeas corpus act, has long
been regarded as one of the "great bulwarks of our liber-
ties." And such it undoubtedly was when the greed of
princes and prelates threatened to grind us like grain be-
tween the upper and nether millstones ; when an absolute
monarchy on one hand and an intolerant and presumptuous
prelacy on the other were trying to fix their cursed fetters
upon the brawn and brain of all mankind. When judiciary
and prelacy worked together like the upper and lower jaws
of a wild beast, of which the harem of a besotted king was
the stomach; when such creatures as Jeffreys wore the er-
mine and the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission
hung like ominous shadows over every English home, then
.indeed was trial by jury, however defective, a thing to be
thankful for, to be defended in the forum or the field. Then
indeed was it the sheet-anchor of liberty, the bright bow of
promise to the weak, the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
night upon which the eyes of the liberty-loving world were
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 217
fixed with reverence and awe, the rock between the tem-
pestuous sea of anarchy and the desolate desert of abject sla-
very, upon which rested, with such poise as it could, the ark
of the social covenant.
But "the old order changeth, yielding place to new," and
we have outgrown the jury system as we have the ordeal by
fire and many other forms and formulas established by the
fathers and religious dogma and judicial process. The
trouble is that the old order acquires a kind of prescriptive
right, lingers long after the conditions which brought it
into being have departed, after the day of its usefulness has
declined. Time was when "sacred relics" were an invalua-
ble aid to religion, forming a bridge, as it were, between
ethnic materialism and the spirituality of the Christian cul-
tus ; but having crossed the bridge it were the part of wis-
dom to burn it, that we may not return. A progressive
world must cast the jury system behind it, as it has cast the
Ptolomaic system, polytheism, alchemy and augury, abso-
lute monarchy and many other things once regarded as the
very acme of natural or even preternatural prescience.
The genesis of the jury system is by no means certain.
It first attained a systematic development in England, but
whether its basic principle was introduced by Anglo-Saxon
or Norseman, borrowed from the Gallic-Romans or devel-
oped from the native Celtic customs, antiquarians find diffi-
culty in deciding. It really matters little whether we are
indebted for it to the semi-mythical Alfred, the legendary
Hengist, or that mailed marauder, William of Normandy,
to whom titled English nincompoops and dead beats delight
to trace their lineage. Certain it is that during the past five
hundred years its development has been in the wrong di-
rection, and it is not to-day so well adapted to secure justice
between man and man as it was when Henry II permitted
cowards to decline the trial by combat for that by assize.
In olden times the jury was composed of the witnesses, was
selected from among reputable citizens of the neighborhood
who were supposed to know most of the cause they were
called upon to decide, and who might refuse to take into
consideration the testimony of any or all other witnesses.
Now instead of selecting those who know most about the
cause they are to pass upon, we select those who know
least. Instead of "afforcing the assize" by getting twelve
good men and true who will agree of their own accord, we
gather twelve ignorami together and, after pumping law
into them they cannot comprehend, and surfeiting them with
testimony which they are incompetent to analyze or unable
218 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
to remember, we allow a dozen or so shyster lawyers to be-
fog them with their sophistry, to drive out what little of the
law and evidence may have found lodgment in their be-
fuddled brains, then lock them up until the most obstinate
jackass in the crowd coerces the others into submission or
drives them to open revolt!
In simple cases where the law is plain and explicit, twelve
honest men, possessing a personal knowledge of the facts
and acquainted with the parties to the suit, may be expected
to render a righteous verdict ; but what can we expect of a
know-knothing jury, gathered by chance, where the testi-
mony is conflicting, the interests involved are intricate, the
law ambiguous, the attorneys adepts in the art of obfusca-
tion and the bribe-giver is ever active?
Even were our juries always composed of men of the
strictest integrity, still we might expect many miscarriages
of justice. The average citizen regards jury duty as an irk-
some task to be avoided if possible. He chafes under the
restraint, is in no condition of mind to analyze great masses
of evidence. Even if he can keep his thoughts off his neg-
lected crops, his workshop or his store and confine them
strictly to the cause in question, his mind has had no judicial
training, and, with skillful attorneys to mislead him, he is
too apt to mistake the non-essential for the essential, or suf-
fer his prejudices to be so played upon that his verdict, while
conscientious, is infamous.
It is safe to say that five-sixths of the verdicts rendered
by juries are compromises are not the verdict of twelve
men, but of a minority who, being strong-willed or stubborn,
override the majority, who are chiefly interested in getting
through with the business that they may receive their dis-
charge. And this is "the great bulwark of our liberties
the handmaid of justice !" Why, the blundering of petit
juries long since passed into a proverb ! It is as impossible
to predict from the law and the evidence what verdict a jury
will render, as where lightning will strike, or what fool
demagogue the Texas democracy will next deify. About
the only thing that can be predicted with any degree of cer-
tainty is that, if the suit is against a railway company, the
corporation will get the worst of it.
It would be some improvement, doubtless, to substitute
the majority for the unanimous rule in making up verdicts,
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 219
but there would be some loss to offset this gain. While
it would rob the stupid and contrary blockhead or the
"fixed" juror of his power for evil, it would also deprive the
man capable of rendering an intelligible and righteous
judgment of his power for good. While on the one hand it
would prevent a stupid and perverted minority overriding
an indifferent majority, on the other it would estop a wise
and judicial-minded minority acting as a check upon a blun-
dering or vicious majority.
The fact is, society is becoming too complex for the jury
system and we must find a substitute therefor. When a na-
tion is composed of but few people they can all assemble in
council and make laws ; but when they become numerous,
and national interests complex, pure democracy must give
place to representative government or monarchy. In a
small State every freeman may properly be expected to be
soldier as well as citizen; but when the hundreds swell to
millions, division of labor and greater proficiency in each
department becomes possible. It is as foolish to expect
every citizen to leave his farm and workshop to enforce the
law as it is to expect him to assist directly in the making of
those laws, or to take his turn at garrisoning frontier forts.
If we can trust delegates to make our laws certainly we
may trust delegates to enforce them. If we can trust to
judges alone in our courts of last resort, cannot we trust to
them also in the lower courts? If it be objected that such a
system would lead to favoritism and abuses; if the jury sys-
tem has such a hold upon the popular fancy that, despite its
many shortcomings, its immediate overthrow would be im-
possible, why not elect our jurors and pay them as we do
our magistrates and county boards? There is no magic
in the number twelve, five or seven would answer equally
as well. The majority rule in making up verdict might be
adopted and each juror's vote made a matter of record. We
could thus secure the services of men of more than average
intelligence and moral standing, with some little qualifica-
tion for the work, fix the responsibility of verdicts and save
to the general public a vast deal of worry and waste of time.
It would be vastly cheaper to the commonwealth, trials
would be briefer, fewer useless witnesses would be summon-
ed and lawyers would soon learn it to be but a waste of lung
power to indulge in cheap sophistry and Ciceronian fanfar-
onade. While a bench of trained judges, holding their
positions for life, and liberally paid, would be the best pos-
tible tribunal, if we must retain the jury system let us effect
a division of labor and fix upon jurors some little responsi-
220 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
bility. Let us put men in the jury box who at least know
a hawk from a handsaw, men who freely accept the service
instead of those who are driven into it by fear of fine and
imprisonment.
POLITICIANS AND PENSIONERS.
I was conversing with a hardy-looking machinist in
Houston who incidentally remarked that he had served in
the federal army during the civil war.
"How long?"
"Only about six months. I enlisted near the close and
never got to see a Johnny with his war-paint on."
"Get a bounty when you enlisted?"
"Oh, yes ; I got $300."
"Ever try to get a pension"?
"Sure! I was taken sick of the mumps and permanently
disabled."
"Disabled for what"?
"Well, you see, my general health was impaired. I only
draw $6 a month, but I'm trying to get an increase."
The conversation drifted to other topics and he finally
informed me that he was the parent stem from which had
sprung twelve lusty olive branches.
"Raise your family since the war?"
"Sure."'
"Work at your trade regularly ?"
"Haven't lost a month's time in ten years."
"Now, hones' Injun, don't you think that a man who
came out of the war capable of continued hard labor and of
incidentally accumulating a dozen kids, has a good deal of
gall to ask the Government to pay him a pension"?
"Well, congress allowed it, and I'd be a d n fool to re-
fuse $72 a year that's thrown at my head."
A few years after the war I witnessed a six-day walking
match and subsequently learned that the winner was draw-
ing a comfortable pension from Uncle Sam because of a dis-
abled leg! A careful investigation would probably disclose
the fact that fully forty per cent of the ex-federals now re-
ceiving pensions came out of the war better men physically
than they went in. The pension legislation indulged in by
that omnium-gatherum of practical politicians and profes-
sional jobbers yclept the American Congress, is, beyond
the peradventure of a doubt, the most damnable outrage
ever perpetrated on a free people.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST. 221
The Republican party sets the pace in the matter of pen-
sion legislation in pandering to the "old soldier vote"
and its Democratic brother considers that it must follow
suit if it would keep its nose within smelling distance of the
public flesh-pots. The leaders of both parties take it for
granted that the old soldier can be held in line only by lib-
eral concessions of public pap -that the moment a subsidy
is denied him he will, like a political mercenary, transfer his
allegiance to the cause of the enemy. As in several states
he holds the balance of power, his vote is important ; hence
we have the edifying spectacle of Democratic and Republi-
can congresses viemg with each other in the building of new
turn-pikes upon which he may travel to the treasury.
General Grant declared that twenty-five years after the
close of the war the pension expenditures should not ex-
ceed $50,000,000 per annum ; yet here it is 30 years since the
cessation of hostilities, and the expenditures are three times
the sum named as the maximum by the federal commander !
Men who followed .the flag of the confederacy are fully as
liberal with the public funds when bidding for the votes of
ex-federals as are the most radical of Republicans.
It is well enough to grant pensions to those who were per-
manently disabled in the discharge of their duties and who
possess no means of support ; but this promiscuous pension-
ing for political purposes is not only an infamous outrage
upon the taxpayers, but an insult to patriotism. The pay
of the federals, rank and file, was far in excess of that re-
ceived by the soldiers of any European country. In addi-
tion to this, many received a liberal bounty. If a man will
not fight for his country or defend his home for a salary,
with a subsidy annex, without asking to be provided for all
the rest of his life at public expense, his patriotism is con-
siderably below par.
I do not believe that the federal soldiers who faced the
legions of Jackson and Lee are asking to be listed as chronic
paupers that the men who "saved the country" insist on
taking it in part payment of their services, then compelling
us to work out the balance. It is the men who "enlisted
near the close of the war" when the bounties were big-
gest and the draft hardest to dodge; who "never saw a
Johnny with his war-paint on;" who were "permanently
disabled by the mumps" then founded large families and
those who became professional pedestrians on pensioned
legs, that consfder patriotism and pie as synonyms and hold
the tear jug into which practical politicians ostentatiously
weep for the woes of the "old soldier."
222 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST.
The confederate soldier suffered far more severely than
did his federal brother. In addition to catching the mumps
and getting disabled legs he got his house burned down,
his mules stolen and his niggers confiscated. He received
no fat bounties and 'never saw a greenback except when he
went through the pockets of some federal prisoner. He
drew the enemy's fire with a great deal more regularity than
he drew his pay, and when he got the latter it was good for
little but gun-wadding and pastime poker ; yet he has man-
aged pretty well without a pension has even contributed
some hundreds of millions toward ameliorating the mental
anguish of his erstwhile enemy.
The confederates were not playing the game of war for
pensions. They did not consider the Confederacy a cas-
ualty insurance company. Some fought as a matter of
duty, some for the fun of the thing, and a few, perhaps, be-
cause they couldn't help it ; but none of them, so far as
heard from, have threatened to spill their patriotism, re-
nounce their political principles and kick the enacting clause
out of their party unless it filled them to the nozzle with pie
at the expense of the public. What little has been done
by the respective states for disabled and impecunious vet-
erans was unsolicited. The old confeds have never threat-
ened to ruin a political party unless it assisted them to rob
the country. Their patriotism is not built on a gold basis
like the American greenback, but is purely a fiat affair.
TRUE LOVE'S TRIALS.
Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, Assistant Editor Houston Post :
My Dear Rebecca: It has been some months since I
took my pen in hand to spill my fond affection over the
fairest of the fair, my sweet Rose of Sharon. During this
hiatus in our communion thro' the mails you have evidently
imagined that my heart has become frappe even harbored
the awful hallucination that in the rush and hurry of reform-
ing the Texas ministry, squeezing the politics out of latter
day religion and promoting harmony in the bifurcated de-
mocracy, I have actually forgotten you. I gather as much
from the fact that you inform the few unfortunate readers
of the Post that I'm a bold bad man, an "adventurer," an
"ingrate," and other things not calculated to inspire respect.
This only proves the old adage that the path of true love
is ever a rocky one, beset with thorns and thistles, as well
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 223
as rosebuds and bulbuls. You know you wronged me when
you made those cruel flings. You suspected that I had
transferred my affections to Dr. Mary Walker and "hell
hath no fury like a woman scorned." You were wretchedly
unhappy and longed to be bitterly cruel. If I ever sinned
against your youth and innocence it must have been in an
uneasy hypnotic dream. Before gods and men I do declare
that if you have been led astray if your young life is
blighted like a tender plant by a sneaping frost 'tis no
fault of mine. If you have been guilty of unwomanly con-
duct, God wotteth well it was despite my counsels rather
than because thereof. If your conscience hurts you, and
in the stilly night there comes into your exuberant bosom
a feeling that's akin to pain ; if you bedew your hen-feather
pillow with unavailing tears while Remorse fleshes his
cruel fangs in your broken heart and makes it to bleed
afresh, why lay the burden of the blame on one who gently
held you back by the tail of your little alpaca coat when you
yearned to fill your snowy cuticle with barrel-house booze
and whoop it up in Happy Hollow? Jealousy is indeed a
green-eyed monster, that makes us see things more strange
than ever flitted hither and yon in a jag-cure joint. "Ingrate"
I may be, for I should not have left a maid so fair and way-
ward in a town with Epictetus Paregoric Hill and Uncle
Dan Gary, with none to keep watch and ward. When she
poured out to me the wealth of her fond affection I should
have stayed ever by it to see that it did not sour. Still I
felt my duty done when I found you, a poor green gosling
in the newspaper pasture, and played the part of a guide,
philosopher and friend until you developed into a full-
fledged goose. Perhaps I have been derelict, for the rela-
tions of man and woman are so delicate that it is indeed
hard to draw the line where duty ends and generosity be-
gins. Still, to err is human, to forgive divine, and I beg
that Rebecca the beauteous will pass my imperfections by.
In these lovers' quarrels, which will arise from time to time,
like ominous clouds in a summer's sky, you should not ex-
pect me to do all the forgiving, for monopolies are con-
trary to law. The fact is, Rebecca, I have been compelled
by cruel circumstances entirely beyond my control to forego
the pleasure of feeding you with the usual allowance of
compressed pansy blossoms and anacreontic poetry. I have
already ravished the gardens of the gods of every fragrant
flower to lay at your wayward feet -have even despoiled
weald and wold of straggling blooms and woven them into
garlands with which to crown you Queen of the Liars' Club.
224 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
There is not even a pale pink holly-hock left blooming alone
in some deserted garden, or hexapetalous jimson waving
its wild glories above a pile of compost that can be added
to your triumphal arch or entwined in a magic cestus for my
fin de siecle Venus. I have overworked my muse in an ef-
fort to paint the lily and gild refined gold, exhausted the
lover's dictionary in showering sweets to the sweet and can
only stand, like another Troilus, on some beetling rampart
beneath the twinkling Pleiades, make mouths at the harvest
moon and sigh my soul out toward the distant camp where
fair Cressid lies, lulled to peaceful dreams by the drowsy
bleat of the goat editor and soporific hum of the busy gal-
linipper. I must wait for new flowers of fancy to bloom in
the arid waste, for Orpheus to mend his lute and Pegasus to
rest his weary wings. Forgot you, Rebecca? As the
French novelists say when waiting for an idea, "Ah God !"
What impressionable son of Adam, having once feasted his
hungry eyes on your sylph-like form; what mortal man,
having once been awed and quite o'ercome by your statu-
esque, she-Napoleonic pose, and gazed into the dreamy
depths of your bovine eyes those wonderful windows of
the soul thro' which it peers forth with all the unutterable
longing and aching tenderness of a bull-calf contemplating
a dewy clover-patch thro' a pair of bars could efface, even
with a bath-brick and elbow grease, that matchless vision
from his memory ! But it is not of love and love's rap-
tures I here would speak. It is of matters less pleasant than
yum-yum beneath the umbrageous boughs of a china-tree
while the fragrance of the bayou comes stealing around the
trysting Pyramus and Thisbe like a benediction, that chiefly
concerns us here. The "New Woman" craze which you
have precipitated on this unhappy land is to-day the burden
of my song. What evil and unwomanly spirit induced you
to cast aside flowing skirts and health-bustles, beflowered
hats and French heels and appear in public places in split-
tail coat and pantaloons? How came you to exchange the
modest name of Rebecca Merlindy for the bellicose pseudo-
nym of Rienzi Miltiades? Did you not understand that
such an example was calculated to utterly demoralize your
sex? Already a goodly portion of the great she- world has
taken to derby hats, shirt-waists and bloomers. Encouraged
by your almost criminal recklessness, the softer sex becomes
year by year more masculine, more inclined to don the
breeches and transpose the "obey" clause in the marriage
contract. You dabbled in politics or tried to and forth-
with the woods were filled with Mary Ellen Leases, You
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 225
wrote for the papers by proxy, of course and half your
sex contracted an incurable case of cacoethes scribendi. You
went on the stage and played Claude Melnotte to Mrs. Jane
Brown Potter's Pauline, and now all the she-stars of the
theatrical firmament want to "do" male parts and stride
about the painted rocks and "set" trees in white tights and
top boots. You insisted upon voting, although you knew
less of political economy than does a prohibition orator, and
forthwith the dear creatures became clamorous for political
privileges, and one of them actually hoisted a presidential
lightning-rod. Your example, Rebecca, has bred a train
of ills, whose culmination even the wisest philosopher cannot
foresee. Indirectly you are responsible for the bicycle
habit which has the beauty of America in its remorseless
grasp. True, you do not ride a bike yourself, your legs
not being long enough to reach the treads, nor your dignity
of that kind which can be safely trusted on rubber wheels ;
but other women, whose physical construction is more con-
servative, mount the erratic machine, light their cigarettes
and go whizzing by, dazzling we poor he-things \vith the
twinkle of their Trilby feet. You doubtless think it all a
joke, Rebecca mine; but it is a jest that may prove a boom-
erang and knock you off the social Christmas tree. You
have carried it too far and must suffer the consequences.
Had you donned a pair of breeches measuring 14 inches in
the leg and 75 in the beam and slipped out on a dark night
for a quiet lark with Dud Bryan, Will Bailey and Whistle-
trigger, you would have done little harm ; but such costume
continually worn in the garish light of day by a gentle maid
who should be spinning her marriage linen and dreaming
of orange blossoms and epithalamiums, is a bid for adverse
remark. Already it is whispered that you are not a woman
at all, but just a dapper little man to whom heaven has
denied the glory of a beard and masculine strength o^f mind.
The world is so prone to judge by appearances, and when
made up you do look a very little like a man in some re-
spects. Think of a young and beautiful woman suspected
of being only a he-thing at a time when the ladies are taking
the destiny of the world into their hands ! Imagine one who
was born to rule, being classed with those miserable worms
of the dust who, in the years to be, will watch the baby and
crochet tidies while their female lords are sitting with feet
cocked up in front of swell hotels, saving the country and
ogling the Josephs who saunter timidly by ! But that is not
all it is not half. It is even darkly hinted that you are
neither male nor female, but a peculiar and eminently un-
226 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
satisfactory combination of both. To such ribaldry, fair
Rebecca, does your clothing-store and gin sling habit sub-
ject you. And to think that I cannot come to your rescue
that it is one of those aggravating cases wherein a doting
swain must listen to the most preposterous speculation
anent the idol of his affection and hold his peace lest he
make a bad matter worse! I can only confide these facts
to you, trusting that womanly tact will teach you the neces-
sity of turning to the wall your portrait in the gallery of
gold-cure graduates, and adopting some more feminine oc-
cupation than chewing plug tobacco and spitting at a mark
that you will once more go into your raiment head first.
I do not chide you, Rebecca. I realize full well that you
are a good girl at heart; but "evil communications corrupt
good manners." There is yet hope. Mary Magdalen re-
formed and Trilby tried to tho' it killed her. That latter
fact should caution you to go at your work of reformation
scientifically, but none the less determinedly. Will you do
so, for the sake of the APOSTLE.
JINGOES AND JOHN BULL.
ANGLO-MANIACS vs. AMERICANS.
The brutal treatment accorded the Cornell crew in Eng-
land is enough to make the blood of every true American
boil, and that so hotly that Johnny would be compelled to
get his gun, and get it p. d. q. Still the case does not ma-
terially differ from that of a dozen others that preceded it.
It is notorious that whenever American athletes cross the
briny to try conclusions with our British cousins they are
flagrantly insulted, systematically robbed and not infre-
quently mobbed by a people posing as the very avatar of
fair play. Ever since the Benicia Boy put it all over the
British champion then had to lick a job-lot of high-toned
toughs the more or less "noble Briton" has missed no op-
portunity to belittle and belie, blackguard and bully-rag the
American athlete who chanced to be his guest. Time and
again it has been demonstrated that he has as little concep-
tion of the courtesy due a stranger within his gates as has a
hyena of hospitality. He boasts of his civilization and
sneers at Uncle Sam as a semi-savage ; yet our very Bowery
toughs and Boiler avenue bums will treat a brave adversary
with more consideration than will the lordlings and duke-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 227
lings of Great Britain. I do not say this to disparage the
English people; I simply record it as a melancholy fact
which has been too frequently demonstrated to permit of
denial. So brutally inhospitable are the people and press
of England to American athletes, that Corbett who is not
particularly thin-skinned declares that Peter Jackson is
the only pugilist he will consent to meet on British soil. As
the latter is a "coon," Corbett might hope to fairly defeat
him and escape being mobbed by the ring-side roughs such
as the conqueror of Savers had to contend with ; tho' he
realizes full well that the sympathies of England would be
with the Ethiopian just as they would be "with the devil
were the prince of darkness pitted against an American
pugilist.
Unquestionably some grand and noble men have been
bred in England men who would do honor even to
America ; but the tight little isle has an undue proportion of
plug-uglies and prigs, blackguards and bullies.
In boxing and wrestling, in rowing and running America
has repeatedly demonstrated her superiority; but this fact
does not fully explain why her athletes are so inhospitably
treated in England. John Bull's chronic belly-ache dates
far back of Sayer's defeat by the Benicia Boy it can be
traced to the Boston Tea Party and Bunker Hill. The royal
beast of Britain has never forgotten that once upon .a time
an infant Republic held him up by the beard and beat the
immortal ichor out of him. That kept him on reasonably
good behavior for a quarter of a century, when his impu-
dence again rose paramount to his judgment and he was
given a second prescription. The trouble with the arro-
gant brute to-day is that he has been allowed to go too long
without a licking. For more than half a century John Bull
has been turning his broad beam up to Uncle Sam and fair-
ly begging for another blistering. He should be accommo-
dated and this time Columbia should drive her Cinderella
so far under the old buccaneer's coat-tails that he could
taste leather all the rest of his life.
But the capitulation of Cornwallis, the almost ludicrous
defeat of Pakenham's veterans by Jackson's frontiersmen,
and the regularity with which British athletes have been rel-
egated to the rear by their American brethren, does not
fully explain the biliousness of John Bull. We have out-
stripped him even further in the field of industry than in
athletic sport have defeated him even more signally in the
struggle for national pre-eminence than in the squared cir-
cle. The little Republic of a century ago, struggling pain-
228 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
fully along the Atlantic sea-board, has become the wealth-
iest and most powerful nation in the world the Star of
Empire is now blazing in the West. America is the com-
mercial rival of England a more grievous offense than
even the Declaration of Independence. In every possible
way John Bull makes his displeasure manifest. During
our civil war the present premier declared that the disrup-
tion of this nation would inure to the commercial advantage
of England a fine sentiment truly for our "Mother Coun-
try" and thereupon John Bull began to meddle in our fam-
ily unpleasantness. He had to pay for this impertinence,
and that did not strengthen the entente cordiale to any
alarming extent. In all official intercourse with America
England assumes an arrogant and dictatorial tone charac-
teristic of that country when dealing with third and fourth-
class powers. There was a time when such treatment would
have been hotly resented; but the old Continentals have
been succeeded by Anglo-maniacs who have never forgiven
Almighty God for suffering them to be born American
sovereigns instead of British subjects; who cultivate the
Hinglish hawkcent, which is about as cheerful as polish-
ing a back-tooth with a rat-tail file ape the waddle of the
Prince of Wales and turn up their twousahs don't-cher-
know whenever they hear that it is raining in "Lonnon."
When these Anglo-maniacs accumulate a little money they
employ some fakir to evolve from his imagination a " family
tree" and hang thereon a bogus coat-of-arms. They decide
that Uncle Sam's sons are not quite good enough to beget
their grandchildren and buy scorbutic dukelings for their
daughters to drag thro' the divorce courts. They are the
same mangy mavericks who dubbed Jim Elaine a "jingoist"
for advocating a foreign policy with a dash of the Declara-
tion of Independence in it one that would compel even
England to respect the American eagle. They are the
same empty peacocks who lift up their discordant voices in
frantic protest when orator or editor gives utterance to a
genuinely American sentiment who have a conniption fit
and fall in it whenever a Congressman suggests that John
Bull be compelled to keep his meddlesome snout out of
American politics. These are the featherless poll-parrots
who prattle of "twisting the lion's tail" whenever it is pro-
posed to resent an English insult talking-machines who
are witty at the expense of their country's honor. These
are the unhung idiots who imagine that a nation, producing
in abundance everything humanity needs, would go to hell
in a handbasket if it adopted an independent currency sys-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 229
tern or an international policy which Yewrup did not ap-
prove. Why in the devil's name these birds do not fly
across the ocean to their beloved England, instead of re-
maining 1 to befoul their own nests, it were difficult to de-
termine. They should be compelled to migrate, for no man
who esteems another country above that from which he gets
his daily bread, is fit to be buried in its soil, drowned in its
waters or hanged on its trees.
Why should the foremost nation of all the world fawn at
the fat feet of John Bull? We can get along much better
without England than can that country without us. Co-
lumbia has proven both her intellectual and physical supe-
riority to Britannia. Then why should she stand humble
and shame- faced in her presence? America has done more
for the human race in a hundred and twenty years than has
England in all her hoary centuries. We could buy the
miserable little island, pay for it and blow it at the moon,
and the world would be none the worse. England has
produced some really great men ; but, like the hen that sat
on the nest of door-knobs, it has taken her a terribly long
time to bring off her brood. Call the roll of the great of
England and America for the present century and say which
the world could best afford to spare !
What we need is a million funerals among the Anglo-
maniacs and a little healthy Jim Blaine " jingoism" in the
White House. We need a' revival of that 6Td spirit which
taught that the title of American sovereign is superior to
any ever borne by a British subject. We need an adminis-
tration that can understand that America is to-day the great-
est nation on the map of the world and does not have to
dance attendance on transatlantic powers. It is time the
American eagle came off the nest where he has so long been
hatching dollars, and emitted a scream that would clear the
atmosphere of political buzzards. It is time the Giant of the
Occident was looking this world over and deciding what he
is going to do with it. Is America to be a new and greater
Rome, bequeathing freedom to all mankind ; or will the
Anglomaniacs annex it to England and ordain that the
tail shall wag the dog?
230 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
THE SINGLE-TAKERS.
"GEORGEISM" REVIEWED.
Of the various political parties and economic schools now
striving to solve the industrial problem, none is more en-
thusiastically aggressive than the so-called Single-Taxers
those who expect, by laying the burden of govern-
ment altogether upon land, to compel the use or relinquish-
ment of natural opportunities for the production of wealth.
The Single-Taxers are quite sure they have discovered an
industrial catholicon, and, in season and out of season, they
continue, with unabated zeal and unfaltering faith, their
"campaign of education/' their crusade against professional
landlordism. As might be expected, they are regarded
with pronounced aversion by the large land-owners who,
driven to bay by this bold assault on prescriptive right, are
not particularly choice of their weapons of warfare, resort-
ing to the bludgeon of invective quite as readily as to the
rapier of ridicule. It proves nothing to denounce the
Single-Taxers as "lunatics" and "crazy communists" at
least nothing further than the inability of their opponents
to meet and overcome them in the arena of intellectual con-
troversy. Abuse is neither argument nor good policy
individuals and political parties thrive upon it. It is re-
cruiting the ranks of the Single-Taxers and making of the
Populists a political power. Abuse is an evidence of log-
ical weakness is the wild ravings of vindictive ignorance.
Lest the landlord class should take fright and refuse to
delve deeper here, I hasten to assure them that I am not a
disciple of Henry George. He has failed to convince me;
but I freely admit that his theories have never been success-
fully controverted. To answer such a man by calling him
a "crank" were too much like the college of cardinals reply-
ing to Galileo by putting him in jail. Henry George is a
world-compeller, and we must either prove the fallacy of his
conclusions or eventually capitulate.
The thesis from which the Single-Tax is legitimately de-
rived did not originate with George, nor with Quesnay or
Rousseau ; it is old as human history. It is an ancient idea
cropping out in our nineteenth century civilization a
kind of economic atavism which goes far to prove the im-
mortality of mind, the indestructibility of human habits.
Henry George is chiefly responsible for the revival of the
state landlord idea ; hence it has been called by his name by
ignorant editors who imagined it a new "craze."
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 231
That there is something radically wrong with our indus-
trial system is generally conceded. Even the old political
parties ostentatiously train beneath the "reform" banner,
and promise the betterment of labor's sad condition. Despite
the mighty increase in the wealth-producing power of labor
resulting from improved machinery, the masses find the
battle of life becoming ever more bitter. While those who
neither toil nor spin are attired like unto Solomon in all his
glory, those who ditch and delve are mere bundles of rags.
While Idleness feasts Industry starves. So long as such
conditions prevail attempts will be made to right the wrong,
and failure to obtain relief will produce that restless discon-
tent of which bloody revolutions are born.
The problem which confronts us is of paramount impor-
tance a crisis in the history of the human race is at hand.
Every industrial depression is becoming a greater danger,
not alone to existing conditions, to established forms and
formulas, but to civilization itself. There was never a time
when the latter could be so easily and irremediably destroy-
ed. The truth of this startling proposition must readily ap-
pear to whosoever will carefully consider it. When each
community was an independent microco'sm both progress
and retrogression were slow; but science has transformed
these isolated and independent communities into a mighty
commercial entity. A century or two ago war, pestilence
or famine might have swept away half the population of the
world without materially affecting the remainder; to-day the
cotton planter of Texas and the corn grower of Kansas de-
pend for their prosperity upon the price of those staples in
Europe, the mechanics of England and Germany upon the
demand for their wares in the antipodes. A million inde-
pendent corpuscles have been incorporated in one great
organism, which is affected in every part by what befalls any
of its members. It is this fact this mighty union of forces
that made the progress of the Nineteenth century pos-
sible; and it is this that has made feasible a world-wide
French Revolution that may never leave a sanctuary for
civilization no house of refuge in which may be hid away
and preserved for happier times the wisdom accumulated
by the toil of sixty centuries. Economists usually consider
the printing press, public education and political equality as
the conservators of civilization, the dynamics which will
carry it ever onward and upward. They forget that the
same winds that waft a proud ship to port may rip its canvas
to ribbons and drive it upon the rocks. When the masses
were ignorant and space had not yielded to the power of
232 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
steam and the electric telegraph, empires might rise or fall,
peoples attain to Roman citizenship or be reduced to
Russian serfdom, and few beyond that particular corner of
the continent either know or care; to-day the progress of
German socialism is watched with intense interest in San
Francisco, and the march of a Coxey on our national capi-
tal is bulletined in Bulgaria. Men separated by far seas are
brought into close communion, agrarian and communistic
movements assume an international character the electric
spark may become the beacon of universal war, may set the
world ablaze.
Political sovereignty united to industrial slavery, public
education for those steeped to the lips in hopeless poverty
were indeed a dangerous compound. Well did Caesar say
of the lean and hungry Cassius, "he thinks too much such
men are dangerous." Lean and hungry men who do not
read and think are servile slaves who accept their fate like
the patient ox or ass; but a well-filled head and an empty
stomach were fire and gunpowder in the social ark of the
covenant. When men begin to ask why some should want
while others waste; when a dissatisfied growl by the Par-
isian sans-culotte is promptly echoed by the Chicago
canaille; when the proletarians throughout the world begin
to realize their strength and to regard the patrician as their
natural enemy; when they have been hoodooed and hum-
bugged by pseudo-economists and lying politicians until
hope is dead and patience quite exhausted; when they
realize that progress in the industrial arts means deeper
poverty and education but a lamp by whose cold light they
view their own wretchedness, think you our boasted civili-
zation is safe?
Such are the conditions to-d'ay, and enlightened self-
interest should suggest to the wealthy class the wisdom of
giving an impartial hearing to a man who imagines he has
found why a progressive civilization breeds plutocrats and
paupers why, albeit his productive power has been multi-
plied, the workman continues at very death-grips with the
wolf of Want. The ability and erudition of Mr. George,
and the further fact that his disciples are not only many,
but men of more than average intelligence and economic
information, certainly entitles him to courteous considera-
tion.
It were folly to call the Single-Tax movement a passing
bubble on the political sea. Men still alive once discoursed
in that vein of "the Abolition lunacy;" but despite their
sneers or perchance because thereof it grew and gath-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 233
ered force until able to exchange the forum for the field
and prove the supernal wisdom of its thesis with the naked
sword. In considering the future of the Single-Tax move-
ment it must not be forgotten th'at this country is to-day
a political chaos, and that from chaos new worlds are
evolved.
The proposition of Henry George is that poverty per-
sists despite the increased productiveness of labor because
of land monopoly, which enables the land-owner to de-
mand and obtain as rent all the joint product of capital and
labor above what will induce the former to seek investment
and the latter to accept employment. He would abolish
private ownership of land and compel each occupant to pay
a rental to the state proportioned to the desirability of his
holding. He assumes that land values are created by the
community and should not go to enrich the individual, but
be appropriated by government and employed to promote
the general welfare. This plan, he thinks, would permit the
abrogation of taxes on the products of industry, thereby,
enhancing the incentive to production, abolish monopoly of
natural resc-urces and insure to rich and poor access thereto
on equal terms. He insists that there is no "conflict be-
tween capital and labor;" that these productive forces are
really allies and the land monopolist their common enemy,
the efficient cause of that great inequality in the distribution
of wealth which to-day threatens the very existence of civi-
lization.
The theory is a very attractive one; but let us measure it
by existing conditions. I freely concede that did one man
own the entire arable area of the earth the rest of the race
would be as truly his slaves as tho' he held a proprietary in-
terest in their bodies. No matter how great their produc-
tion of wealth, he could appropriate all in excess of what
would yield mere animal existence. It is as absurd to per-
mit a monopolization of land as to permit a monopolization
of the atmosphere. But that is not the question we need
not cross a bridge until we come to it. Does a world-
embracing land monopoly exist? And, if so, is it really re-
sponsible for the fact that the population of the globe is
dividing into two well-defined classes millionaires and
mendicants, masters and slaves? And if Mr. George has
properly diagnosed the industrial disease, has he prescribed
the proper remedy?
It were impossible in the brief space of a magazine ar-
234 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ticle to take up in detail the propositions of the apostle of
state landlordism and subject each to a searching analysis;
nor is it necessary to do more than call attention to a few
indisputable facts to prove that the public policy he recom-
mends would do little or nothing to ameliorate the hard
conditions that behedge the toiling millions.
Although the human race has inhabited the earth for
ages, there has never been a time when the arable land, the
timber, coal, iron and other great sources of wealth were
monopolized. Three continents, rich in natural resources
and capable of supporting dense populations even tho' iso-
lated from all other portions of the earth, have scarce felt
the touch of the dominant race, are inhabited chiefly by pre-
datory bands of savages. It is possible that the time will
come when the entire available surface of the earth will be
thick-settled as Massachusetts when landlordism will be-
come a serious problem; but we have no reason to believe
that the total population has materially increased within
historic times. There has ever been, perhaps always will
be, a vent for overcrowded countries. Man is not confined
to that locality in which he is born. Year by year migra-
tion is made easier, cheaper, the world's population rend-
ered more mobile. Rapid and systematic transportation
facilities are spreading our cities over vast areas and bring-
ing the remote parts of the earth within easy reach of the
world's markets. A difference of a shilling or two a day
will move vast bodies of laborers across the ocean, an
added cent of interest send capital to the antipodes. When
ignorance among laborers was general, a journey of a few
hundred miles a serious matter and international protection
of capital practically unknown, those who could monopo-
lize the natural resources of a populous country might
grievously oppress the people; but to-day labor and capital
look the world over for the best opportunity, are no longer
dominated by the local landlords. The vast amount of
European wealth and labor here in America, and the
mighty streams of money and muscle setting towards newer
countries still, should suggest to Mr. George the impossi-
bility of landowners grievously oppressing these great fac-
tors of production until the entire earth is "fenced in:."
If Mr. George desires to invest money in a great manu-
facturing enterprise, a hundred thriving cities are ready to
donate a desirable site, and some of them will even exempt
his plant from taxation for a term of years labor and capi-
tal may produce to the utmost of their power and divide
the product unvexed by the greed of their arch-enemy. If
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 235
he would like to acquire a little farm, thousands of men who
are "land poor" are eager to accommodate him on easy
terms. If he will but give it out that he wants to buy a
building lot, he'll find his front yard black with real estate
men ready to convince him that the lan'dlorders of the com-
munity do not constitute a close corporation. True, he can
no longer go into Illinois or Indiana and "take up" a fertile
farm ; he will be required to pay for the value that has been
conferred upon land by the expenditure of the wealth and
energy of others. In attempting to seize more than this,
the landowners drive away the population, and with it the
superior advantages which give value to their holdings.
When the owners of land in the heart of a city demand too
much, the tendency of the trade center is to move; in the
direction of the least resistance. Thus, when landlordism
becomes a disease, it supplies its own remedy. Land is
fixed while labor and capital are not. I use the word capital
here in the sense in which Mr. George employs it, as dis-
tinguished from land ownership really a distinction with-
out a difference. Despite the hair-splitting of those econo-
mists who would save the world by the science of defini-
tion, land employed for productive purposes and possessing
a marketable value, is as much capital as the farm machin-
ery and store buildings upon it. To distinguish rent from
interest is a species of philosophizing that bakes no bread,
and I am surprised that a man of Mr. George's breadth of
mind should waste time on such profitless subtleties while
grappling with the great industrial problem. If I have
money which I desire to employ for the attainment of more
wealth, I may buy a farm with it and receive rent; or I may
loan it to another who will buy a farm with it and pay me
interest. By whatever name the increment be called, it is
dug out of the soil; hence it were ridiculous to say that the
landowner is the economic enemy of the capitalist. The
number of mortgages recorded in the United States would
indicate that in the battle which Mr. George imagines is
being waged between the two, the capitalist is more than
holding his own. Capital represented by desirable land
presses for employment just as does capital represented by
coin; and when it cannot get much it must take little.
But, it may be asked, how comes it that thousands of
fertile acres lie idle in the older states while people press
forward into the wilderness ? I do not say there is no local
land monopoly I say that there is no general monopoly.
I have monopolized one woman and one section of land;
but that does not prevent other men getting married, or
236 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
acquiring farms. There are other wiomerr to be won and
other sunny acres awaiting ownership. In fact, taking the
world at large, the supply of both land and women seems
to be in shameful excess of the demand.
Men must be governed by their means. If I have an
abundance of money, I will buy a farm in that garden of
the gods. Central Texas, where I may enjoy many pecu-
niary and social advantages; if I have but little, I will go
where land is cheaper because of less desirable environ-
ment, and strive by industry and economy to acquire those
conveniences which my present capital does not permit me
to enjoy. If I have a million of money, I may buy and
build on Fifth avenue; if I have in my pockets only a choice
assortment of rectangular holes, I must content myself with
a squalid tenement in Rag Alley until, by getting a com-
pound cathartic hustle on myself, I am able to command
the comforts of life. It might be asked with equal reason
why great store buildings sometimes remain empty while
hucksters stand on the curbstone to vend their wares; why
fine residences are often tenantless while there's brisk de-
mand for small cottages why women wear cheap calico
while bolts of silk remain unsold.
Let us briefly consider that "unearned increment" of
which Mr. George would deprive the landholder as some-
thing to which he is not justly entitled. Ten years ago
let us say John Smith purchased a lot in tfie new town
of K., paying therefor $100. It is now salable at $1,000,
an increase in value of $900. He has not driven a stake
upon it, has not caused it to produce food or shelter for
man or beast. The town has simply grown up around
it and enhanced its desirability, therefore its market
Rvalue. Surely here is a case of "unearned increment"
upon which the public may pounce with a clear con-
science! But wait a bit. Although he has not used the
lot, has not Smith paid "rent" thereon to the state, county
and municipality in the form of taxes? And from such
taxes have not the streets been paved, schoolhouses built,
government maintained and a fire department paid? And
do not these things add to the desirability and market
value of all land in the community? Has he not for ten
years past been pouring into the public coffers of K. the
product of his labor? True, if ten thousand non-residents
had purchased lots in the prospective city and none had
improved them there would have been no increase in
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 237
value ; and it is also true that Smith would not be paying-
taxes on a valuation of $1,000 for the continued better-
ment of the town. After deducting the purchase price,
compound interest thereon and taxes for ten years, his
profits are large; but suppose he had paid $1,000 for the
lot, and, despite all the money expended to maintain it,
now finds it marketable at but $100: how much unearned
increment is the government entitled to? If only the in-
crease in land values is to be taken for public uses, as
proposed by Mr. George, from whence is that county or
municipal government where lands are declining in value,
to derive its revenue?
There are unquestionably instances where people have
been enriched by a rise in land values which they did little
to promote; but it may be safely assumed that the gen-
eral rule of action of land owners is in the direction of
self-interest that the increase in values is due chiefly to
their industry and enterprise. If it be true that "men will
not take up arms in defense of a boarding-house," it is
also true that they will not construct railways and canals,
build factories and bridges for the benefit of a commu-
nity in which they have no proprietary interest. To illus-
trate : A few years ago the citizens of a Texas town in
which realty values were rapidly declining, raised a con-
siderable bonus to secure a railroad. The road was built,
the trade territory of the town increased, freights fell,
business became brisk and realty rapidly advanced. Many
people moved to the town and adjacent country to share
the prosperity and by their industry made it greater.
There was employment for more laborers at better wages
than formerly and new opportunities for the profitable
employment of capital. The newcomers profited by the
enterprise of the old citizens ; but were they entitled to
appropriate the increase in realty values? Under a sys-
tem permitting them to do so would that railroad have
been built? Was the enhancement of values really un-
earned increment, or was it the legitimate reward of
capital wisely employed?
When a number of people penetrate into a new coun-
try and subdue the wild beasts and savage men ; when
they create a social oasis in the wilderness, from a trade
ganglion, establish a government and make it a more
desirable place of residence for those who come after,
are they not entitled to their reward? According to that
moral law of which Mr. George talks so much, are the
newcomers entitled to appropriate unto themselves the
238 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
value created by the toil and sacrifice of the pioneers?
And when they in turn have builded roads, established
schools, and by their labor made the land still more de-
sirable, were it either just or politic to deprive them of
the fruits of their toil as something that belongs equally
to any tramp who may drag his idle carcass into the
community?
The Single Tax propaganda is simply an attempt at
compromise between the Georgian theory and existing
conditions the insertion of the thin end of the wedge.
Mr. George would, if possible, confiscate to the last
penny "that fund arising from general growth and de-
velopment," regardless of its efficient cause. Just what
he would do with the surplus after defraying govern-
mental expenses and, making necessary public improve-
ments he does not plainly say, but intimates that he
would pro-rate it among the people regardless of the
value of the individual in our social economy, as is the
practice in Freudenstaedt, Klingenberg and other Ger-
man Arcadias that have made no material progress
worth mentioning during several centuries. If that be
the idea, and it can be successfully carried into execution,
then indeed will Weary Willie and Dusty Rhodes find life
well worth the living.
But the Single-Taxers would not go to the Georgian ex-
treme they would simply let down the bars. They would
take from the landowner only enough "rent" for the support
of government ; there is to be no largesses distributed among
the impecunious not just yet. It is urged that this plan
would not interfere with private ownership of land, but
would abolish land monopoly, while the tax could be more
equitable and collected at less cost than any hitherto de-
vised. This is another plausible theory concocted without
due regard to conditions. Experience has repeatedly
proven that while the people will stand a heavy indirect tax
without murmuring, a much lighter one direct in incidence
will drive them to revolt. To illustrate : The man who
pays an indirect tax of $40 a year on the liquor he drinks
seldom thinks cf it. Ask him about the liquor tax and
the chances are he will tell you it ought to be increased;
but let the government take the excise off liquor and on the
first of each year compel this consumer to pay $20 and
denounce it as an outrage. It profits nothing to urge that
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 239
such action is illogical; theories are but intellectual gym-
nastics conditions govern.
But if the Single-Tax could be inaugurated despite the
prejudices of the people, would it abolish local monopolies
of land? Would it even have a tendency in that direction?
If it be true that every dollar expended by government must
be coaxed out of the soil, torn from the mine or hewn from
the forest, what difference does it make, so far as monopoli-
zation of these natural resources is concerned, whether the
tax falls upon them directly or indirectly? If it be true that
the government mulct would be lightened, would not mo-
nopoly of natural resources be encouraged rather than re-
pressed? Let us say that I am paying taxes on $10,000
worth of realty, half of which is unimproved land yielding
me no income, and that the annual mulct is $300; the Sin-
gle-Tax is inaugurated and my buildings become exempt.
My taxes reduced, of course, by the improved system
amount to but $200, all upon land. Will I be more likely
than before to place my idle land on the market for what it
will bring and retire from a "speculation" supposed by the
Single-Taxers to be the root of all economic evil? And if so,
why? I am certainly better able than before to maintain
my title, for the governmental drain upon my sources of
wealth is lighter. The supply of land has not been in-
creased nor the demand therefor diminished. In this era
of machinery production is impracticable without the co-op-
eration of capital. True, labor is the creator of capital, but
it has become largely dependent upon its creature with-
out its assistance must return to the industrial system of the
savage. This is what those economists mean who offend
Mr. George by discoursing of the "wage fund." If the
Single-Tax leads me to part with my idle land is the capital
available for the employment of labor increased? If the
purchase price comes from the sale of other land there has
simply been a swapping of jack-knives ; if from manufactur-
ing or commerce, the result is the same no capital has been
added to the general stock, no new opportunities have been
opened to human endeavor.
It is urged that the shifting of taxes from all other forms
of wealth to land would encourage production because men
would no longer be "fined" by government for building a
house, constructing an engine or erecting a mill. What is
taxation but the taking by government of a portion of la-
bor's product? Land, by itself considered, can pay no
taxes. All governmental burdens laid upon it must be
borne by what labor compels it to yield. Taxation is a
240 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tithe taken from the bushel of corn, the bale of cotton, the
barrel of flour and the bolt of cloth. Such being the case,
what boots it whether the tax be laid upon the land or the
product on the plow, the crop or the crib? As first or last
the producer of wealth must pay the tax, what difference
does it make, so far as production is concerned, from which
pocket it is taken?
There are some evils inseparable from private ownership
of land; but the same may be said of every human institu-
tion yet devised. To attribute all the ills of the industrial
world to this one cause were too much like tracing bunions
and baldness to the same source. Land speculation may
have had something to do with the commercial crash of
'93; but it were difficult to show that its influence for evil
was greater than speculation in grain and fibres, stocks and
bonds. There was a tremendous shrinkage in the market
value of realty that year. The "land monopoly" became
demoralized and large holders made a desperate effort to
unload at a loss, to relinquish natural opportunities for the
production of wealth and this, the Single-Taxers say, pro-
duced the panic. If this be true, what will happen when
they deliberately bring about these very conditions again?
Having undertaken to better the condition of labor and cap-
ital by compelling the great landlords to throw their hold-
ings upon the market at bankrupt sale, they next assure us
that like conditions transformed a million industrious
workmen into penniless tramps and strewed the country
with the wrecks of business concerns. Did land monopoly
produce the panic of 1857 when a vast public domain
awaited the plow?
The fact that private ownership of land is a comparatively
new thing is no argument against it The steam engine
and electric telegraph even the Republic in which we live
are new. Nor does it profit aught to point out that no
landowner can trace his title back to the Original Producer,
as can the owner of a pocket-knife or a pint of peanuts. Mr.
George truly says: "That which a man makes or pro-
duces is his own, as against all the w r orld." In reality man
cannot "make" or "produce" a pocket-knife or a pint of
peanuts, any more than he can make an acre of land or a bed
of ore. He can only transform matter into articles of util-
ity, adding thereby to its value, and that added value, and
that only, is his. In the same manner he can, by his labor,
add value to land by increasing its fertility or otherwise en-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 241
hancing its desirability, and that added value is ''his own.
as against all the world." It is all that he claims, is all
that he can sell. In time the pocket-knife becomes worth-
less and is relinquished; in time the value of land passes,
and on the site of once populous cities the solitary herds-
man tends his sheep. This being true, private ownership
of land is as defensible as private ownership of corn or cat-
tle the title of land values is as valid as his title to any
other kind of wealth which human endeavor has called into
existence.
The assumption that the institution upon which Mr.
George is warring makes against the interest of labor re-
mains to be demonstrated. In matters of such moment it
were unsafe to draw conclusions from a few isolated in-
stances. The prosperous condition of New Zealand may
be due to the Single-Tax, or obtain despite of it. So far as
I can gather from Single-Tax literature which seems as
inexhaustible as Prohibition tracts there is no more reason
for attributing trade revival in that country to the new sys-
tem than for attributing trade revival in Texas to the old.
The Single-Tax were much like bread pills calculated to
do neither much good nor harm granting, of course, that
the change could be effected without alarming capital.
But the extreme of the George system, by which all in-
crease in land values would be appropriated by the state
and to which the Single-Tax is to serve as stepping-stone
would profoundly affect industrial conditions for good or
for ill. Let us consider its probable effects. We will sup-
pose that I am by trade a fanner, and find myself in one of
the older states entirely devoid of capital. Clearly there is
nothing for me to do but seek employment with one more
prosperous. I may then save up my wage until able to em-
bark in business for myself, either as tenant in a populous
community where land is dear, or as proprietor in a sparsely
settled one where it is cheap. And I would be compelled
to do the same thing under the George system, for if granted
access to land I have not the capital wherewith to provide
the teams and tools, shelter and sustenance necessary to
make a crop. When I have accumulated a little capital I
lease a farm and pay rent to an individual ; under the George
system I would pay rent to the state. In the first instance
the amount is fixed by the law of supply and demand; in
the latter I would yield to my landlord (the State) every ear
of corn and every ounce of cotton in excess of what could
be produced on the poorest land in cultivation. In time I
buy a farm. It represents the investment of so much of
242 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the product of my labor. I may exchange it for an equal
amount of other forms of wealth. Having invested my cap-
ital I expect it to yield interest as well as wages. I at once
become a public-spirited citizen and strive to benefit my
neighbors, because their interest and mine are commutual.
I want good government, schools, and churches. I may
need no protection, have no children to educate or soul to
save ; but I realize that these institutions add to the value of
my property, enhance my capital. For the same reason I
give liberally of my substance to secure railways and fac-
tories, establish newspapers and libraries, build bridges and
drain pestilential marshes. The increase in the value of my
land repays my enterprise and rewards my philanthropy.
Under the system proposed by Mr. George I could not be-
come a free-holder, but would remain ever a tenant. In-
crease in the value of land I occupied would not belong to
me, but to the state ; hence I would have no more interest
in promoting it than would the veriest vagabond. I would
be as happily situated on the outskirts of civilization as in
the center of the most populous state, as prosperous 50
miles from a railway or a blacksmith shop as with these con-
veniences at my door, for all I gained by the advantages of
location would be taken from me for the benefit of those less
fortunately situated. With the chief incentive to enterprise
gone, I would simply stagnate, and so would my fellows.
We would have a new and greater Freudenstaedt progress-
ing a foot or two every four centuries.
The Single-Taxers who are industriously warring upon
land monopoly are frightening themselves with a spectre
of their own contriving. There is no such thing in ex-
istence probably never will be. Some men own vast
quantities of land ; but a majority of them are willing to
part with it, or portions thereof, on terms that make it as
safe an investment as the purchase of any other class of
property at the market price. As a rule the holders of
large tracts of unused land are eager to sell the bulk of it
in homestead parcels to those who will improve it and
thereby add to the market value of the remainder. The
"unearned increment," that lesser evil of which Mr.
George complains, usually proves an effective antidote for
the greater monopoly of land.
In most of the large cities we find men owning large
quantities of land which yields them enormous revenues
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 243
in the way of rent. Thousands of poor people slave from
the cradle to the grave to enrich these arrogant aristo-
crats. Such a, condition is unquestionably an evil; but
will the Single-Tax or even the George system in its
entirety cure it? Taking the tax off a tenement build-
ing and placing it on the land occupied has no more ten-
dency to reduce rent than has exempting one floor from
taxation and doubling it on the next. The Single-Taxers
take it for granted that more tenement buildings would
be erected that less land would be allowed to remain
idle. Under the present system, wherever land is avail-
able buildings are erected whenever, in the opinion of
capitalists, they will yield a good return on the invest-
ment. It is the efficient demand for buildings a demand
backed by rent-paying ability that causes the construc-
tion of buildings now, and the same rule would be oper-
ative under the economic system proposed by Mr. George.
Clearly the Single-Tax would not make for the better-
ment of the masses except in so far as, by the simplifica-
tion of government it reduced taxation. And even this
benefit, according to Mr. George, would be intercepted
by the landlords, for we have already seen that a reduc-
tion of the government of tending to abate monopoly of
natural resources, would really strengthen it. We have
also seen that the Georgian theory of state landlordism if
carried to the extent of confiscation of all land values, in-
stead of promoting progress by insuring*, an equitable dis-
tribution of wealth, would really retard it by throttling in-
dividual enterprise. A nation where Georgeism was fully
applied would scarce consume itself in revolutionary fires
it would simply petrify.
According to the census of 1890, the value of land oc-
cupied by the industrial establishments of this country
was only about one-third the value of the buildings and
machinery, less than one-third the annual wages paid.
It constituted much less than one-fourth the total assets
of those concerns. Yet Mr. George would have us be-
lieve that rent is despoiling both interest and wages
that the tail is wagging the dog ! Capital is not in busi-
ness solely for its health. It is just as easy to invest
money in land as in buildings and machinery, and the
greater safety of such an investment leads men to accept
a lower interest than will induce them to embark in any
industrial enterprise. Even Mr. George notes this fact,
but its natural sequence has evidently not occurred to
him. How money invested in land values yields a smaller
244 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
return than money invested in manufacturing and mer-
chandizing, while at the same time the landlord is robbing
all active industry, Mr. George does not explain.
It does not follow, however, that private ownership of
land is an unmixed blessing; that a man who secures title
to a few square rods in the wilderness is entitled to found
thereon a purse-proud aristocracy and compel genera-
tions yet to be to pay more than royal tribute to his heirs.
The labor of the Single-Taxers is not altogether in vain.
It has driven thousands to thinking on economic ques-
tions and "in a multitude of counsel there is wisdom."
It serves to keep the people alive to the necessity of
guarding from the undue encroachment of concentrated
capital the great domain that has been bequeathed to
them. The political and economic systems of a country
must of necessity represent a compromise between con-
flicting forces which hold each other in check. Where we
have ultra-conservatives we need ultra-radicals to keep
the car of progress out of the rut; and where we have
the latter we require the former to prevent a reign of
wild experimentalism that would end in disaster. The
radicals furnish the dynamics of civilization while the
conservatives maintain the equilibrium. In the collision
of factions is generated light as well as heat, and to the
philosophic ear there is social harmony only in political
discord.
THE GRAMMAR SHARP.
A party signing himself A. L. Jenks writes the Icono-
clast, pointing out a grammatical error in the last num-
ber of the great religious monthly. Thanks, Jenks. Even
the best of us will inadvertently get over on the haw side
of the median line in our syntax sometimes, and I am
so grateful to you for setting me right that I will not only
put your name in print and immortalize you as the prize
jackass of your day and generation, but tell you a little
story in the humble hope that all your busy tribe of pro-
fessional grammar sharps and pestiferous pismires will
profit by it.
I served my apprenticeship in the sanctum of a surly
editor who was long on ideas but short on grammar. One
day a putty-headed pedagogue blew in one of those
mental microbes who spend minutes thinking what to say
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 245
and months learning how to say it. He had discovered a
grammatical error in an editorial leader and was gasp-
ing like a duck with its bill full of dried mud.
"Mistah Editor," he exclaimed, "I find a grammatical
ehwah in your papah this morning."
"The h 1 you say !" quoth the editor, who could see no
harm in taking the name of the devil or his dominions
in vain. "What else did you find in the article any
ideas?"
The professor assented, and the autocrat of the sanc-
tum continued in a voice that made the bristles of the
paste-brush curl: "Well, sonny, language is the vehicle
of thought, and if I have succeeded in constructing a
vehicle that will carry ideas into the head of such a blank-
ety-blanked idiot, such an irremediable ass as you are, I'll
get it patented."
Do you understand, Jenks? Can you discover the beau-
tiful moral of the story without a diagram? Right here,
Jenks, I will present you as a worthy representative of a
considerable contingent of smart Alecs with a slug of
advice that is more precious than fine gold. Treasure it
tenderly and transmit it as a priceless heritage to the
Jenkses of the next generation : Whenever you encoun-
ter a grammatical error riding gayly along on a train of
thought, "Kill it and go on." Remember that even the
good Homer nods sometimes. If you aspire to be really
useful go sit on the bleaching board and watch an ama-
teur game of baseball, bestride a dry goods box and save
the country, spit at a mark, preach prohibition, play
croquet with a bevy of old maids, suck a cane do anything
but play grammar sharp.
Another thing, Jenks, and character this in your mem-
ory : Do not take your pen in hand and write letters to a
busy editor just to display your cuteness. By so doing
you encroach upon the preserves of Doc Daniels Aus-
tin's meddlesome little itch specialist. Besides, the exas-
perated editor may .expectorate on you and drown you.
But right here a question, Jenks: How do you get into
your clothes? Do you go into them head first, then pose
before an amorous looking-glass with your mouth full of
pins; or do you insert yourself one leg at a time, then
make frantic swipes under the bureau for collar buttons,
while the circumambient ether assumes a cerulean hue?
This question is important. In the unlamented erstwhile
the last of the Apostles was bestride the editorial tripod
of the San Antonio Express. One day he sorted out of
246 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
his mail a kick almost as silly as yours. He had been up
late attending a prayer meeting with Albert Steve and
Oscar Guessaz and his liver was a trifle out of plumb.
He jumped on that kicker and recalcitrated in return until
the air was full of fragments of flesh. The next day he
found in his sanctum a beautiful damosel with a chilled-
steel glitter in her bright blue eye. He opined that per-
haps she had called to praise his latest "Sunday Sermon"
and present him with a pair of hand worked slippers
several sizes too small; but he was banking on the wrong
card. He thought maybe she had brought a bunch of
blue forget-me-nots to lay on his shrine and to say that
she had worshipped at a distance until her young heart
hurt her so she could stand it no longer,' but he was mis-
taken. She had dropped in to inform him that she was
the party of the first part to the controversy aforesaid,
and to lament the untimely demise of chivalry. Now,
A. L. Jenks, if the front elevation of your name is Aman-
da Louise, please understand that this don't go; if it be
Abraham Lincoln it goes with altitudinous eclat and wild
acclaim.
Great God, is it possible that people will give precious
time to such trifling with the mighty Universe yet to be
explored, the secret of man's origin still enshrouded in
mystery, his destination a mere matter of speculation!
Let grammar sharps say what they will, that phrase ap-
proaches nearest perfection which conveys, with most
perspicuity and least jaw-labor, an idea from mind to
mind. Mortal man cannot afford to sit down "in the
conflux of two eternities" and split hairs. Life is too
real, too earnest, too valuable to be wasted on the idle
subtleties of word-mongers. Fd rather have Samian wine
served in a goard than putrid vinegar in a goblet of gold.
The purists of the present are to progressive thought
what the scholastics of the past were to religion. They
reduce the mind to a soulless machine which grinds no
grist for the hungry multitude ; they blast the fruitful fig
tree with the curse of their foolish criticism; they sub-
stitute manner for matter esteem the wretched vehicle
above its priceless freight.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 247
HEAVEN AND HELL.
THEIR LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE.
Ever since the idea of Heaven and Hell first dawned
upon the mind of man, he has been trying to locate those
interesting ultimates, to fix their position in the Cosmos, to
mark out their metes and bounds; but despite infinite in-
quiry at Sibyl-caves and elsewhere, patient poring over
half-articulate prophecies, much labored lucubration and
study of the heavens by theologico-astronomic savants,
they still hover indefinite in the great inane, a drifting De-
los which no scientific Jupiter can finally fix and give a lati-
tude and longitude. We are accustomed to think of Heaven
as high above us; of Hell as far beneath our feet, a freak
of barbaric fancy that even our super-civilization cannot
shake off. If Heaven be over our heads at midday, what
direction at Night's high noon would we take to reach the
happy home of the Gods?
Is it not possible that we are using in this search tele-
scopes of too long a range, looking quite over the objects
sought and into inane limboes; that, in fact, we need no op-
tical aids, being able to look into the highest Heaven and
deepest Hell even with our eyes closed; to hear celestial
harp- music and the rush of wings amid the perfumed
groves of Paradise; to feel Hell's hot blast beating into our
very faces? Is it not possible that Hell and Heaven are
even around us and within us, visual, tactual, here or no-
where ?
What is it that we denominate Heaven but Happiness;
that we call Hell but Unhappiness? Then art thou not in
Heaven or Hell ? Is it necessary to pass the portals of the
tomb, to make a long voyage on unknown seas to find
Pleasure or Pain? What Pleasure cans't paint with Fancy's
most skillful pencil that transcends pure Love requited?
What agony, mental and physical, cans't picture greater
than surrounds thee on every side ? Is it not true, that even
here, in this world, in this life, is found the divinest Pleasure
and the most demoniac Pain the highest Heaven and the
deepest, darkest Hell that human mind can conceive ? That
even now we flit to and fro in Paradise, harping and hymn-
ing to an ever-present God; or wander, with blistered feet
and bleeding hearts, hopeless and helpless, through the des-
olate regions of the damned?
Perhaps if we were all transported, Elijah-like, to the
248 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
orthodox heaven, many of us would find it much less toler-
able than this earth; would long to return and fight Life's
bitter battles all over again; to suffer an occasional touch
of that nether fire which sometimes scorches and withers
us. Really, if the celestial immigration agents have put
forth a true prospectus, it is small wonder that people cling
so tenaciously to the old homestead, or, when compelled to
move, go to a quite opposite direction. In old times it was
supposed that angels relinquished heaven for earth's pains
and pleasures being tempted thereto by the daughters of
men; and after carefully reading such celestico-descriptive
literature as can be come at, one may well wonder that the
whole Heavenly Hierarchy did not follow them, and give to
Lucifer and his hosts his leave to return thither when they
liked.
How better can we describe Heaven than by calling it
Content; Hell than by naming it Discontent? One man is
contented with a crust finds Heaven in half a loaf of black
bread; another is discontent with a crown finds Hell in
the wardship of half a world. How, then, if men are to re-
tain aught of their individuality if they are not to be blot-
ted out and quite new beings created in their places in
whom the first parties can take no more than an idle inter-
est can we expect one Heaven, even though the highest,
to please everybody? How can we expect one Hell to
prove a place of pain to the great multi-minded host that is
supposed to be drifting thither? Really the Devil and his
imps would prove quite pleasant companions to many
kindred spirits who take a grim delight in defying Destruc-
tion itself.
Stranger than even the idea that we must leave this
world to find the face of Deity or Devil is our method of
determining who shall be given a harp in the great Here-
after, who dance to music of quite other making. We set
up an arbitrary standard of Goodness; those who comply
therewith are assuredly destined for Paradise, those who fall
short thereof as certainly devoted to Destruction. If a man
do thus-and-so he may, according to all accounts, read his
title clear to mansions in the skies; if he do not so, it will be
the worse for him in the world to come. "To the victor
belongs the crown/' Granted; but how are we to determine
who are the victors what ones of the mighty host seeking
celestial bays fought their way through fierce foes; what
ones found no gorgons and goblins in their path, but
marched gaily through their allotted term of life without
so much as a skirmish ?
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 249
With fair fortune and fish blood how easy it were to be a
saint! With fortune of quite another hue and every vein a
fierce flaming torrent of Gehenna-fire, in which Demons
dance and Lust runs riot, in which Madness mingles and
Murder ever shrieks, it were not so easy. Is it not pos-
sible that some of the world's worst wage the most relent-
less warfare upon the great realm of Darkness and the
Devil? That while others are making a holiday warfare
upon and putting to flight certain mischievous little imps
Satan's light infantry many of those we call criminals and
assign to "the gallows here and Hell hereafter, have for long
weary years been at very death-grips with the whole Infer-
nal Hierarchy? battling without hope of victory, of that
Happiness of Despair and that God like within them that,
however choked by the sulphur-fumes of war, however
torn and trampled, cannot cry for quarter, will not surren-
der, but, through defeat after defeat, fight ever on and on!
In physical warfare, where man' goes forth to strive with
man, the world stops not to consider who was victor or
vanquished; but rather with what courage they fought,
what powers they contended withal. It were greater glory
to have lost Thermopylae or the Alamo than to have won
on fairer fields; yet in this struggle with Hell's puissant
powers to be overcome is to merit eternal infamy! To* those
who stand though they never looked on Lucifer's blazing
banner imperishable crowns; to those who fall, the exe-
cration of man, the curse of God! Around the unscarred
"victors" we gather with paeans of praise, upholding their
hands in every trivial trial; but let not those who bear the
battle's brunt upon whose unhappy heads burst the blue
terrors of that mighty Cimmerian cloud expect either aid
or comfort, love or sympathy. Alone in that black Chaos ;
mocked by man, torn by fiends, taught that even God is
their enemy, they must struggle on to what?
ISRAEL AS IT IS.
There was a time when to have sprung from Judah's con-
secrated loins was better than to be born a king; when the
embattled hosts of Israel made the world tremble before
their martial might, and men turned for knowledge to
Zion's holy hill as the helianthus turns its face to the rising
sun.
When our ancestors were but brutal barbarians, clad in
250 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
skins stripped with sharp stones from beasts scarcely less
ferocious; dwelling in caves and subsisting on roots and
raw meat; with no aspirations above the crudest creature
comforts, no conception of immortality, no dream of man's
hig'h destiny, Solomon was making silver as the stones in
the streets of Jerusalem; the Jews were worshipping the
"Lord of Hosts/' framing those laws which are to-day the
basic principle of civilization, quelling semi-barbarous peo-
ple with the sword, computing the procession of the planets
and weaving into the woof of human history those imper-
ishable gems of poesy and philosophy which the world's
wisest say transcend the genius of mortal man and must,
perforce, be the gracious gift of God.
Yet for twenty centuries we have regarded the Jew with
suspicion, treated him as if he were of an inferior race;
as though in his bosom beat the heart of an inhuman harpy,
in his veins coursed the accursed blood of the wolf. For
twenty centuries the Jew has suffered "the oppressor's
wrong, the proud man's contumely" has been the target
at which the ringer of scorn was ever pointed; the buffet
of dissolute princes and purse-proud potentates; the unde-
serving victim of the blind wrath of the proletarian rabble ;
the mark at which sectarian hate and unreasoning bigotry
have levelled their most vindictive shafts; despoiled, out-
raged, beaten with many stripes; expatriated, driven hither
and thither, finding no rest for his weary feet in a world
which his wisdom has done so much to humanize, to which
he has given happiness here and hope hereafter
Is it possible that the Jew, who is of the blood and bone
of the patriarchs and prophets, of Moses the Medianite, and
those warlike Maccabees before whom the fierce Syrian
soldiery fled terror-stricken from Judea's hills, is a creature
fit only for our contumely, a dog to be spurned by "Chris-
tian" feet? that the children of men who, cooped 1 up in one
quarter of their beloved city and dying of starvation, de-
fended their holy temple against Titus thel Terrible and the
intrepid sons of all-conquering Rome until the sacred pile
was dripping with blood and ablaze with the legionary's
brand, but merit the sneers of a people whose ancestors a
few generations ago were plowing the Northern seas as
pirates in quest of plunder, or participating in the bloody
and brutal rites of the Druidical superstition?
To deny that there is a widespread antipathy to the Jew
were as fatuous as to deny the existence of the sun. In
most parts of the United States this antipathy is latent; but
in Europe it not only manifests itself in legislation and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 251
social ethics, but frequently bursts forth in deeds 1 of des-
perate violence and inhumanity on the part of the people.
Even while I write, in "Christian" Russia the Jews are
being despoiled and outraged their homes given to the
flames, their savings to the plunderer, their daughters to
the ravisher, their throats to the knife! And the rest of
the so-called Christian world mildly protests; intimates
that, perhaps, after all, the Jew has a soul, at least flesh and
bone, and may suffer somewhat.
While the Tsar's brutal soldiery aided by the volunteer
efforts of the Russian peasantry and such other people as
consider the killing of a creditor the easiest way to dis-
charge an honest debt are hurrying the Jews across the
frontiers, the civilized world is firing whereases, resolutions,
remonstrances signed by aldermen and fledgling D. D.'s,
silly tirades by alleged able editors and other trifling non-
sense and cheap balderdash at his "Most Christian Majes-
ty;" then, convinced that it has done its duty, it goes
home to dinner perhaps with a half defined feeling that
nobody has any business to be a Jew! Were the people
of any other race subjected to such barbarous brutality,
the Christian world, so-called, would demand that it cease
instantly, and demand it sword in hand.
The cause of this prejudice against the Jew, which ap-
pears to be bred in the very bone of "Christian" people of
Indo-European blood, it were indeed difficult to determine.
Scarcely a count in the formidable indictment which has
hung over him for a hundred generations like a veritable
sword of Damocles, will stand analysis. It is charged that
the Jew will not intermarry with other races. In God's
name, cannot a man choose a wife to suit himself without
having a whole majestic universe snarling at his heels? If
the dark-eyed daughters of Judah prefer their kins'men to
those who from time immemorial have persecuted them,
cannot a professedly chivalrous world leave them free to
choose ? Is it at all strange) that a people whose blood for
two thousand years has been kept free fromi taint, should
decline to pour it into that great red tide which has
greedily absorbed every clean and unclean thing with which
it has come in contact, whether Goth or Moor, British bar-
barian or American red Indian, and is now blending slowly
but surely with the Ethiop and Australian Bushman?
But while the incongruous and ofttimes unclean mixture
of races in Europe, and especially in America, where the
great-grandsons of Charlemagne's paladins wed the great-
granddaughters of expatriated sneak thieves and lousy In-
dian squaws where the blood of the Capulets mingles with
252 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
that of the Cades is of itself sufficient to give pause to
those who trace their lineage through God-fearing men and
chaste women back to the days of David, it is not the only
nor the chief cause why the Jews maintain that solidarity
which is at once the wonder of the world and the burthen
of its never-ceasing jeremiad. Their religion tends to make
the Jews chary of intermarriage with non-conformists; but
the great determining cause of their exclusiveness is the
social and political ostracism to which they have for so
many centuries been generally subjected by the "enlight-
ened," "progressive," "Christian" nations of Europe, and
which occasionally shows its ugly front, like Discord at
Peleus' nuptial rites, in free America, where anything that
can dodge the gallows or the jail for one and twenty years
is called a sovereign, where we buy with our millions the
bastard spawn of kings' courtesans as husbands for our
daughters !
The Jew was driven into trade and money-changing by
the edicts of Christian potentates forbidding him to acquire
title to land. In his own country before the diaspora his
chief occupation was agriculture, and the law of his religion
did not permit him to lend at interest for the relief of dis-
tress. Money is power, even in the hands of the Jew,, and
it is small wonder that when he found it his only friend in
a world of fanatical foes the only weapon with which he
could hope to win his way in sheer self-defense he dili-
gently soug'ht to acquire all of it possible. Money to the
Jew has ever meant much more than creature comforts;
it has meant sword and shield, bulwark and bastion the
magic wand that metamorphoses the Medusa-face of sec-
tarian hate into that of the oily and unctuous hypocrite.
It is small wonder that in money matters the Jew has
become preternaturally keen; small wonder that in dealing
with his enemies, actual or potential, he should prove an
exacting creditor should acquire an unenviable reputa-
tion among his hereditary critics for sordidness and "sharp
practice." But the avarice, so-called, of the Jew, is the
result, not the cause of centuries of political and social os-
tracism. To abuse the Jew for "getting gain" were like
throwing a man into a tempestuous sea and cursing him for
grasping desperately at whatever may promise preserva-
tion. Numerically too weak to force recognition of his
right with the naked sword, the Jew forges his weapon of
fine gold and with it makes the proudest of Christian
potentates pay him homage with their lips while they curse
him in their hearts.
So far from being a stony-hearted, avaricious people,
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 253
as popularly supposed, the Jews are naturally the most
sympathetic and generous in the world. Who ever heard
of a Jew begging bread, going to the alms-house or suffer-
ing for creature comforts, while other members of his race
even though strangers knowing of his necessities, had
a crust to share or a dollar to divide? And yet we "Chris-
tians,"who prate of our liberality and pose before the world
as paragons of philanthropy, ofttimes allow our old mothers
to go "on the county" while we go on a champagne "jag;"
permit our brothers to eat the bitter bread of a stranger's
contemptuous charity, while we parade as public-spirited
citizens ! Very remarkable is it that while our relatives are
usually the last in the world we desire to embark in busi-
ness with, the Jew prefers his near kinsman to all others.
We know our brethren know that they will rob and be-
tray, "bullyrag" and beat at every opportunity. The
Jew knows his brethren and trusts his fortune to their
hands without a tremor!
Avaricious? Miserly? Little-souled ? Mean? Thou fool!
The Jew is the most liberal money-spender in the world.
He calls for the best of everything and pays for it like a
prince ! Did you ever hear that a Jew miser starved to
death in the midst of his millions? That one of the race of
Judah ever perished for lack of medical attendance which
he was too penurious to pay for? Yet such things are of
almost daily occurrence in this Christian land! But the
victim of the unholy lust for gain is never, no, never, a Jew.
He may hide his heart in his money-bags, but never follows
the example of Pedro Garcia and keeps his soul there also.
In every country where the Jew has been accorded the
political privileges of other people, he has proven himself
a public-spirited citizen, and his subscriptions to enter-
prises to promote the public welfare have been paid
promptly and without protest. While the Christian has
given his "moral support," the Jew has gone do\vn into his
pockets and planked down the wherewithal that "makes
the world go round/'
Another count in the indictment is that the Jew never
really identifies himself with the country in which he re-
sides never becomes a patriot; that he is eager to enjoy
the rights of citizenship while shirking its responsibilities
anxious for the protection of a flag he will not lift a hand
to defend. This is, perhaps, the most remarkable of all
the multifarious phases in which ingrained prejudice and
hereditary hatred has bodied itself forth. Although the
Jewish contingent in our eleemosynary institutions and
penitentiaries is practically nil, they are largely supported
254 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
by taxes paid by the Jewish people. True, the Jew is sel-
dom the central figure at party primaries ; his voice rarely
adds to the discordant din of partisan polemics; he is sel-
dom seen on the stump at cross-roads or the beer-barrel
in bar-rooms, telling his fellow-citizens what to do to be
saved. He rarely makes of himself a moral bankrupt or
noisy nuisance trying to capture an office with small salary
and large stealage: but he can generally be counted upon
to cast his ballot for the "conservative" candidate and pay
his taxes promptly. Furthermore, when he finds that
country in danger which treats him a few degrees better
than a dog, he can be depended upon to risk his life and
fortune in its defense. Compared with percentage of pop-
ulation, the Jewish contingent in the Federal and Confed-
erate forces was very large, and precious few circumcised
soldiers were arrested for bounty- jumping, reprimanded
for cowardice or court-martialed for desertion. Many
Jews rose to military distinction during the civil war, and
the descendants of Miles Standish, Mad Anthony Wayne,
Light-Horse Harry Lee and Francis Marion were proud to
call them their commanders. Who can forget the services
to the South of Judah Benjamin, or the heroic fortitude
with which the Jews stood by the failing Confederacy "with
their fortunes, their lives and their sacred honor?" But
for the financial aid of the Northern Jews when the tide
of battle appeared to be turning against the Federal gov-
ernment and the mighty structure seemed tottering to its
fall ; when the British lion was crouching for a spring, and
even France looked askance at the wounded eagle, the
mailed hand of the mighty North would have fallen' nerve-
less as that of a frightened child, the stars and bars would
float south of the Ohio, and that scourge of God, negro
slavery, be fixed on this fair land forever.
Since the Jews became numerous in Europe and Amer-
ica there has been scarce a battlefield not dyed with Israel's
consecrated blood; scarcely a military maneuver not paid
for from Jewish purses ; scarce a throne not gilded by Jew-
ish industry; scarce a printed page upon which, directly or
indirectly, they did not set their seal ; scarce a poet who did
not borrow their musical metaphors; scarce an orator who
did not tacitly acknowledge in every sentence that but for
the Jews he would have nothing to say.
From the loins of Judah have sprung more intellectual
giants than any other race or nation can boast. The roster
of those who have added to the world's wisdom, to human
happiness, stretches in an unbroken line from the present
hour back to the dawn of human history. Did you ever
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 255
stop to reflect that Spinoza, the prince of philosophers,
Mendelssohn, the master of the world of music, and a host
of others whom we revere as something almost more than
mortal, not to mention the Christ, whom we worship as a
God, were all of the race which you profess to despise?
The cause of the prejudice against the Jews is multifarious.
He is emphatically a child of the Orient as different from
the Occidentals as though native of another planet. The
brawny and intensely practical Scotch Highlander and the
mild-eyed melancholy lotus-eater could scarce be further
apart from an ethnological standpoint than the Jews and
the Indo-Germanic people. Race, political and religious
differences bred antipathy long before the destruction of
the Second Temple. Then as the Jews dispersed over
Europe, came the ill-wind of business rivalry, the hatred of
the debtor for the creditor class, followed by the fierce fires
of religious bigotry that made of mediaeval Europe a hell
upon which Cains Caligula might have looked with horror.
In those fierce Gehenna-fires were forged the chains that
still hold the Christian mind in thrall; in those dark days
when intolerance was lord paramount, when superstition
was the handmaiden of religion and the Christian cavalier
drove into the ground his sword, stained with the blood
of non-conforming maidens, and fell upon his knees before
the reeking cross that formed the hilt; when with whip
and faggot, the thumb-screw and the wheel, fanatics
dragged men to the throne of Grace, or drove them to the
Devil, the vulpine instinct of the Jew attained, perforce, an
abnormal development, distrust of those not of his race
and religion became hereditary. He found the world
against him, and it is his misfortune, not his fault, that his
hand is against the world.
That the spirit of the Jews has not been utterly crushed
by twenty centuries of systematic oppression ; that they have
not withered beneath the terrible baptism of fire, degener-
ated into contemptible spiritless lazzaroni ; that the united
world has signally failed to trample them beneath its brutal
feet and keep them there; that despite two thousand years
of trial and temptation, of calumny, intimidation, of the most
brutal outrages recorded in Time's too unhappv annals,
the daughters of Judah are to-day the paragons of purity,
as they have ever been of beauty, proclaims to every man
with eyes to see and brain to understand, that the Jews are
one of the greatest races, one of the grandest peoples that
ever appeared upon the earth; that the Lord of Hosts was
infinitely wiser than we when He made His covenant witii
them and swore by His own bright essence increate, that
256 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
through good and ill, through weal and woe, He would be
their God and they should be His people.
THE CURSE OF KISSING.
Every little while some smart Alec scientist mounts the
bema to inform a foolish world that kissing is a dangerous
pastime; that upon the roseate lips of beauty there ever
lurks the bacillus, flourishing skull and cross-bones ver-
itable flaming swords to keep poor Adam out of his Eden.
According to these learned men the fairest maid is loaded
to the muzzle with microbes, her kiss a Judas osculation,
betraying the sighing swain who dares to browse upon
her dewy lips, to well-nigh certain death. In the "linger-
ing sweetness long drawn out" myriads of disease germs
are supposed to pass from mouth to mouth in true reci-
procity fashion, and, falling upon new and fecund soil,
take root and flourish there until the ecstatic fools pass un-
timely to that bourne where all faces stand so wide ajar
held so by eternal hosannahs that an attempted kiss were
like dropping Hoosac Tunnel into the Mammoth Cave.
As the duly ordained guide, philosopher and friend of the
scientists as of the clergy the Iconoclast feels compelled
to file a protest. As the Moor of Venice intimated, there's
such a thing as knowing entirely too much. Wisdom that
knocks the yum-yum out of life, transforms the fond de-
lights of courtship into an armed neutrality and makes of
the sensuous Vale of Cashmere a profitless desert of dead
formalities and scientific sanitation, simply to save the life
assurance companies paying an occasional premium, should
be sealed in some Pandora box or genie-casket and cast
into the sea. We cannot blame the bacteria for selecting
as roosting place the rose-bud mouths of the daughters of
men, any more than we can blame the bees for hovering
with drowsy drunken hum about the fragrant flowers ; still
we were happier when we knew not of their presence
when we could swoop blithely down upon a pair of ruby lips
working like a patent clothes-wringer in a steam laundry,
and extract hyblaean honey in great hunks without Death
riding his old white skate athwart our pansy-bed and freez-
ing the genial current of our soul with his Svengali leer.
W^e dislike to quarrel with science, but the tables educed
in the currency controversy now epidemic in this unhappy
land have made us doubt. Death may lurk in the lover's
kiss like a yellow-jacket in a Jersey apple; but that scien-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 257
tist who will go about with his compound microscope,
searching into this tutti-frutti of the soul for miniature
monsters, is fit for treason, stratagems and spoils. He's not
a credible witness and ought to be abolished. He's the
Thersites of modern society, and we hope to see some
wrathful Achilles take him out behind the smoke-house and
talk to him in a tone of voice that would discourage a book
agent or a poor relation. We don't believe a word about
his little tale of osculatory woe. During a variegated experi-
ence of forty years we've never combed any tuberculosis
fungi, mump microbes or diphtheritic walking delegates out
of our white-horse moustache. Kissing injurious to health,
forsooth! Why it's the fount of perennial youth which
owl-eyed old Ponce de Leon sought among the savages,
instead of rilling his sails with sighs of "Gady's soft desiring
strain." It's tne true Brown-Sequard elixir, which makes
the heart of hoary age beat forever like a boy's. It's the
heaven-distilled eau de vie which causes the young man to
forget a combination of tight boot and soft-boiled corn and
makes the grisly octogenarian rise up William Riley and
neigh like a two-year-old. Disease germs, indeed! Why
it's nature's remedy for all the ills that flesih is heir to,
facile princeps of ennui antidotes, infallible cure for that
tired feeling. The latest pseudo-scientist to discover that
the gentle ripple df the kiss is but a dirge, tries to set in
the black overhanging firmament a bow of promise. He
opines that all danger may be avoided if the kissing ma-
chines are carefully deodorized before and after using, and
recommends that the lips be washed with some chemical
compound that will make the most obstinate bacillus sorry
he was born. It's a great scheme but will it work ? Will
our society belles and beaux now appear equipped, each
with a bottle of carbolic acid or a jug of lime water in which
to soak their sweetness before effecting that exchange
which is no robbery? or will each parlor be provided with
a bowl of bacteria annihilator, which the young man will
employ much as the careful cotton planter does Paris
green? The plan of disinfection before permitting the
spirits to rush together a la Tennyson at the touching of
the lips, may work in Boston, perhaps; but out here in the
glad, free Southwest, where we still have to catch our hare
before we cook it, such an arrangement would clog the
wheels of progress and perhaps extinguish Hymen's torch.
Imagine the Apostle chasing the beauteous Rebecca Mer-
lindy around a log cabin at some husking bee at the met-
ropolis of Harris county, a swab in one hand and a gourd-
ful of carbonated bayou water in the other! Here in Texas
258 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
a man must take his kiss with the peeling on or go without.
He has enough to do to manage the maid without bother-
ing about the bacteria. And, let scientists with their double-
geared microscopes say what they may, that man who gets
an opportunity to buzz a corn-fed beauty whose breath is
sweet as that of a brindle calf fed on clover blooms, need
not worry about bacilli. It is a feast fit for gods, so
let him fall to, without waiting to have the bloom sponged
off his peach on the foolish hypothesis that its component
parts are horned hippogriffs, icthyosauria and feathered
sea-serpents such as hover in the gloom of a gold-cure
joint at 2 g. m. If his heart fails him if he be not willing
to chance the <cold and silent tomb for the felicity of brows-
ing for a few fleeting moments in Elysian Fields let him
follow the example of the great and glorious G. Cleveland,
Esq., and hire a substitute. There are cases, however,
where it would be well to do considerable deodorizing be-
fore risking osculation; better still, to let the doubtful
sweets remain unplucked, as not worth the labor. This
great Yankee nation has fallen into the bad habit of promis-
cuous kissing a social rite as stale, flat and every way
unprofitable as employing a community foothbrush or an
indiscriminate swapping of gum. Whether dangerous dis-
eases may be transmitted thereby I know not; but it is
death to sentiment and provocative of nausea. A woman
should be almost as chary of her lips as of more gracious
favors. A sensitive gentleman would as soon accept a
bride from Boiler avenue as take to wife a vestal virgin
whom every lecherous libertine had "mouthed and mum-
bled." The practice of ''kissing the bride," which still pre-
vails in communities professing not only civilization, but
the acme of aestheticism, should be abolished by law under
severe pains and penalties. Why a modest woman, who
has done nothing worse than marry, should be compelled to
kiss a company of men and thereby sample everything from
the aroma of sour stomachs to masticated codfish, I cannot
imagine. The levite who performs the ceremony usually
consecrates the first fruits to the Lord, and what he may
chance to leave is gleaned by Tom, Dick and the Devil,
until lips that would have tempted angels to assume mortal
ills, become foul as the Valley of Hinnom sweet incense
to offer a loving lord! I once attended a church fair in
Missouri and there found two local beauties of good family
retailing kisses to all comers at two-bits apiece "for the
good of the cause!" "D n a cause," quoth I, "that must
be forwarded by such foul means." I bought $5 worth of
the sacred sweetness then hired an old farmer who en-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 259
joyed a bad case of catarrh and had worn his solitary tooth
do'wn to the pliocene period chewing plug tobacco and de-
positing the quotient on his beard, to receive the goods.
When half through with the job he struck for a raise of
salary! A kiss should be a sacred thing the child of a
love that is deathless. It is the benediction of a mother,
the pledge of a sweetheart, the homage of a wife. Promis-
cuous kissing is a casting of pearls before swine, a brutal
prostitution of the noblest and holiest rite ever practiced
by the human race. It is a flagrant offense against all that
is noble in man and modest in woman; hence let us hope
that it is really conducive to disease that the wage of sin
is death.
THE MAN IN THE MOON.
CRITICISM BY OUR LUNAR CONTEMPORARY.
Doubtless you have a distant acquaintance with the Man
in the Moon. He never becomes unduly familiar, never
borrows money of you or quarrels with you anent forms of
baptism, never bores you with 'his political views or takes
a fiendish delight in telling you the unkind things which
others say about you. When two is company he does not
make a crowd. He is probably the oldest inhabitant, cer-
tainly the most prominent citizen of our little contempo-
rary. Our ancestors saw him as an old man bearing a lan-
tern and bundle of faggots going about in the bright sun-
light that illumines his home, much as did our own foolish
Diogenes; but whether on the same errand, deponent saith
not. What he purposed doing with his bundle of faggots
whether to build a fire to cook his breakfast, or broil a
heretic was never definitely determined. The modern
almanac-makers see only the face of the old fellow a
mildly-beaming countenance, somewhat resembling that of
Mr. Pickwick, when the moon is full, that of a disappointed
and discouraged office-seeker when the bright disc has
faded to a silver bow. For my part, I could always see
in the moon many people besides an old man toiling along
to a lunar nowhere with his bundle of faggots, or beaming
down on me with smile both childlike and bland. When
the moon is full and quite regardless of my own condition
I can see therein a gallant soldier and his bonny bride,
two charming ladies in confidential tete-a-tete, and the
head and shoulders of a gigantic gladiator lying fast asleep
260 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
unscreened by so much as a mosquito bar the musical
attendants of Morpheus evidently being undreamed of in
his philosophy. And sometimes, again, when the moon
chances to hang at a peculiar angle, this variegated popula-
tion disappears and the great disc resembles a mighty
medallion, with Goddess of Liberty clear-cut and distinct
as on the silver dollar. The stars are there encircling her,
but no E Pluribus Unum not so much as mention of "the
crime of '73." I've often thought that could the other side
of the moon be seen a full-fledged American eagle would
there be found, squinting one eye at the legend, In God
We Trust while keeping a close grip on his bundle of ar-
rows. I am satisfied that could Mr. Cleveland see the
moon as I sometimes do, and note its similitude to the
silver dollar, he'd recommend its utter abolition by act of
Congress or employ the bond-clippers to build a golden
pyramid for it to rest upon, like a prize pumpkin poised on
a knitting-needle
But perchance the handsome lady is the lunar "New
Woman/' not yet provided with bike and bloomers who
has retired the old man to the nursery and herself assumed
the sceptre of the night.
I have tried to point out to various people the interesting
family of the Man in the Moon; but they have usually in-
sisted that he was doing the Robinson Crusoe act sailing
through space on his silver isle in utter solitude. Being a
JefTersonian Democrat, I yield to the verdict of the majority
and surrender my private opinion, even discredit the evi-
dence of my own eyes, quite the proper thing from a par-
tisan standpoint and shall take it for granted that the lunar
Goddess of Liberty, like our own star-crowned and mud-
bedraggled deity, is a mythus, the creature of a morbid
imagination, and devote my entire attention to the time-
honored Man in the Moon.
He has evidently been there ever since the swift-rolling
little planet assumed its present topography perhaps mil-
lions of years ago. From a period so remote that the mind
of man can scarce conceive thereof, he has looked be-
nignly down upon this teeming earth, with its laughter and
its tears, its triumphal arches and its- bitter ashes looked
and held his peace. He is accounted everybody's friend,
because he is no tale-bearer, tattler and two-faced talking
machine; is "the same yesterday, to-day and forever;" a
fact which many men and perchance an occasional woman,
likewise might profitably reflect upon.
Nations rise and fall; religions are born and die; the
Tower of Babel lifts its spiral curves to kiss the clouds, then
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 261
crumbles into dust; Alexander conquers the world and
Mark Antony casts it away as a worthless bauble to bask
in the sensuous splendor of Cleopatra's eyes ; Lisbon
earthquakes engulf their thousands and the French Rev-
olutions flame with nether fire the Man in the Moon ob-
serves it all and makes no sign. How different he from
the Man or even the Woman in the Earth! Do but let
a Cleveland babe be born, or the daughter of a prosperous
map-peddler take a bankrupt dude with bogus title to
raise, and there is universal cackle as of multitudinous flocks
of geese gone mad. Let a brace of pugilists pound each
other with pillows for a fat purse, or some poor preacher
bite at the Devil's hook, baited with an old sunbonnet, and
what a commotion: people priding themselves on the
possession of a thinking faculty expecting the heavens to
fall, or the civilization of six thousand years to slip its
trolley-pole. Let political parties with adjustable plat-
forms and gutta-percha principles indulge in wrestling-
match, with the public flesh-pots as prize, what screech-
ing and scrannel-piping by perspiring orators and partisan
editors the confusion of Babe.l worse confounded !
Sitting silent there all these centuries and watching the
goings and comings of the children of men their mega-
iopanous horn-tootings and turgid pufferies, their inane
bickerings and infamous back-bitings listening to their
ape-chattering and eternal much ado about nothing has it
occurred to the Man in the Moon, think you, that what the
human race most needs is a gold-cure for the gab habit?
How thankful he must have been when the morning stars
sang together that there were no featherless bipeds to
drown, with their foolish bawling, the celestial melody!
We are supposing, of course, that the Man in the Moon
is a living, sentient being; that the mild face so long
turned upon this planet is that of one who sees, and seeing,
understands. Does such a face look down upon us from
anywhere in the great Immensity ? The priests and prophets
of all ages have assured us even so. They have given to this
supernal being many names and attributes and habitations,
but have signally failed to fix his celestial latitude and lon-
gitude. Gods come and gods go, but the Man in the
Moon remains. He saw if aught inanimate e'er sees
the rise of Kishna and Kronus, of Odin and Osiris, of
Jupiter and Jove; and in serene and silent majesty he looks
down upon their ruined altars and deserted fanes. Cults
and creeds have swayed the minds of untold millions have
enforced themselves with sword and faggot, with poison-
cup and persecution cruel as Perdition's pains only to be
262 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
swept by the broom of Time into the world's great rubbish-
heap as intellectual trash, and from these mounds of muck
new dogmas have sprung like weeds, and flourished their
little day, and died layer upon layer, like cities rising and
falling upon the ruins of other cities where men have lived
and loved passing, each in its turn, into the tomb of the
world's history, its traditions, its utter forgetfulness for-
ever lost in the murky shadows of the centuries ! When Jeho-
vah has resigned to other hands the sceptre of the universe,
and the Christian cultus taken its place beside the Babylo-
nian creeds; when antiquarians trace with infinite toil on
ruined monuments and fallen pillars the history of this
proud Republic, as they trace that of many a bygone nation
which imagined itself one of the few, the immortal things
that were not born to die ; when Macauley's New Zealander
muses on a broken arch of London Bridge and watches
the solitary herdsman tend his sheep on the site of the
world's metropolis, as he does to-day where Babylonian gar-
dens once did hang and the lords and ladies of Nineveh
rolled in gilded chariots over cloth of gold where Car-
thagenia's voluptuous queen wept for unrequited love and
Priam's intrepid sons begirt the altars of Ilium with bur-
nished steel the Man in the Moon will look down with
the same imperturbable countenance that he turned upon
the Buddha sitting solitary beneath the Bodhi tree, upon
Hagar as she wandered forth from the tent of Abraham
into the wilderness. Not a line has changed since he
beamed on Pyramus and Thisbe stealing forth to their
trysting place near old Ninus' tomb not a wrinkle has been
added since Joshua spiked the lunar coat-tail fast in the
valley of Ajalon while he slaughtered the Amorites, de-
spoiled their vineyards and enslaved their virgins.
If the Man in the Moon would only speak, how many
things he might tell us ! How the world's history would
be revised and our pantheon of heroes and galaxy of saints
transformed! During the dark of the moon does he hold
converse with that lunar Goddess of Liberty, or New
\Voman we have observed there, her gaze turned intently
hitherward, as tho' watching the progress of female suf-
frage or studying our Parisian fashion plates ? Does he, in
post-prandial sociability over his wine and walnuts, chatter
unrestrained with that great gladiator who may be Her-
cules resting from his labors, or even the sun-god visiting
his fair Salene and fallen fast asleep while waiting for her
to do up her back hair or put a little celestial powder on her
pale cheeks ? And if so, what does he say ? Can you imag-
ine he having so carefully watched the genus homo ever
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 263
since his advent upon the earth familiar with every detail
of his origin and development? Is it possible that he ob-
serves us simply for his amusement; or, at most,
studies us much as a naturalist might the frantic industry
of a tribe of ants? When the lunar blinds are close-drawn
and the stars given leave to flaunt their glories in the face
of night, does he make merry at our expense? Can you
imagine him saying:
"Those little bipeds, straddling painfully over the surface
of our sister planet, amuse me very much. Do you know
sun, moon and stars were made for their especial benefit
that these planetary microbes actually imagine the world,
just as the fleas on a monster dog suppose the canine was
created solely for their comfort that the animal's frantic
efforts to get rid of them are "special providences" having
some mysterious tendency to promote their "ultimate
good?" They really imagine themselves the only impor-
tant things in this great universe of ours that the rest is
but leather and prunella.
"Poor ephemera, living their little day, then sinking back
into the soil, their bodies fertilizing weeds and fattening
worms! Do but observe them burrowing like moles in
their mother's bosom ; trying to count her ribs or determine
if she have a heart of fire to read her history in the
freckles of her face. Miserable redbugs on the thick cuticle
of the mighty planet! Note them sweeping the milky-way
with petty tubes called telescopes, or pondering with mag-
nifying glass over a drop of water the world of other ani-
malcttlae only somewhat smaller than themselves then
founding pretentious schools wherein they impart, with
birch rod and other educational appliances, the secrets of
the universe! Science born of supposition, philosophies
founded upon fooleries, stuffed with infinite labor into the
fat heads of half-fledged ephemera and miscalled educa-
tion! And the wisest in the great owlerie cannot compre-
hend the fundamental principle of Nature's first and sim-
plest law, that of gravitation; cannot tell whence he came
or whither he goes uncertain whether his ancestors were
angels or apes! And yet I have seen them fall upon their
fellows and do them to the death for declaring that cer-
tain frog-eyed and ass-eared animalculae were incompe-
tent to read every riddle in the great apocalypse of nature
were not familiar with the very family affairs of the
Creator of the Cosmos !"
And so might the Man in the Moon go on maundering
and mumbling century after century, rehearsing our faults,
laughing at our presumption even advising Bo-otes that
264 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
when weary of the chase and seeking- dolce far nicnte, he
would find us a curious if somewhat profitless study in bac-
teriology.
Of course it were unkind of the Man in the Moon to make
such remarks about us ; still, if we could but hear, it might
do us good like a medicine enable us to better understand
our small importance in the economy of the universe ; to
get our heads out of the clouds and cling- somewhat closer
to the grass. Did you ever reflect that to the archangels
if such there be "we are even as the Lilliputians of Gulliver
to the Brobdignagians mere trifling- curiosities to be kept
in a case what the doodle-bugs or itch bacilli are to us?
Suppose that while idly lounging on heaven's imperial
battlements, Ithuriel, star-eyed sentinel of the great court of
God, should discover Brother Cranfill, the abdominous
apostle of prohibition, assiduously saving the country by
spying about club-room keyholes, stirring- up strife between
neighbors, an abnormal nuisance, a pestiferous blue-bottle
buzzing about a putrid body politic: what think you?
Would the entire celestial population crowd the jasper
walls, like boys at a ball-game, to observe our poor crack-
brained brother? Would they dispute anent his proper
entomological classification, come insisting that he was a
scarabaeus, or terrestrial tumble-bug, who had misplaced
his little ball of compost and was running frantically hither
and thither in search thereof? Would they send a com-
mittee to the Almighty to humbly ask why this amorphous
curiosity was created?
A thousand years are to the Lord as but one day; and,
by laborious inquiry and shrewd guesswork, we can trace
the human race back almost a week! Another seven days
on the great horologue of God and the genus 'homo' may be
gone utterly; but the planets will continue to circle round
the sun, Orion and Arcturus to pour their mighty streams
of sidereal glory into the great realm of darkness, the
Pleiades to "twinkle like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a
silver braid." The existence of the human race is but an
unimportant incident in the history of the universe in-
fusoria born of heat and moisture, perishing when the
moisture is eliminated or the heat becomes greater or less.
Had man not appeared, the mountains would have reared
their rugged ' crests to meet the glory of the unrisen sun,
the purple mists have hovered in the valleys, the rivers
rolled onward to the sea and the tides ebbed and flowed
not a star would have fallen from the o'erhanging firma-
ment, not a planet hesitated in its eternal course; there
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 265
would have been never a drop of water nor a grain of sand
more or less.
"Lords of Creation," forsooth! We are the idle sport
of Time and Space. Yesterday is forgotten and to-morrow
is unknown. We toil and strive here on, our miserable
ant-hill, transforming some particles of matter mere
planetary fungi into various shapes; but can create noth-
ing, destroy nothing. Yet we assume that Almighty God,
who hung the midnight heavens with patines of pure gold
arid painted the rings of Saturn that even he, Architect of
the Universe left his eternal throne, star-gemmed, cano-
pied with clouds of incense upon which ever falls the bright
effulgence of solar systems, thro' which rolls the eternal
melody of the spheres, came down to earth and of the cold
dead clay made a miserable biped and called it his master-
piece; that he is now following it about with, note-book,
jotting down the inconsequential doings of this miserable
microbe observing with jealous solicitude how it is bap-
tized, what the "articles" of its religion, whether it worship
as Buddhist or Baptist, Methodist or Mormon ! Some of us
so believe, thereby flattering our vanity and finding com-
fort. Others declare there is no God, because they cannot
understand him cannot conceive of a being without a be-
ginning; attribute everything that is to the operation of
blind force, as tho' force itself did not have an unknown
and inconceivable genesis; as tho' force without matter
were comprehensible to the human mind could precede
matter, and, operating on nothing, produce something!
What know the infusoria in a drop of water of Caesar
and Socrates? And what know Caesar and Socrates
hanging, microscopic in body, infinitesimal in mind, to their
little globule of a world of this great Universe of God
and the laws which govern it? The most industrious dig-
ging will not disclose the foundations of the earth; the
most persistent star-gazing reveals to us only a few phos-
phorescent bubbles on the bosom of Infinity's shoreless
sea. And yet we dogmatize about the Deity; build elabo-
rate theories anent the abodes of the blessed; write sacred
books and establish religious rites which we ask the world
to accept as the embodiment of supernatural wisdom. We
have conferences and convocations, synods and ecumeni-
cal councils; we have turgid Talmages, slingers of sancti-
fied slang, malevolent Haydens, and Cranfills puffed up
like the frog in the fable with mephitic air, all pointing
the way to some impossible Celestial City where the "pore
mizzable worm of the dust" \vill become an imperishable
butterfly and flit from flower to flower, doing absolutely
266 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
nothing of any importance thro' all eternity not even mar-
rying or giving in marriage, a mocking-bird without a
mate! And not even Cranfill, puffing out his "fair round
belly with good capon lined" while Gabriel and Michael
stand agaze can locate that interesting ultimate to which
they would lead us ; can only vaguely assure us that it is
"over there," or "up yonder" up and down being relative
terms by which we describe flagstaff's, sub-cellars and such
like protuberances and depressions on the earth's surface.
Celestial City, "up yonder" whether at noon or midnight;
haven of eternal dilettante! sm and yaller dog dolce far
niente "over there" and thousands of sleek sky-pilots
with Haydenic heads, with Cranfillian stomachs nicely
padded with fat poultry and surreptitious booze at the ex-
pense of the stupid ignorance and ingrained prejudice,
leading us thither by devious routes, with toll-gate and
oratorical affliction every seven days' journey Colombos
exploring the inane for supposititious Cathays and impos-
sible spice islands; blind leading the blind and both falling
into the foul ditch of blasphemous dogmatism and wallow-
ing contented there, imagining meanwhile that they are
making progress!
And all this time a behoofed and be-horned devil with
leathery wings, fiery nostrils and prehensile tail with javelin
point a kind of unholy cross between a Pasiphaean mino-
taur and Cleveland mugwump resembling nothing in the
heavens or earth or the waters under the earth, unless it
be the Chicago platform is going to and fro in the land,
seeking new Jobs to afflict with festering sores and fool
friends; snatching up handfuls of human souls and flying
screeching with them down to Perdition for what purpose
only he and heaven knows. Curious creature this orthodox
devil who affrights the fearful soul of the evangelist
voluntarily spending most of his time in hell when he could
just as well spend it all in Texas. It seems that the upper
and nether powers are using this earth as recruiting ground
for their armies, Lucifer obtaining the bulk of the able-
bodied volunteers, the Lord having to content himself with
the organization of amazonian guards. What effect the
advent of thQ muscular "New Woman" will have upon the
strife between the hosts of heaven and hell it were difficult
to determine. She certainly does not aspire to be an angel
here, and if she follows in the footsteps of her brother
hereafter, Michael might as well close his recruiting offices
and strike his colors.
I do not undervalue human life and effort and aspiration.
I do not mock the blind struggles of mortal man to put on
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 267
immortality, to master the elements and extend the domain
of his knowledge; but I do insist that those who assume
that Almighty God made the solar system for our sweet
sakes should 'be tapped for the simples. Surely the stupen-
dous labors of the Creator were undertaken with grander
object, a nobler aim than the breeding on this compara-
tively unimportant planet of a few harpers for heaven and
a host of hoodlums for hell. A few million square miles,
flat as a floor, with a fence around it to prevent our falling
off; a sun ten miles in diameter and a moon the bigness of
an Iowa barn were sufficient plant for the manufacture of
men. Then why this infinitude of suns blazing in stellar
space this exhibition of power?
Did the Creator of all this come down to earth and flicker
in bushes as a fire, exhibit himself for the delectation of the
elders of Israel and spend forty days chiseling laws on
tables of stone, when he could have traced them in letters
of flame across the firmament? Having "made the stars
also" thrown them in as lagniappe to a hard day's labor
did he send his Son, co-ruler of the universe, to be aggra-
vated by human ants? Go to, thou wretched babbler, and
put thy gall in pickle. Pour thy story into the dull ears
of ancient dames, and with its marvels rob confiding child-
hood of its pence to line thy paunch; but tempt not the
righteous indignation of reasoning men.
All messiahs, prophets and wonder-workers were even
as we: and they have passed, as we in turn shall pass, back
into the broad bosom of their mother earth to await the
pleasure of Him that once did call them forth; who can bid
them live again for an hour, for a year, for ages, during all
eternity. Some were wiser, nobler than we, contained
more of the element of God-hood, their lives a larger por-
tion of that bright Essence Increate. Buddha the Pitiful,
Moses the Leader, Mahomet the Reformer and Christ the
Loving, were our teachers. They imparted to us, each in
his way, all they knew of the Mystery of Life all that, in
the profound depths of their superior souls, they dreamed
of man's origin, his duty and his destiny. Peace to their
ashes. Tho' Time will sweep from the records of the world
the story of their endeavor, and even their names sound no
more in the ears of men, the good they wrought will still
remain, the priceless heritage of the human race fur-
nishing forth the foundations for nobler cults, for purer
ideals, for grander conceptions of the Most High God.
Whether man e'er do put on immortality, or his little
life be rounded with ever dreamless sleep; whether he
wander always in Elysian fields, or,
268 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
"Greater than kings, than gods more glad,
The aching craze to live ends, and life glides
Lifeless to nameless quiet, nameless joy,
Blessed Nirvana sinless, stirless rest
That change which never changes,"
'tis well to have lived and loved. Down upon thy knees,
aspiring pigmy, and give thanks to God thou wast not
born a beast that the best of terrestrial life is thine, with
the joys of infancy, the pride of manhood and the halo of
age. Take the good the gods provide and hold thy peace.
If it be heaven's will that a happier world awaits thee be-
yond the tomb's pale portals, rejoice that thou art rewarded
beyond thy deserts ; if not, lie down like a tired child
upon its mother's breast, and pass without a sigh into the
eternal, the imperishable elements from which thou wert
called back into the great Life Ocean which is God.
"The dew is on the lotus; rise Great Sun,
And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.
Om Mani Padme Hum, the sunrise comes-
The dewdrop slips into the shining sea!"
THE NEW WOMAN.
BEAUTY AND BLOOMERS.
The new woman is the target at which editors and
artists are just now leveling a world of would-be wit and
abortive ridicule. She is usually depicted in the periodi-
cals as a biped of doubtful gender, who apes the customs
and clothing of creation's lords and aspires to manage the
political and social world to suit herself. She is supposed
to be intensely "strong-minded" and devoid of sentiment
as a bale of hay quite the antithesis of the soft, clinging
creature who once made glad the heart of man by hanging
her second providence upon him and sitting contentedly
down to the manipulation of buttons and the rearing of
babes. According to the analytical editors, she cares never
a copper for the command to be fruitful and multiply -is
simply an educated ice-berg who prefers billiards and bike-
ing to the triumphs of beauty, club life to domestic cares,
and would, if opportunity offered, use Hymen's torch in a
political parade and leave the later Adam without that
"helpmeet" which the good God gave him on observing
his utter inability to take care of himself.
The New Woman of the smart paragraph builders and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 269
box-wood butchers may be one differentiation of the genus;
but fortunately this species is about as rare as white black-
birds or editors with an idea above partisan politics. The
New Woman is really a very charming creature, and there
is little likelihood that she will become either too few or too
numerous. She is simply a hard-sensed young lady who
politely but pointedly declines to play second fiddle in the
great diapason of humanity to be bound by the foolish
fashions and inept customs that have cursed her sex for
sixty centuries. She does not object to matrimony, but
declines to regard the capture of some sap-headed dude
with a few dollars as the end and aim of her existence. Her
ideals of wifehood and motherhood are too exalted to permit
her sitting supinely down on the matrimonial block; like
Patience on a monument, and waiting for some bumptious
he-thing to straddle along who will consent to supply her
with board and clothes in consideration of the surrender
of her freedom and the debauchment of her beauty. She
prefers to gird up her patent health corset and go out into
the world to hustle her own hash until, from the great
Somewhere of her waking dreams, her ideal comes to make
of her a loving companion instead of a legal concubine.
Calphurnia will be Caesar's wife, meriting his confidence
'and dividing his care, rioting in his love and rich in his
respect, or she'll be naught to him.
Such is the New Woman, who stands forth in her
matchless beauty and modest pride, undaunted by the puny
arrows of a tribe of journalistic pigmies. For ages woman
was but man's plaything, her occupation the amusement of
his idle hours valuable chiefly for breeding purposes. The
highest educational advantages were denied her, the profes-
sions closed against her as an incapable. Her talents were
supposed to be small, and little opportunity was offered for
their enlargement. But as the world grew wiser it became
more liberal. One by one the foolish barriers that cir-
cumscribed her usefulness have fallen, and she has pressed
eagerly forward into the widening field. If she has not
proven herself man's intellectual peer she has ceased to be
a pensioner on his bounty, has demonstrated her ability
to earn her bread and with independence have come
grander ideals, loftier aims, nobler womanhood.
The real New Woman is self-reliant without being man-
nish, modest without prudery and companionable while
avoiding that familiarity which breeds contempt. But
there is quite a different creature abroad, upon which the
press delights to confer a title to which she can lay no
claim the fashionable butterfly and professional fad-chaser,
270 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
whose newness consists chiefly in novelty of dress, the busi-
ness of whose life is to make as liberal a display of her
personal charms as may be consistent with a kind of india-
rubber respectability. The first has demonstrated that
woman may possess brains; the latter has made it manifest
that she must have legs! The latter fact has long been
suspected even by the exoteric school of bashful bachelors.
It has been darkly hinted from time to time by divers sci-
entific gentlemen that woman is a bipedal being who
achieves locomotion by advancing one foot before the
other, instead of gliding through the air like a' gilded moth
or sliding about the surface of the earth like a drop of
quicksilver; but it remained for the fad-follower to put
her physique in evidence and thereby dispel all doubt.
Now that feminine underpinning is an accepted fact, a
truth revealed we may pause to consider whether we are
the happier for our new got knowledge. Candor compels the
confession that we are not particularly grateful to the fad-
follower for her startling exhibitions of locomotive loveli-
ness that tttiere may be too much even of a good thing.
The poet assures us that,
"Spring would be but gloomy weather
If there was nothing else but Spring."
And he might have told us, with equal truth, that an end-
less procession of perambulating living pictures would pall
on the ocular appetite and pro'duce that tired feeling. The
female limb is unquestionably a thing of beauty and a joy
forever; but we would have been far happier ihad the dizzy
fin de siecle devotee of fashion not called the world's atten-
tion to it. Had she kept it hidden we might, in the fullness
of time, have found it out ourselves and enjoyed the felicity
of a glad surprise. Her gratuitous anatomical exhibit
argues a lack of enterprise on the part of creation's lords
that is quite exasperating.
I have no desire to interfere with the sartorial liberty of
the ladies; I would simply call their attention to the fact
that a costume which half reveals, half conceals the female
form divine, is far more fetching than one which supplants
theories with conditions and deprives Fancy of her occu-
pation. The twinkle of a pretty foot peeping coyly forth
beneath a dainty petticoat; the fleeting glimpse of a well-
turned ankle in a billowy sea of lace were enough to make
a stoic grab a goose-quill and reel off erotic poetry by the
ream to> transform the veriest Reuben into a soulful Ana-
creon; but what minstrel, filled to overflowing with the di-
vine afflatus, could tune his lyre or build an Ella Wheeler
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 271
ode in honor of a pair of bloomers ? Why, at sight of such
an apparition immortal Pegasus would balk and buck like
Mark Twain's Mexican plug! Had Petrarch's Laura worn
pants the dago nightingale would' have come off his perch ;
had Heloise donned the divided skirt no heart-sore pilgrim
would pour his scalding tears into her storied urn; had
Helen of Troy paddled about the Isles of Greece in fin de
sicclc bathing-suit the Bard of Chios had not tuned his im-
mortal harp nor Priam's hoary head 'have sunk beneath
the sword'. Think of burning Sappho in tan-colored leg-
gings taking the Lover's Leap; of Bonnie Annie Laurie in
bloomers of Juliet with a sea-green patch on the rear ele-
vation of her scorched banana biking suit ! Had such mon-
strosities appeared on Parnassus, the muses would have
been stricken dumb perhaps have drowned themselves in
the Pierian Spring.
If the fashionable young female who is no more the
New Woman than she is the Old Adam is dressing to
please herself, we have nothing to say ; but if she is decking
out to gladden the hearts of the sterner sex we (hereby
advise her in strict confidence that, as the rival of the bal-
let-girls and vaudeville beer-slingers, she is a glittering
failure. Whether biking or surf-bathing, clucking at a
political hen convention or dress reform, congress, she is
an inartistic hermaphroditical hoo-doo that, while causing
the unskillful to laugh, must make the judicious grieve. In
matters sartorial progress and improvement are not always
synonyms. The abbreviated skirt may be more healthful
than the pyramidal petticoat ; but it makes a woman an
offensive freak, an eyesore to the artist, an uncanny night-
mare to all men with a correct conception of the eternal
fitness of things. The reckless display of personal charms
by the woman of fashion her double-entendre decollete
is not calculated to promote elevation of thought or purity
of action could occur only in a society already corrupt.
It may be urged in extenuation of the offense against
the canons of good taste that modesty in costume is a
mere matter of custom ; that had the ladies for a century or
so worn bloomers or even breeches the world would
consider it quite the proper thing because accustomed to
it; that had they suddenly exchanged such garb for the mod-
ern ball-room gown, all the prudes in bloomers or
breeches would have tearfully protested, and the female
pharisees with leathery arms and busts built like a jaun-
diced clap-board thanked God they were not as other peo*
pie. This may be true, for
"That monster custom, of habits devil,"
272 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
can inure us to almost anything, however outre or inar-
tistic. A man who had never seen a rose might regard a
red holly-hock as the acme of floral perfection; having
never seen a female figure tastefully draped, he
might contemplate even bloomers with satisfaction; but I
doubt if he could regard the wearer with that chivalric
adoration which has placed woman but little lower than the
angels. He would doubtless consider her "a jolly good
fellow," and enjoy her society to a certain extent; but
that courteous deference which distinguishes him could
scarce develop he would make few sacrifices for her sake.
Had such been the fashion, love would have remained but
lust and marriage simply a civil contract. Had Queen
Elizabeth worn bloomers, Sir Walter Raleigh Bright-have
bridged a mudpuddle for her with tfris costly cloak; but
more likely he would have told her to climb upon his back.
Lci-ander might have swam the tempestuous Hellespont to
bask in the smiles of a beauty clad only in breeches ; but I
think he would have waited for the boat.
SLAVE OR SOVEREIGN.
STATUS OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN.
[Synopsis of an address delivered by Mr. Brann, August 10, 1895.]
Fellow citizens: If I had a million o' money carefully
protected from the income tax by a plutocratic supreme
court I would probably not be here to inquire whether
you are Slaves or Sovereigns. And if you could draw your
check for seven figures with any probability of getting it
cashed you would not be here to answer. You'd do just
as Dives did: lean back in your luxurious chair and absorb
your sangaree, while Lazarus scratched his Populist fleas
on your front steps and exploited your garbage barrels for
bones. You'd turn up your patrician nose at the lowly
proletaire, and if he did but hint that, having created this
world's wealth, he was entitled to something better than
hand-outs, you'd have an anti-communistic cat-fit and de-
nounce him as an insolent hoodlum) who should be com-
fortably hanged. That's human nature to a hair, and you
are all human, I suppose even if the politicians do buy
you with gas and sell you for gold.
I tell you frankly that I'm complaining, not because of
the other fellow's colossal fortune, but because I can't
strike the plutocratic combination. I'm dreadfully anxious
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 273
to accumulate a modest fortune of about fifty millions
that I may build a comfortable orphan asylum for that vast
contingent of Democratic politicians whom, the next elec-
tion will deprive of their "pap."
I'm no philanthropist who's trying to reform the world
for the fun of the thing who's willing to starve to death
for the sake of an attractive tombstone. I want to so
amend industrial conditions that I won't have to 'hustle so
hard and so long between meals; and when they are
bettered for me they will be bettered for you, and for every
man who with pick or pen, brain or brawn honestly earns
his daily bread.
I want more holidays; more time to sit down and reflect
that it is good to be alive; more time to go fishing not
fishing for men, but for sure-enough suckers. Here in Amer-
ica if the average mortal aspires to fill a long-felt want
with first-class fodder, he's got to chase the almighty dol-
lar on week-days like a hungry coyote camping on the
trail of a corpulent jack-rabbit, and spend Sunday figur-
ing how to circumvent his fellow-citizen. Life with the
American people is one continual hurry and rush from the
cradle to the grave. We're born in a hurry, live by elec-
tricity and die with scientific expedition. Half of us don't
take time to become acquainted with our own 'families.
We've even got to courting by telephone, and I expect to
see some enterprising firm put up lover's kisses in tablet
form, so that they can be carried in the vest pocket and
absorbed while we figure cent per cent or make out a
mortgage.
For a score of years I had been listening to the boast
of the American people that they were Sovereigns by right
divine, and at last it occurred to me to swear out a search-
warrant for my crown and go on a still-hunt for my scep-
tre ; but soon found that the jewels of my throne-room, the
rod of my authority and my purple robe of office were con-
spicuous by their absence and I wasn't married at the time
either. The American citizen is a sovereign, not to the ex-
tent of his voice and vote, but to the exact amount of Uncle
Sam's illuminated mental anguish plasters at his command.
Money is lord paramount, Mammon our prophet, our god
the golden calf.
The dollar is indeed "almighty." It's the Archimedean
lever that lifts the ill-bred boor into select society and
places the ignorant sap-head in the United State Senate.
It makes presidents of "stuffed prophets," governors of
274 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
intellectual geese, philosophers of fools and gilds infamy
itself with supernal glory. It wrecks the altars of inno-
'cence and pollutes the fanes of the people, breaks the sword
of Justice and binds the Goddess of Liberty with chains of
gold. It is lord of the land, the uncrowned king of the
commonwealth, and its whole religious creed is comprised
in the one verse, "To him that hath shall bei given and he
shall have abundance, while from him that hath not shall
be taken even that which he hath."
"We, the people, rule" in the conventions; but our del-
egated lawmakers have a different lord. In 1892 we de-
manded "tariff reform" with a whoop that shook, the im-
perial rafters of heaven, and declared for the minting of
gold and silver without discrimination against either metal.
But our so-called "public servants," instead of hastening
to obey our behests, spent months manufacturing excuses
for disregarding their duty. Placed between the devil of
the money power and the deep sea of public opinion, they
wobbled in and they wobbled out like a drunken boa-con-
strictor taking its jag to a gold cure joint. They were like
the little boy who put his trousers on t'other side to we
couldn't tell whether they were going to school or coming
home. But our doubts were all dispelled last November.
They were coming home and they were coming to stay.
We are the fellows who were going to school to that
school of experience where fools are educated.
Slave or Sovereign? The last is an individual entity, a
controlling power, his will is law. The first goes and
comes, fetches and carries at the command of a master;
creating wealth he may not possess, bound by laws he
does not approve, dependent upon the pleasure of others
for the privilege of breaking bread. Is not the latter con-
dition that of a majority of the American people to-day?
Are they not at the subsequent end of a financial hole, the
sides soaped and never a ladder in sight?
In a country so favored a veritable garden of the gods,
where every prospect pleases and not even the politician
is wholly vile the lowliest laborer should be a lord, and
each and all find life well worth the living. But it is not
so. People starve while sunny savannas, bursting with fat-
ness, yield no food; they wander houseless thro' summer's
heat and winter's cold, while great mountains of granite
comb the fleecy clouds and the forest monarch measures
strength with the thunderstorm; they flee naked and
ashamed from the face of their fellow-men while fabrics
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 275
moulder in the market-place and the song of the spindle is
silent; they freeze while beneath their feet are countless
tons of coal incarnate kisses of the sun-god's fiery youth;
they have never a spot of earth on which to plant a vine and
watch their children play where they may rear with loving
hands lowly roof and rule, lords of a little world hemmed in
by the sacred circle of a home ; yet the common heritage in
the human race lies fair before them and there is room
enough.
The people of Texas do not realize how terrible is the
industrial condition of the world to-day how wide the
gulf that separates Dives and Lazarus, how pitiful the
poverty of millions of their fellow men. The Texas mer-
chant complains of dull trade, the farmer of low prices,
the mechanic of indifferent wages: yet Texas is the most
favored spot on the great round earth to-day. I defy you
to find another portion of the globe of equal area and pop-
ulation where the wealth is so well distributed, where so
few people go hungry to bed without prospect of break-
fast. But the grisly gorgon of Greed and the gaunt spec-
tre of Need are coming West and South in the wake of the
Star of Empire. Already Texas has begun to breed mil-
lionaires and mendicants, sovereigns and slaves. Already
we have an aristocracy of money, in which wealth makes
the man and want of it the fellow, and year by year it be-
comes easier for Dives to add to his hoard and for Lazarus
to starve to death.
We appeal to New York for capital with which to de-
velop our resources ; and New York has it in abundance
countless millions she is eager to let out at usury; yet it is
estimated that ten thousand children perish in that city
every year of the world for lack of food and how many
are kept alive by the bitter bread of a contemptuous char-
ity God only knows. In one year 3,000 children were de-
barred from the public schools of Chicago because of lack
of clothing to cover their nakedness and Chicago boasts
herself "the typical American city." The despised Salva-
tion Army trying to feed a thousand homeless and hungry
men on the sandlots of San Francisco proves that already
the curse has travelled across the continent.
And people who are not only permitted to run at large,
but actually elected to office, prattle of "overproduction"
while people are starving in nakedness; proposes to elim-
inate pauperism and inaugurate the industrial millennium
by placing fiddle-strings on the free-list or increasing the
tariff-tax on toothpicks to relieve the country of the com-
276 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mercial jim-jams by means of the gold cure. And the fool-
killer still procrastinates!
The American citizen is called a sovereign by those
patriots who are preparing to sacrifice themselves on the
altar of a nice fat office. And perhaps he is; 'but I'm free.
We are frequently told that the condition of labor is bet-
ter -to-day than a century ago. That is half a truth, yet
wholly a falsehood. A century ago the workman knew
naught of many comforts and conveniences he now en-
joys when he happens to have a job; but that was one
age, this quite another. Progress gives no man new wants,
and the luxuries of one generation become the necessities
of the next. To deny this to limit the laborer to actual
necessaries as measured by a former age were to relegate
him back to barbarism, to nomadism and nakedness. If
we should be content with what our fathers had, then they
should have been satisfied with the comforts enjoyed by
their progenitors, and so on back until man digs roots
with his finger nails, attires himself in a streak of red
paint for winter overcoat and a few freckles for summier
ulster. It is by comparison with his fellows and not with
his fathers that man determines whether he's fortunate or
unfortunate whether he's receiving his proper proportion
of the world's increase of wealth. A century ago t'here
was no such glaring inequality as now exists. There were
no fifty million dollar fortunes and no free-soup joints. If
the workman's piano was a jews-harp and his Pullman
car a spavined cayuse, his employer was not erecting pal-
aces in which to stable his blooded stock, nor purchasing
dissolute princes for his daughters to play at marriage and
divorce with. If the farmer's wife wore linsey-woolsey
and went barefoot to save her shoes, her neighbor did not
import $5,000 gowns from "Paree" and put jeweled col-
lars on her pet cur. The difference in the condition of Dives
and Lazarus is more sharply defined than ever before. It
is not so much the pitiful poverty of the many as the 1 enor-
mous wealth of the few that is fostering discontent. Pride
dallying with Sin begot Death; willful waste is breeding
Anarchy in the Womb of Want. The lords and ladies of
the house of Have revel in luxury such as Lucullus never
knew, while within sound of their feasting gaunt children
fight like famished beasts for that which the breakfast gar-
bage barrels afford. Private fortunes make the famed
wealth of Lydia's ancient kings appear but a beggar's patri-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 277
mony, while brawny giants must beg or steal and starving
mothers give the withered breast to dying babes.
Labor now seeks employment, not as a right, but as a
privilege. It has come to such a pitiful pass in this "land
of liberty," this "refuge of the world's oppressed," that
to afford a man an opportunity to employ his strength or
skill in the creation of wealth, a portion of which he may
retain for his own support, is regarded rather as a privi-
lege than a free contract between American Sovereigns
an act of charity, for which the recipient should be duly
grateful.
No man can be a freeman while dependent upon the
good will of another for his bread and butter. He may be
a Sovereign dejure, but he's a Slave de facto. And under
present conditions the more labor-saving machinery he in-
vents, the tighter he rivets his chains.
We had hoped and believed that human ingenuity was
about to lift the curse laid on Adam by his angry Lord; the
angel of Intellect to reimparadise the poor slave, place his
fetters on nature's tireless forces and declare that never
again should bread be eaten in the sweat of the brow; but
man proposes and is sued for breach of promise.
Were a man to declare labor-saving machinery and the
general development of the country a curse to the poor, he
would be branded as a "moss-back" or budding candidate
for Bedlam; yet it is unquestionably true that the further
the average individual gets from the so-called blessings of
civilization the less he is affected by our boasted indus-
trial system the smaller his danger of starving to death.
Many of us can remember when we had little labor-sav-
ing machinery in Texas; when railways were scarce as
consistent Christians at a colored camp-meeting, goods
were carried from the coast on the backs of burros and a
full-dress suit consisted chiefly of buckskin breeches and a
brace of angel makers. And we remember also that a
pauper was a curiosity; that the very cowboys played poker
at $10 ante with the sky for limit, the common laborer
carried coin in his belt and the merchant had money to
burn. Texas has developed wonderfully during the last
few decades. We now have improved machinery and ex-
tensive poor-farms; railways and political rings; a $3,000,-
ooo capitol and an army of unemployed. We have built
fine schools and finer churches, made the black man our
political brother and bought his vote. We have exchanged
our buckskin for broadcloth, our hair-raising profanity for
the hypocrite's whine, straight corn-juice for tilie cham-
pagne-jag and the hip-pocket court for the jackass verdict
278 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of the petit jury. But the cowboy now plays penny-ante
on credit or shoots craps for small coin; the common
laborer carries in his belt only a robust appetite, while the
merchant who dodges bankruptcy for a dozen years con-
siders himself the special favorite of fortune.
And what is true of Texas is true in greater or less de-
gree of every State in the Union. Development, so dear
to the heart of the patriotic and public-spirited citizen, has
a tendency to transform an independent and moderately
prosperous people into masters and slaves. But this is not
the fault of labor-saving machinery, nor of capital, nor of
development by itself considered. The more wealth labor
creates, the more it should enjoy. When the reverse is the
case distribution is at fault.
The substitution of expensive machinery for hand-labor
eliminated the independent artisan. His productive power
was multiplied; but his independence his ability to
care for himself without the co-operation of large capital
was gone. The wheelwright could not return to his shop
nor the shoemaker to his last and live in comfort. Compe-
tition with the iron ringers of the great factory were im-
possible. Labor must now await the pleasure of capital
the creature has become lord of its creator. Tfhe fierce
competition of idle armies forces wages down, and slowly
but surely the workman is sinking back to the level occu-
pied before the cunning brain of ; 'genius harnessed the
lightning to his lathe and gave him nerves of steel and
muscles of brass with which to fight his battle for bread.
With the improved machinery with which he is provided,
the American workman can create as much wealth in a
week as he need consume in a month; but he goes down
on his knees and thanks God and the plutocracy for an
opportunity to toil 300 days in the year for a bare subsist-
ence.
Unfortunately, I have no catholicon for every industrial
ill but the political drug-stores are full of 'em. All you've
got to do is to select your panacea, pull the cork and
let peace and plenty overflow a grateful land so we're
told. Instead of the cure-me-quicks prescribed by the
economic M. D.'s, I believe that our industrial system has
been doped with entirely too many drugs. I'd throw
physic to the dogs, exercise a little common-sense and
give nature a chance. There's an old story of an Arkan-
saw doctor who invariably threw his patients into fits be-
cause he was master of that complaint; but the economic
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 279
M. D.'s can't even cure fits. When they attempt it the
patient goes into convulsions.
Instead of going to so much trouble to bar out cheap
goods by means of tariff walls, I'd bar out cheap men. If
you're making monkey-wrenches at $2 a day and some fel-
low abroad is building 'em for 50 cents, your boss comes
to you and says:
"Jim, we've got to have a tariff to keep out the product
of pauper labor or our nether garment's ripped from nar-
rative to neck-band. I can't pay you $2 and compete with
an employer who pays but 50 cents."
That sounds reasonable and you swing back on the G.
O. P. tow-line and lay a tariff-tax on monkey-wrenches
that looms up like an old-time Democratic majority in
Texas. And while you are burning ratification tar-bar-
rels and trying to shake hands with yourself in the mirror
at the Mechanic's Exchange, that 50 cent fellow crosses
the briny and robs you o>f your bench. Your old employer
is protected all right, but where do you come in? You
don't come in; you simply stand out in the industrial nor-
ther. You count the railroad ties from town to town while
your wife takes in washing, your daughter goes tol work in
a factory at two dollars a week and your son grows up an
ignorant Arab and gets into ward politics or the peniten-
tiary. You can't compete with tlie importation, because
you've been bred to a higher standard of living. You
must have meat three times a day, a newspaper at break-
fast and a new book or the Iconoclast after supper.
You must have your plunge bath and spring bed, your
clean shave and Sunday shirt. How: can you hope to hold
your job when a man is bidding for it who takes up his
belly-band for breakfast, dines on slumgullion and sucks
his breath for supper; to whom literature is an unknown
luxury, a bath a deplorable accident, and a crummy old
blanket a -comfortable bed ? You can't do it, and if you'll
take the Apostle's advice you'll quit trying-.
No; I wouldn't prevent the immigration of worthy Euro-
peans men of intelligence, who dignify labor. We have
millions such in America, and they are most estimable
citizens. Our ancestors were all Europeans, and that
man who is not proud of his parentage should have been
born a beast. But I'd knock higher than Gilderoy's kite
the theory that America should forever be the dumping-
ground for foreign filth that people will be warmly wel-
comed here -whom no other country wants and the devil
wouldn't have.
We have made American citizenship entirely too cheap.
280 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
We permit every creature that can poise on its hind legs
and call itself a man, to sway the sceptre of American
Sovereignty to become an important factor in the forma-
tion of our public polity; and then, with this venal vote on
the one hand, eager to be bought, and the plutocrat on the
other anxious to buy, we wonder why it is that the invari-
able tendency of our laws is to make the rich man a prince
and the poor man a Populist why we are "great only in
that strange spell, a name."
In this work of reform we've got to begin at the bottom
with the body politic itself. You can't make a silk purse
of a sow's ear, nor Sovereigns of men who were born to be
Slaves. We've got to grade up or we're gone. Only super-
ior Intelligence is capable of self-government 'Ignorance
and Tyranny go hand in hand. You may theorize until
the Bottomless Pit is transformed into a skating park;
you may vote tariffs high or low and money hard or soft;
you may inaugurate the Single-Tax or transform the
American Republic into a commune, but the condition of
the hewers of wood and the) drawers of water will never be
permanently bettered while Ignorance and Vice have ac-
cess to the ballot-box.
We have carried the enchanting doctrine of "political
equality" entirely too far and are paying the penalty.
The rebound from the monstrous doctrine of the divine
right of monarchs has hurried us into equal error. Dis-
f listed with the rottenness of the established religion, the
'rench people once crowned a courtesan as Goddess of
Reason; maddened by the insolence of 'hereditary official-
ism, our fathers placed the rod of power in the hoodlum's
reckless hand and bound upon the stupid; brow of hopeless
nescience Columbia's imperial crown. That the greater
must guide the lesser intelligence is nature's immutable
law. To deny this were to question our own right to rule
the beast and God's authority to reign King of all mankind.
Self-preservation will yet compel us to guard the sacred
privileges of American sovereignty as jealously as did
Rome her citizenship.
Do this, and all other needed reforms will follow as surely
and as swiftly as the day-god follows the dawn. Knowl-
edge is power. When those who vote fully understand
that every dollar expended by government, federal, state
or municipal, must be created by the common people that
first or last, labor must furnish it forth 'we'll cease having
billion-dollar Congresses. We'll cease paying a hundred
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 281
and forty millions per annum in federal pensions; we'll
cease wasting a King's ransom annually in pretending to
"improve" intermittent creeks and impossible harbors
solely for political navigation; we'll cease borrowing
money in time of peace to bolster up that foolish financial
fetich known as the "gold-reserve;" we'll cease making so
many needless laws and paying aspiring patriots fat sal-
aries to harass us with their enforcement; we'll cease ex-
empting from taxation the half-million dollar church and
laying a heavier mulct on the mechanic's cottage and the
widow's cow; we'll cease paying preachers five dollars a
minute to stand up in our legislative halls and insult Al-
might God with perfunctory prayers; we'll cease build-
ing so many palatial prisons where thieves and thugs ma)'
be cared for at the expense of honest people, but will
divide criminals into two classes those who slhould be per-
emptorily hanged, and those who should be whipped and
turned loose to hustle their own hash. Nothing knocks
the sawdust out of false sentiment so quickly as the reali-
zation that it's an expensive luxury and that we must pay
the freight.
Billion-dollar Congresses, eh? Do you know what that
means? There are less than fifteen million wealth creators
in this country, and the last farthing" of it comes out of
their pockets something over $66 apiece! If you had it
in silver dollars and I suppose that most of you would
accept silver you couldn't count it in a century. Lay the
coins edge to edge and they'll belt the world. Pile them
on top of each other and you'll have a silver shaft more
than 1750 miles high. Sand your hands and climb it.
Perchance from the top you'll see many things among
others what is oppressing the poor. And while up in that
rarified atmosphere, where the vision is good and thinking
probably easy, you will look around for those other
pyramids of expense annually erected by state, county and
municipal government, then come down firm in tihe faith
that if this isn't a great government it ought to be, consider-
ing what it costs. No wonder the workman carries in his
pocket only an elegant assortment of holes!
We're governed entirely too much Officialism is becom-
ing a veritable Old Man of the Sea on the neck of Labor's
Sinbad. About every fifth man you meet is a public ser-
vant of some sort, and you cannot get married or buried,
purchase a drink or own a dog except with a by-your-leave
to the all-pervading law of the land. In some states sui-
cide itself is an infraction of the criminal code, and if the
police don't cut you down in time to put you in jail the
282 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
preachers will send you to hell. Every criminal law this
state and county and city needs can be printed in a book
no larger than the Iconoclast, and that so plain that he
who runs may read and reading understand. And when
so printed and so understood, without the possibility of
misconstruction, they could be enforced at one-fifth the
cost of the present judicial failure. We have so many
laws and so much legal machinery that when you throw: a
man into the judicial hopper not even an astrologer can
tell whether he'll come out a horse-thief or only a homi-
cide or whether the people will weary of waiting on the
circumlocution office and take a change of venue to Judge
Lynch.
This can never be a land of religious liberty the atheist
can never be considered as on a political parity with his
ultra-orthodox brother until w,e compel church property
to bear its pro rata of the public burdens.
And right here let me say a word about the "Apostle."
I have been accused by people for whom no cherry-tree
blooms or little hatchet is ground of being a rank atheist
and a red-flag anarchist. It has been broadly intimated
that I'm trying to rip the Christian religion up by the
roots, rob trusting hearts of their hope and deprive the
preacher of his daily bread. Now I might just as well
confess to you that I'm no angel. If I were I'd fly out of
Texas till the bifurcated Democratic party has another
"harmony" deal. When you hear people denouncing me
as an atheist, just retire to your closet and pray, "Father
forgive them, for they know not what they do." And you
might add, that nobody cares. No mortal son of Adam's
misery can produce one line I ever wrote, or quote one
sentence I ever uttered, disrespectful of any religion and
that's more than you can say of most of the ministers.
But it is not right, it is not just that the little holdings
of the poor should be relentlessly taxed and costly tem-
ples exempted palatial edifices in which polite society
pretends to worship One who broke bread with beggars
and slept in the brush. Such an arrangement signifies
neither good religion nor good sense. It's the result of
sanctified selfishness. I believe in taxing luxuries, and a
costly church is not a necessity. At least Christ did not
think so, for he never built one.
Congregations that can afford to erect fine churches and
export saving grace to the pagans of foreign climes, can
afford to pay taxes and thereby help American heathen
put of the hole. A million men out of employment, pac-
ing our streets in grim despair; a million children coming
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 283
up in ignorance and crime; a million women hesitating
between the wolf of want and the abundance of infamy,
and the church supposed to be God's ministering angel
crying, ''Give, give! If you can't give much, give little.
Remember the widow's mite" so acceptable to a pauper
deity.
Give for what? To build fine temples in whose sacred
shadows will lurk the gaunt spectre of Famine and the
grisly gorgon of Crime. To buy grand organs and costly
bells to peal praises to One who had nowhere to lay his
head. To pay stall-fed preachers five, ten, twenty thousand
dollars a year to expound the doctrine of a poor carpen-
ter who couldn't have kept a silver dollar in his jeans a
single day while there was poverty and suffering in the
world.
While the wealth-producer is robbed to pension million-
aires who suffered mental anguish because of the draft, and
to administer worse than useless laws, still the amount so
unnecessarily abstracted would be but a mere bagatelle if
labor was steadily employed and reaped its just reward.
With the mighty energies of this nation in full play and
the wealth remaining with its producers, we could give
even all the candidates an office, with plenty to get and
little to do, and still have pie in the pantry and corn in the
crib. There is something more the matter than govern-
mental waste there's something radically wrong.
In tracing the causes of panics and periods of business
depression, we invariably find our currency more or less at
fault. Now don't get frightened. I'm not going to dose
you 'with free silver nor give you the gold cure. This is
neither Coin's Financial School nor a gold-bug incubator.
The currency question is one you know all about. Every-
body does especially the corner-grocery politician. He
understands it from A to Izzard knows almost as much
about it as a hello-girl does of the nature of electricity.
Prof. Jevon truly says that "a kind of intellectual vertigo
appears to sieze people when they talk of money." Per-
haps the Goddess of Liberty on the silver dollar has 'em
Trilbyized.
We hear a great deal of late about the "science of
money." It's supposed to 'be something very esoteric
something that a fellow can only master by drawing heav-
ily on his gray matter, by working his think-machine up
to the limit and sweating blood. Now let me tell you that
there is no "science of money," any more than there's a
284 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
science of harvesting hoop-poles or fighting flies. When a
man begins to give you an interminable song and dance
about the science of money, just you send for the police
and have him locked up as a dangerous lunatic.
Here's a ticket good for so many meals at a restaurant
an order for so much wealth ; and here's a silver dollar
no 'tisn't; it's a check on a-er on a "resort;" in fact, on a
saloon; an I. O. U. for 12 1-2 cents, the price of a cigar
or something I suppose. "Man should not live by bread
alone." Now what's the difference between this ticket
and check and the currency issued by the government?
Simply this : These are the I. O. U.'s of individual's money,
the I. O. U.'s of the entire American people. These are
orders for certain kinds of wealth at particular places;
money is an order for all kinds of wealth at any place
within the jurisdiction of the federal government. This
ticket is the check of one American, drawn against his
personal wealth and credit; this bill is the check of all
Americans, drawn against the collective wealth and credit
of the nation. That's all the difference between a cock-
tail check and a coin, 'between a meal ticket and a ten
dollar bill. Neither is worth a rap unless it can be
redeemed. Like sanctification caught at a camp-meeting,
there must be a hereafter to it or it's a humbug. But don't
you metallists take that as a premise and jump at conclu-
sions or you're liable to sprain your logical sequence. What
kind of redemption did I have in view when I acquired this
clie I mean this ticket? I expected that it would be re-
deemed in something that would expand my surcingle and
enable me to cast a shadow in eggs and oleomargarine,
corn-bread and buttermilk. And if so redeemed on demand,
is it not a good ticket is it not worth its face? What kind
of redemption did I expect when I acquired this bill? I
expected it to be redeemed in the necessaries of life or
possibly the luxuries. Who issued it? The government.
Who's the government? The people. And when the peo-
ple have given me bread and butter, tobacco and transporta-
tion, clothing and cocktails, and afforded me police protec-
tion to the extent of my ten dollars hasn't it been redeemed
in the manner I anticipated in the only way in which
money can be redeemed ? If I exchange this bill for a gold
eagle what have I got? Another governmental drink-
check or meal-ticket that awaits redemption. And there
you have the whole "science of money," over which poli-
ticians have so long puzzled their brains that their think-
tanks have got full of logical wiggletails. A dollar, whether
it be made of gold, silver or paper, is simply an order which
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST. 285
the people in their official capacity give against all the
wealth, actual and potential, of the nation; and unless the
holder can get it promptly redeemed in food and clothing,
he's in a terribly bad fix.
Every few years our industrial system gets the jim-jams.
Capital flies to cover, factories close and labor goes tramp-
ing across the country seeking honest employment and re-
ceiving a warm welcome from militia companies with
shotted guns. Cheerful idiots begin to prattle of "over-
production," the economic M. D.'s to refurbish all the old
remedies, from conjure-bags to communism. They all
know exactly what caused the "crisis" and what to do for
it ; but despite the doctors the patient usually survives.
And the M. D. who succeeds in cramming his pet panacea
down its throat claims all the credit for the recovery. We
are slowly emerging from the crash of '93, and the cuckoos
are cock-sure that Cleveland hoodooed with that financial
rabbit-foot known as the gold-reserve that a country
fairly bursting with wealth was saved from the demnition
bowwows by the blessed expedient of going into debt ; that
labor found salvation by shouldering an added burden in
the shape of interest-bearing bonds. Hereafter when a
burro tries to lie down beneath a load that's making him
bench-legged, we'll just pile a brick house or two on top of
him, and, with ears and tail erect, he'll strike a Nancy
Hanks gait and come cavorting down the home stretch.
When a statesman can see such things as that while wide
awake and perfectly sober, he ought to consult a doctor.
No wonder the Democratic party split wide open trans-
formed from an ascendent sun into a bifurcated Biela's
comet, wandering the Lord knows whither.
The gold reserve, we are told, is to "protect the credit of
our currency." Protect it from whom? You and I are
making no assault upon it wouldn't hurt it for the world.
When we get a paper or silver dollar we don't trot around
to the treasury to have it "redeemed" in a slug of yellow
metal we make a bee line for the grocery store and have
it redeemed in a side o' bacon. Who is it that chisels deso-
lation into the blessed gold reserve the so-called "bul-
warks of our currency ?" The fellows who want bonds the
capitalistic, the creditor class; the men who own the
mortgages and have millions of dollars corded up in
bank the men who have most to lose by any bobble in the
credit of our currency. And every time the capitalist
286 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tries to hoist himself with his own petard, the administra-
tion smothers the blaze with a block of interest-bearing
bonds. If he wants to make a sky-rocket of himself, let
him kerosense his coat-tails and apply the match. If the
gold reserve were really necessary to the credit of our cur-
rency, capitalists would no more make war upon it than
they would bestride a buzz-saw making- a million revolu-
tions a minute. Instead of systematically draining it they
would, whenever It struck "the danger-line," gather all
the gold they could get and send it on to Washington.
The capitalists are not crazy; they've simply got a soft
snap in that "bulwark" business and are working it for all
it's worth.
Calico is sold by the yard, kerosene by the gallon, coffee
by the pound. These measures are immutable, and those
who buy and sell by them make their contract in perfect
confidence. But suppose they altered from day to day or
from year to year, the yard ranging from 25 to 50 inches,
the pound from 10 to 20 ounces; would our exchanges be
effected without much friction, think you? Would not
such a ridiculous system of weights and measures para-
lyze exchange and demoralize industry? Would not those
who could juggle the system to suit themselves buying
by a long and selling by a short yard accumulate colossal
fortunes at the expense of the common people? Would
we not have "panics" in plenty and "depressions" galore?
Well, that is exactly what is happening to the dollar, our
measure of value, the most important of all our trade tools.
And mark you, a change in the purchasing power of the
dollar is equivalent to an alteration of every weight and
measure employed by commerce. Understand? When
the purchasing power of the dollar expands or contracts it
has the same effect on exchange as would the expansion
or contraction of the yard, the gallon and the pound.
A shifting measure of value is the nigger in our indus-
trial woodpile. We have got to have a measure of value
that's as immutable as our measure of quantity; a dollar
as reliable as an official pound; a dollar that's the same
yesterday, and to-day and forever, before we see the last
of these panics and periods of business depression. We
have got to have a currency that will adapt itself auto-
matically and infallibly to the requirements of commerce
that will constitute an ever-effective exchange medium be-
fore we can obtain a smooth-working industrial machine
and the maximum employment of labor.
We know frfom experience that gold will not supply us
with such a currency, that silver will not do it, that bimet-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 287
allism will not do it that greenbackism, as we understand
the term, will not come within a mile of it. Then what
will do it? That's the problem. Solve it, and you forever
'put an end to commercial panics in a land of plenty; you
deprive capital of its power to oppress labor; you assure
industry a constant friend where it has so often found an
insidious foe. Solve it and Columbia can furnish happy
homes for half the world homes unhaunted by the wolf
of want, but crowned with sweet content and gilded with
freedom's glory.
For a century economists have been seeking the solution
of this all-important problem. Even conservative old
Adam Smith dreamed of the emancipation of the world
from the multifarious ills of metallic money ; but we still
cling with slavish servility to the silver of Abraham and
the gold of Solomon.
I do not claim to have found the philosopher's stone, for
which so many wiser men have sought in vain; but the
currency plan I proposed in 1891 and which was again
outlined in the Iconoclast for May of this year has been
carefully examined by the ablest financiers of Europe and
America, and they have been unable to point out a funda-
mental fault. It is known as the interconvertible bond-cur-
rency plan, by which our circulating media would be bot-
tomed on the entire wealth of the nation instead of upon
fragments of metal of fluctuating value ; by which the vol-
ume of the currency would depend, not upon the fecundity
of the mines, the fiat of Congress or the greed of Wall
street, but upon the needs of commerce itself. By this plan
the proportion between the money-work to be done and the
money available to do it is always the same; hence it
would afford an immutable measure of value. In studying
the plan it is well to bear in mind that our foreign trade
that bogy-man of the metallists has no more to do
with our currency than with our pint cups and bushel-
baskets no more than with our language and religion ;
that we can pay our foreign debts and collect our foreign
credits only in commodities; that the prattle indulged in
by the metallists anent "money that is good the world
oVer' is mere goose-speech that there is no such money.
We buy and sell with England and France to the extent
of tens of millions annually ; yet I haven't seen a British
guinea or a French franc in fifteen years. And if you
had a foreign coin and should go around to a resort, and
call for a glass of er of buttermilk, and plank the fittle
288 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
stranger down on the counter, the party in the white apron
and Alaska dazzler would say:
"Wot yer givin' us?"
You'd reply : "I'm giving you gold money good the
world over."
" Wot is it watch charm? Dis ain't no pawn shop."
"But that's money."
"Eh?"
"Money gold coin that maketh the heart glad."
"Wot kind o' money?"
"It's a British guinea."
"Well, why don't you go to Great Britain to blow your-
self?"
"But my dear sir, this is money of final payment. This
is value itself. This does not depend on the stamp of gov-
ernment, but circulates throughout the world on its intrinsic
merit."
"Well, it don't circulate in this joint. See?
Slam your theories up against conditions before you tie
to them.
You all know that in this country there should be no
such thing as able-bodied pauperism. You know that un-
til the last arable acre is brought to the highest possible
cultivation, every mine developed, every forest made to
contribute to the creature comforts of man, there should be
remunerative work for all. You know that, with the aid
of wealth-creating machinery every laborer should be able
to acquire a competence to comfort his declining days.
You know that until Need is satisfied and Greed is gorged
there can be no such thing as overproduction that under
normal conditions when there's a plethora of necessaries,
the surplus energy of the nation turns to the creation of
luxuries and the standard of living advances. You know
that with such wonderful resources, touched by the magic
wand of genius, the golden age of which poets have dream-
ed and for which philanthropists have prayed, should be even
at our doors.
I hope to contribute in some slight degree to the estab-
lishment of conditions that will enable us to utilize to the
utmost the free gifts of a gracious God ; to the proper dis-
tribution of wealth; to the emancipation of labor, not by
the law of blind force, but enlightened self-interest not
by riotous revolution, but peaceful evolution. I want to
see every American Citizen in very truth a Sovereign, to
whom life is a joy instead of a curse. I want to see every
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
rag transformed into a royal robe, every hovel into a cul-
tured home. I want to hasten, if by ever so little, the day
when we can boast with the proud sons of imperial Rome,
that to be an American is greater than to be a king.
And when we so amend industrial conditions that each
can find employment at profitable prices, we do more to
eliminate crime and foster morality than have all the
prophets and preachers, from Melchizedeck the mythical to
Talmage the turgid.
No man can be either a patriot or a consistent Christian
on an empty stomach he's merely a savage animal, a
dangerous beast. You must get a square meal inside of a
man and a clean shirt outside of him before he's fit sub-
ject for saving grace. You must give him a bath before
he's worth baptizing. And when you get him clean and
well clothed, fed and housed as a reward of his own honest
industry, he's not far from the Kingdom of God. But
if you w r ant to degrade a people beyond redemption ; if you*
want to transform them into contemptible peons and
whining hypocrites who encumber the earth like so much
unclean vermin, educate them to feed on the crumbs from
Dives* banquet-board and accept his cast-off clothing with
obsequious thankfulness.
The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and
the impoverishment of the common people until it was the
bread of charity or the blood of the revolution, has ever
been the herald of moral decay and of national death. So
passed the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome,
and, if we may judge the future by the past, so will perish
the greatest republic that ever gleamed like a priceless
jewel on the skeleton hand of Time. Self-interest, human-
ity, patriotism, religion itself, admonish us to weigh well
the problem of the hour a problem born of human prog-
ress, forced upon us by the mighty revolution wrought in
the industrial world by the giant Steam and that prob-
lem is: Shall the average American Citizen be a Slave or
a Sovereign?
Don't imagine for a moment that I'm an anarchist
that I'm going to wind up this seance by unfurling the
red flag and throwing a hat-full of bombs. I admit that I
haven't much respect for law there's so much of it that
when I come to spread my respect over the entire lot it's
about as thin as one of Sam Jones' sermons. Still, I don't
believe in strikes, and riots and bloodshed. I'm for peace
peace in its most virulent form. I've had a sneaking
respect for Cleveland ever since he employed a substitute
to put a kibosh on the Southern Confederacy while he re-
200 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mained at home to play pinocle with the pretty girls. He
may not be much of a statesman in time of peace, but
there's no picnic ants on his judgment in time of war.
It is time that capital and labor realized that their in-
terests are really commutual, as interdependent as the
brain and the body ; time they ceased their fratricidal strife
and, uniting their mighty forces under the flag of Prog-
ress, completed the conquest of the world and doomed
Poverty, Ignorance and Vice hell's great triumvirate to
banishment eternal. Unless labor is employed, capital
cannot increase it can 'only concentrate. Unless prop-
erty rights are held inviolable and capital thereby encour-
aged to high enterprise, labor is left without a lever with
which to lift itself to perfect life and must sink back to
barbarism.
It is time that American citizens of alleged intelligence
ceased trailing blindly in the wake of partisan band-
wagons and began to seriously consider the public welfare
time they realized that the people were not made for
parties, but parties for the people, and refuse to sacrifice
their patriotism on the unclean altar of partisan slavery.
Blind obedience to party fiat; the division of the people
of one great political family into hostile camps ; subjec-
tion of the public interest to partisan advantage; placing
the badge of party servitude above the crown of American
sovereignty the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division
above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting
unity have brought the first nation of all the world to the
very brink of destruction.
It is difficult for people here in Texas to understand the
industrial condition of the American nation to-day ; to ap-
preciate the dangers upon which it is drifting. We are
too apt to imagine everybody as prosperous and conserva-
tive as ourselves ; or if not so, it's because they do not vote
the Democratic ticket that panacea for all the ills that
flesh is heir to. Here in Texas we have hung our second
providence on the Democratic party it has become a re-
ligion with us. If a man, is orthodox in his political faith
all things are forgiven him; but if there's any doubt about
his Democracy we are inclined to regard him as an alien,
if not an anarchist. Most of us enjoy the shadow of our
own vine and fig tree which it is impossible to mortgage.
We feed three times a day, have a cocktail every morning,
a clean shirt occasionally, and even when cotton goes so
low it doesn't pay for the pans-green to poison the worms,
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 291
we blame it on the Lord instead of on our political leaders.
But it's different in other sections of the Union.
America contains more than a million as desperate men
as ever danced the Carmagnole or shrieked with brutal
joy when the blood of French aristocrats reddened the
guillotine. The dark alleys and unclean dives of our great
cities are crowded with dangerous sans-cullotte, and our
highways with hungry men eager for bread though the
world blaze for it. Pauperism is rampant, the criminal
classes increasing and everywhere the serpent of Socialism
is leaving it's empoisoned slime. Suppose that these des-
perate elements find a determined leader a modern
Marat, who will make the most of his opportunities for
evil: how many of that vast contingent now clinging
with feeble grasp to the rotten skirts of a doubtful respecta-
bility, would be swept into the seething vortex of un-
bridled villainy? Note the failure of public officials to pro-
tect corporate property ; the necessity of calling for federal
bayonets and batteries to suppress labor riots ; the dan-
gerous unrest of the common people ; the sympathy of the
farmer that Atlas upon whose broad shoulders rests our
political and industrial world with every quasi-military
organization that throws down the gage of battle to
the powers that be, then tell me, if you can, where Dives
may look for defenders should the rabble rise in its wrath,
the bullet supplant the ballot in the irrepressible conflict
between the Cormorant and the Commune ! And what are
we doing to avert the danger? Distributing a little dole
and preaching patience to starving people; quarreling
about the advisability of "counting a quorum" or coining
a little silver seigniorage ; "wrangling over the " : ghts" of
a mid-Pacific prostitute to rule Celts and Saxons, and try-
ing to so "reform" the tariff that it will yield more revenue
with less taxation ! We are bowing down before various
pie-hunting political gods and electing men to Congress
who couldn't tell the Federal Constitution from Calvin's
Confession of Faith. We are sending street-corner econ-
omists to state and national conventions to evolve
from their innate ignorance and gild with their supernal
gall political platforms which we are pledged beforehand to
accept as the essence of all worldly wisdom. Our pa-
triotism has been supplanted by partisanship, and now all
are for a party and none are for the state. On July 4 we
shout for the old flag and all the rest of the year we clamor
for an appropriation. The man who is kicked by a night-
mare while dreaming of the draft demands a pension and
every burning patriot wants an office. And while our
292 BRANN, TH'E ICONOCLAST
ship of state is threading "with unsteady course the stormy
straits between the Scylla of Greed and the Charybdis of
Need; its canvas torn by contending winds; its decks
swept by angry waves, we boast of the strength of our
"free institutions" as tho' Republics had never fallen nor
revolutions erased from the map of the world proud Em-
pires that imagined themselves immortal.
But before God I do believe this selfish and unpatriotic
age will pass, as passed the age of brutish ignorance, as
passed the age of tyranny. I believe the clay will come oh
blessed dawn ! when the angel of Intellect will banish
the devil of Demagogy; when Americans will be in spirit
and in truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the
concern of all ; when labor will no longer fear the Cormor-
ant nor capital the Commune when all men \vill be equal
before the law wherever falls the shadow of our flag.
MARLBOROUGH-VANDERBILT MARRIAGE.
The approaching marriage of Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt
to the Duke of Marlborough is agitating the social world
from centre to circumference. New York's Four Hun 1
dred and the fashionables of London are standing on their
hind legs and wildly waving their ears. The alliance is
pronounced not only "the social event of the season," but
of all seasons, so far as Columbia is concerned. The cap-
ture by Miss Gould of a French count was not a circum-
stance to it. The Frenchman was only a count by courtesy,
while the "Jook" is still doing business at Sara Jennings'
old stand. The press gave us only a few columns daily
anent the Gould-Castellane barter and sale, but it shoots
the Vanderbilt-Marlborough affair into us by the page.
The press can always be depended upon to rise equal to the
occasion, and this is too evidently the supreme crisis of
the universe. Millions of columns have been written anent
the matter, and the deluge of intellectual bilge-water has
just begun. If Heaven and Earth should again embrace
to beget a second Saturnus the pencil-pushers could not
be more profoundly impressed.
And who the devil are the Duke of Marlborough and
Miss Vanderbilt, that the world should hald its breath
while they make elaborate preparations to contribute, each
to the misery of the other to share the same bed and
board? The Duke is the lineal descendant of old John
Churchill and Sara Jennings, two of the most disreputable
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 293
ducks that ever disgraced the earth. John utilized the
virtue of his sister to break into the British "nobility,"
fawned at the feet of her princely paramour so long as he
had power to promote his fortune, then turned traitor
and sold his services to William III, by whom he was ever
regarded with suspicion and treated with contempt. Like
Sextus Tarquinius and Benedict Arnold, he was a soldier
of some ability; but he was more shameless than the one
and more corrupt than the other. Arnold would not have
profited by a sister's prostitution, nor Sextus have soiled
his hand with the small wage of the common soldier. John
Churchill, founder of the House of Marlborough, was
the Boss Tweed of his time, the prize pimp of his day and
generation. As a traitor he was the peer of Judas Iscariot,
and he has been equalled in shameless dishonesty only by
his lineal descendants. The only assurance we have that
the latter were not bastards is to be found in the fact that
they were one and all stamped from head to heel with the
Marlborough meanness. It is another case of the evil men
do living after them, while the good is interred with
their bones. Sara Jennings, his wife, was eminently worthy
so mean a mate. She was a kind of unholy cross between
Xanthippe and Sycorax, the best hated old heifer in all
England. Too cold-blooded to play the prostitute herself,
she was content to tend door and share in the profit of her
sister-in-law's shame. The fiance of Miss Vanderbilt is
descended from this impure source thro' a long line of titled
cuckolds and shameless pimps, and now stands on the
ragged edge of poverty, bartering to parvenues for bread
an empty dukedom bought with a female relative's dis-
honor. The late Lord Randolph Churchill, uncle of the
present duke, was unquestionably the best of the lot; but
he demonstrated of what material he was made when he
failed to rip the white liver out of Prince Collars and Cuffs
when he caught that royal popinjay ftagrante delict o with
"Lady" Churchill, at Windsor Castle when he accepted
the foul bawd warm from the embraces of that titled nin-
compoop and permitted her to continue to bear his name.
The father of the present duke, and his predecessor in the
title was universally conceded to be the most contemptible
cur in all Christendom. He had more than the vices of the
original Churchill and none of his supposed virtues. He
succeeded in wedding a respectable woman, but she was
compelled to leave him because of his general cussedness.
He then sold his title to a dizzy New York music teacher
who had managed to catch a sucker and bump .his head
for several millions. He ran through with Lil Hammersly's
294 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
boodle, was carried to the grave with the syphilis and left
a beggarly title to his particularly stupid son, who is now
bartering- it to the Vanderbilts.
Such, in brief, is the origin and history of "the great
House of Marlborough" a plebeian family raised to the
peerage by prostitution and enriched by rascality that em-
braced every crime in the calendar, from petty thievery
to base ingratitude, from arrant hypocrisy to high trea-
son, to be in turn pauperized by pimps, beggared by
bawds. There is not a drop of pure blood in the entire
family.
There has never been one of the name entitled to be
called a gentleman. The record of the house is black with
more than Armenian meanness, across its escutcheon falls
the bar-sinister of a woman's shame. The present duke
is said to be somewhat better than his degraded progeni-
tors. Poverty makes even dukes humble. When a "noble-
man" is unable to buy so much as a yellow pot to put in
his boudoir he is apt to strike a moderate gait ; but he is
a Churchill, and "an evil tree cannot bring forth good
fruit." In appearance he is a tough of the toughs. He
has a head like a Bowery bouncer and the mug of an ape
who has met with an accident. When he gets his grip on
the Vanderbilt gold it is dollars to doughnuts he will use
it as did his unlamented father the millions of the gay
Lil Hammersly, who paid for the privilege of being
kicked and cuffed by a genuine British "nobleman" in
Blenheim Palace.
And the Vanderbilts? Two hundred years ago an ig-
norant Hollander squatted on a patch of land at Flat
Bush, L. I., and engaged in the laudable enterprise of
raising cabbages, while his better half added an occa-
sional florin to the family hoard by peddling fish. At that
time the name was taken on the installment plan, being
written Van Der Bilt. Old Bilt begat a son named Jacob,
who followed in the footsteps of his father, and was poor
without being proud. He was also a grower of cabbages,
and his gude wife not above peddling sprats from door to
door and filing the proceeds away in her ample yarn
sock. In the course of four generations the Van Der Bilts
had accumulated sufficient boodle to buy a small ferry-
boat, and began at once to float on to fortune. The name
was coupled up to save stationery in writing it, for none
realized better than they that economy is the road to
wealth. By working like the Old Harry and spending
never a cent, and by the rise in land values in and around
New York, the Vanderbilts became wealthy enough to
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 295
exchange barter in shrimps and sprats for deals in rail-
way stocks to purchase a coronet to offset that "very
ancient and fish-like smell" which has so long clung to
the descendants of old Aris. Miss Consuelo is the
daughter of Wm. K. Vanderbilt, a lively old bird who
was recently divorced from his wife for reasons that have
been kept a family secret. It is the general impression, how-
ever, that it was a case of mutual fornication ; that while
"Willie" was going a rapid gait in dizzy "Paree," Alva
was holding up her end of the line in London. Such is
the lineage of the young lady who is about to purchase a
descendant of old Judas Iscariot Churchill and Sara Jen-
nings. She is a long, gaunt, skinny young female whose
face would frighten any animal but a pauper duke out for
the "dough." Her muscular arms, stub-nose and big
feet proclaim her plebeian origin, while if the countenance
be a true index to the intellect, she is the mental equal of
a half-baked Chinese idol. If she had not been born with
a silver spoon in her mouth it is doubtful if she could se-
cure a position in the second row of the ballet on her
shape, or a place in a steam laundry by her intelligence.
But Miss Consuelo is an American. Were she the de-
scendant of a Bowery tough, as homely as a hedgehog
and as stupid as a Cleveland Democrat she would be in-
finitely too good for the best man that ever bore the title
of Duke of Marborough. We are sorry for the young
lady, just as we are sorry for any calf that is being led to
the shambles. She will doubtless wish a thousand times
that instead of wedding the "Jooke" she followed the ex-
ample of her female ancestors married some sturdy
young Dutch farmer and peddled fish. After the glamour
and glitter have worn away she will wonder if the game
was worth the candle. She will look at the scorbutic
subject of an old woman and compare him with the sov-
ereigns of her native land and wish to God that she could
lose him.
"What fools these mortals be" especially where a
petty title and a little money are concerned ! Most of the
"great American dailies" have printed pictures of the
young pair who are making such elaborate preparations to
occupy the same sheets; but the New York World out-
toadies all Toadydom. It informs an alleged intelligent
world just how tall Miss Vanderbilt is, the length of her
foot and such other information as might be valuable
were she a Papuan slave being bartered for breeding pur-
poses. It also devotes considerable space to a description
of the lingerie in which she will encase her "lithe limbs"
296 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
during the honeymoon. The style is only hinted at, but we
may presume that the chemise will be provided with
handles and the under-garment patterned after Biela's
comet or the Democratic party. The fit will doubtless be
au fait. The sartorial artist will doubtless be able to prop-
erly attire any portion of her anatomy by employing the
World's measurements. We regret that our great con-
temporary has neglected to tell us anything about the
lingerie of the bridegroom-elect. But perhaps he doesn't
wear any at present. He is probably waiting for the
Vanderbilt "settlement" to provide his noble anatomy
with undershirts.
I wish the young turtle-doves well, but can scarce
pray that their tribe may increase. I trust that having
secured sufficient of the ducats hoarded up by certain
Dutch fish wives to enable him to live in comfort, the
duke will give us an imitation of a nobleman who is try-
ing to be decent; that having purchased one of the two-
and-twenty dukedoms of the United Kingdom, the young
woman will not pattern after her giddy aunt and hang
on princes' favors to the dishonor of her husband.
The papers state that the capture of the Duke by the
Vanderbiltian millions will result in bringing the bride's
parents together again that they will re-marry. It is a
consummation devoutly to be wished. They seem to have
been made for each other to harmonize in tastes and
habits almost as well as did old John Churchill and Sara
Jennings. In view of the aphorism that "like takes to
like," I cannot imagine how they came to drift apart. If
Mrs. Vanderbilt is looking for a rake, Willie should
please her to perfection. If he admires dizzy females,
she's the girl for his gold. If Willie loves the rapid in
crinoline he should fairly worship his ci-devant wife. Let
them forgive and forget and enjoy to the utmost the
beatitude of having a sure-enough Duke for a son-in-law
of referring to their daughter in the presence of those
stuck up Goulds as "the Duchess." Willie and Alva
should spend a few months of each year at Blenheim
Palace a place so noted in the annals of prostitution.
Vive la Van Der Bilt ! Vive la Marlborough ! The rep-
resentative family of American parvenues and that of Eu-
ropean pimps in holy alliance were a combination at
which the majestic world may well stand agaze.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 297
HUMBUGS AND HUMBUGGERY.
THE GREAT AMERICAN PRODUCT.
Satan is supposed to have been the original Humbug;
but he's a back number now must feel dreadfully anti-
quated and useless among so many modern improve-
ments.
That the American people love to be humbugged long
since passed into a proverb. Humbuggery may be calle^l
our national vice, our besetting sin. Like liberty, it ap-
pears to be in the very air we breathe, and we take to it
as naturally as we go into politics. Our entire social sys-
tem has become saturated with it. It is the main-spring
of many acts we loudly praise, the lode-star of men we
apotheosize, is oftimes the warp and woof even of the
mantle of charity, which, like a well-filled purse or a
tariff compromise covers a multitude of sins.
There are various kinds and classes of Humbugs; but
reduced to the last analysis stripped of the sugar-coat-
ing by which they impose on the public they are one
and all simply professors of falsehood.
I am sometimes inclined to the view that humbuggery
is a disease, and that some doctor will yet discover a gold-
cure for it will demonstrate that the bad habit is due to
microbes that get into a man's mind and make trouble
trying to turn around, or to bacilli that bore holes in his
moral 'character and let his honesty leak out; for the med-
ical fraternity has gravely informed us that kleptomania
(sneak-thievery by eminently respectable people) and
dipsomania (sottishness by the social salt of the
earth), are simply diseases that should be treated with
pills and powders instead of with penitentiaries and whip-
ping-posts. Now if a man will steal a saw-mill and go
back after the site simply because his pericardium is out
of plumb or his liver has gone into politics ; will nurse a
juicy old jag until it develops into a combined museum
and menagerie, because his circulation has slipped an ec-
centric or his stomach got out of its natural orbit, I submit,
in all seriousness that he might be physically incapaci-
tated for telling the truth by an insidious attack on his
veracity by the dreadful falsehood fungi, and that the
best way to restore his moral equilibrium to remove
him from the category of chronic Humbugs would be to
fumigate him.
The Lord once attempted to check the Humbug habit
298 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
by striking liars dead ; but soon saw that such a plan
would prove more fatal than a second flood that there
wouldn't be even a Noah's Ark picnic party of us left
and reluctantly relinquished it. Science has not yet suc-
ceeded in mastering the disease ; but just give it time and
it will save the world yet will find a medical name for
every human frailty ; will be able to tell, by looking at a
man's tongue, whether he's coming down with the mug-
wump malaria or the office-holding hysteria, and do
something for him before it's everlastingly too late.
The very best of people have a touch of the complaint
"the trail of the serpent is over us all." Even our young
ladies are said to be, to a certain extent, Humbugs. I
have been told that many of them wear patent complex-
ions, "boughten" bangs, and pad out scrawny forms until
they appear voluptuous Junos, and thereby deceive and
ensnare, bedazzle and beguile the unsuspecting sons) of
men. I have been told that many of them who are soft-
voiced angels before marriage can give a rusty buzz-saw
cards and spades and beat it blind after they have suc-
ceeded in landing the confiding sucker. But perhaps such
tales are only the bitter complainings of miserable
Benedicts who have been soundly beaten at their own
game of humbuggery. Marriage is, perhaps, the only
game of chance ever invented at which it is possible for
both players to lose. Too often, after much sugar-coated
deception, and many premeditated misdeals on both sides,
one draws a blank and the other a booby. After patient
angling in the matrimonial pool, one lands a stingaree
and the other a bull-head. One expects to capture a demi-
god who hits the earth only in high places ; the other to
wed a wingless angel who will make his Edenic bower
one long-drawn sigh of ecstatic bliss. The result is that
one is tied up to a slattern who slouches around the
house with her hair on tins, in a dirty collar and with a
dime novel, a temper like aqua-fortis and a voice like a
cat-fight ; the other a hoodlum who comes home from the
lodge at 2 g. m. and whoops and howls for her to come
down and help him hunt for the keyhole, and is then
snailed in by a policeman before she can frame a curtain
lecture or find the rolling pin.
False Pride is the father of humbuggery, the parent of
Fraud. We are Humbugs because we desire that our
fellows think us better, braver, brighter, perhaps richer
than we really are. We practice humbuggery to attain
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 299
social position to which we are entitled by neither birth
nor brains, to acquire wealth for which we render no
equivalent, to procure power we cannot wisely employ.
While proclaiming love of democracy we purchase
peers for our daughters. While boasting liberty of speech
we assail like demons those who presume to dissent from
our opinions in either religion or politics.
History is full of Humbugs and liberty itself ofttimes but
a gilded lie. No man is really free who is dependent upon
the good will of others for employment. There can be no
true liberty where Prejudice usurps the throne of Rea-
son. Men are slaves instead of sovereigns when they suffer
themselves to be held in iron thrall by political dogma or
religious creed, blindly accepting the ipse dixit of others
instead of exercising to the utmost the intelligence which
God hath given them.
I have said that charity itself is ofttimes a Humbug.
It is so when it becomes the handmaid of ostentation in-
stead of the true almoner of the heart; or when men give
to the poor only because it is "lending to the Lord," then
expect compound interest.
That philanthropist is a fraud who, after piling up a
colossal fortune at the expense of the common people,
leaves it to found an educational or eleemosynary insti-
tute when death calls him across the dark river. Know-
ing that Charon's boat is purely a passenger packet
that it carries no freight, however precious he drops his
dollars with a sigh ; but, determined to reap some benefit
from boodle his itching hand can no longer hold, he de-
crees that it be used to found some charitable fake to pre-
vent himself being forgotten some pitiful institute where
a few of the wretched victims of his rapacious greed may
get a plate of starvation soup, or a prayer-book, and bless
their benefactor's name. The very monument erected
over bones of the sanctimonious old skin-flint is a fraud ;
flaunts a string of colossal falsehoods in the face of the
world ; piously points to heaven perhaps to indicate that
Satan refused to receive him and sent him back to St.
Peter with a request that he make other arrangements.
Many of the martyrs whose memory we revere, of the
saints we apotheosize, of the heroes we enshrine in his-
tory, are one-third fraud and two-thirds fake. The man
who can grow in grace while his pet corn's in chancery,
or lose an election without spilling his moral character;
who can wait an hour for his dinner without walking all
300 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
over the nerves of his wife, or crawl out of bed in the
middle of his first nap and rustle till the cold, gray dawn
with a brace of colicky kids, without broadly insinuating
that he was a copper-riveted, nickel-plated, automatic,
double-cylinder idiot to ever get married, is a greater
hero than he that taketh a city.
The place to take the true measure of a man is not the
market-place or the amen-corner, not the forum or the
field, but at his fireside. There he lays aside his mask
and you may learn whether he's imp or angel, king or cur,
hero or Humbug. I care not what the world says of him
whether it crown him with bays or pelt him with bad
eggs; I care never a copper what his reputation or re-
ligion may toe: If his babes dread his home-coming and
his better-half swallows her heart every time she has to
ask him for a five dollar bill, he's a fraud of the first
water, even tho' he prays night and morn till he's black
in the face and howls hallelujah till he shakes the eternal
hills. But if his children rush to the front gate to greet
him, and love's own sunshine illumes the face of his wife
when she hears his footfall, you can take it for granted
that he's true gold, for his home's a heaven, and the Hum-
bug never gets that near the great white throne of God.
He may be a rank atheist and a red-flag anarchist, a Mor-
mon and a mugwump; he may buy votes in blocks-of-
five and bet on the election; he may deal 'em from the
bottom of the deck and drink beer till he can't tell a silver
dollar from a circular saw, and still be an infinitely better
man than the cowardly little Humbug who's all suavity
in society, but who makes his home a hell who vents
upon the hapless heads of wife and children the ill-nature
he would like to inflict on his fellow-men, but dares not.
I can forgive much in that fellow mortal who would rath-
er make men swear than women weep ; who would rath-
er have the hate of the whole he-world than the contempt
of his wife who would rather call anger to the eyes of a
king than fear to the face of a child.
The hero is not he that strives with the world for wit-
ness who seeks the bubble fame at the cannon's brazen
lip and risks his life that he may live forever.
"Think not that helm and harness are signs of valor true ;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battles ever knew."
To bear with becoming' grace the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune; to find our heaven in others' happi-
ness, and for their sake to sacrifice and suffer wrongs that
might be righted with a thread of steel; to live an honest
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 301
life in a land where Truth doth feed on crusts while
Falsehood fattens at Lucullean feasts, requires more true
manhood, more moral stamina, more unadulterated sand
than to follow a flag into the very jaws of hell or die for
the faith in the auto da fe. Heroes? Why unurn the
ashes of the half-forgotten dead and pore o'er the musty
pages of the past for names to glorify? If you would
find heroes grander, martyrs more noble and saints of
more sanctity than Rubens ever painted or immortal
Homer sang ; who, without Achilles' armor, have slain
an hundred Hectors ; without Samsonian locks have torn
the lion; without the sword of Michael have thrown down
the gage to all the embattled hosts of hell, seek not in the
musty tomes of history, but in the hearts and homes of
the self-sacrificing wives and mothers of this great
world.
"God could not be everywhere," says the proverb,
"therefore he made mothers,"
Let the heroes of history have their due; still I imagine
the world would have been much the same had Alexander
died of cholera-infantum or grown up a harmless dude.
I don't thing the earth unbalanced would from its orbit
fly had Caesar been drowned in the Rubicon, or Cleveland
never been born. I imagine that Greece would have hum-
bled the Persian pride had there been no Thermopylae,
that Rome would have ruled the world had Scaevola's
good right hand not hissed in the Tuscan fire. It is even
possible that civilization would have stood the shocks had
"Lanky Bob" and "Gentleman Jim" met on Texas soil
that the second-term boom of "our heroic young Chris-
tian governor" would have lost no gas. One catfish does
not make a creek nor one hero a nation. The waves do
not make the sea, but the sea furnishes forth the waves.
Leonidas were lost to history but for the three hundred
nameless braves who backed his bluff. Had there been
but one Cromwell Charles the First would have kept his
head. In Washington's deathless splendor gleams the
glory of forgotten millions, and the history of Bonaparte
is written with blood of the unknown brave.
Humbuggery, fraud, deception everywhere.
"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players"
Momus the major-domo, the millions en masque. Even
friendship is becoming a screaming farce, intended to pro-
302 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mote the social fortune or fill the purse. We fawn that
thrift may follow ; are prodigal of sweet words because
they cost nothing and swell the sails of many a rich ar-
gosy ; but weigh every penny we put forth, and carefully
calculate the chance of gain or loss. It's heads I win, tails
you lose, and when we cannot play it on that principle we
promptly jump the game.
"Who steals my purse steals trash."
That's Shakespeare.
"He that filches from me my good name . . . makes me poor
indeed."
That's nonsense. Reputation is but the ephemeral dew
on character's everlasting gold; but he that steals a hu-
man heart and tramples it beneath his brutal heel ; he
that feigns a friendship he does not feel; he that fawns
upon his fellows and hugs them hard and after scandals
them, is the foulest fraud in all this land of fakes, the
most hideous Humbug in all hell's unclean hierarchy.
I am sometimes tempted to believe that the only friend-
ship that will stand fire is that of a yellow dog for a paup-
er negro. Strike a friend for a small loan and his affection
grows suddenly cold; lose your fortune and your sweet-
heart sends you word that she will be a sister to you ;
your brother will betray you for boodle, your father fight
you for a foolish flag and your lieirs-at-law will dance
when they hear of your death ; but the devotion of a yal-
ler dog to a worthless nigger hath all seasons for its own.
But the Humbug for whom I have least use is the man
who assiduously damns the Rum Demon ; makes tearful
temperance talks; ostentatiously votes the prohibition
ticket; groans like a sick calf hit by a battering-ram
whenever he sees a young man come out of a barroom;
then sneaks up a dirty alley, crawls thro' the side door of
a second-class saloon; calls for the cheapest whiskey in
the shop, runs the glass over trying to get the worth of
his money ; pours it down at a gulp and scoots in a hurry
lest somebody ask him to treat; who has a chronic tooth-
ache in the stomach which nothing but drugstore
whiskey will relieve; who keeps a jug of dollar-a-gallon
bug-juice hid under his bed and sneaks to it like a thiev-
ing hyena digging up a dead nigger rents his property
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 303
for saloon purposes, then piously prays the Lord to pro-
tect the young from temptation.
* * *
But perhaps the prince of Humbugs, the incarnation of
fraud, the apotheosis of audacity, is the street-corner pol-
itician. He towers above his fellow fakes like Saul above
his brethren. I have been time and again instructed in
the most intricate problems of public polity questions
that have perplexed the wisest statesmen of the world
by men who had never read a single standard work on po-
litical economy, and who could not tell to save their souls
granting that they possess such perishable property
whether Adam Smith wrote the "Wealth of Nations" or
the Lord's Prayer ; who were not familiar with the consti-
tution of their own state, or the face of a receipted wash-
bill ; who could scarce tell a sloop from a ship, a bill of
lading from a sight draft ; a hydraulic ram from a he-goat
unless they were properly labeled. Yet no question can
arise in metaphysics or morals, government or general-
ship, upon which these great little men do not presume
to speak with the authoritative assurance of a Lord Chief
Justice or a six-foot woman addressing a four-foot hus-
band. They invariably know it all. They could teach
Solomon and the Seven Wise Men wisdom, and had they
been on earth when Almighty God wrote the Ten Com-
mandments they would have moved an amendment or
drafted a minority report.
And these are the fellows who frame our political plat-
forms and dominate our elections whose boundless cu-
pidity, colossal ignorance and supernal gall bring about
starvation in a land of plenty divide the most industri-
ous and progressive people that ever graced the footstool
of Almighty God, into bloated millionaires and groveling
mendicants.
Even patriotism has become a Humbug has been
supplanted by partisanship, and now all are for party and
none are for the state. On July 4 we shout for the old flag,
and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropria-
tion. The man who is kicked by a nightmare while dream-
ing of the draft demands a pension and every burning pa-
triot wants an office. Twice, yea, thrice within the mem-
ory of men now living, America has been on the very
verge of an industrial revolution, a Reign of Terror; yet
we continue to hang our second Providence on a job-lot
of politcal jacksnipes who carry their patriotism in their
pockets and their sense under their surcingles. While we
304 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
who feed three times a day; who have a cocktail every
morning and a clean, shirt occasionally, are boasting of
our allegiance to "the grand old party," or prating of the
principles of Jeffersonian democracy are bliridly trailing
in the wake of some partisan band-wagon like a brindle
calf behind a Kansas hay-cart this nation, born of our
fathers' blood and sanctified by our mothers' tears, is
dominated by political self-seekers who have taken for
their motto, "After us the deluge."
Once after holding forth at some length on Humbugs,
a physician said to me :
"Ah-er you-ah didn't mention the medical profes-
sion."
"No," I replied, "the power of language hath its limits."
The medical, mark you, is the noblest of all profes-
sions. It contains many learned and able men who devote
their lives unselfishly to the amelioration of human misery ;
but I much doubt whether one-half the M. D.'s now send-
ing people to the drug stores with cipher dispatches, could
tell what was the matter with a suffering mortal were he
transparent as glass and lit up by electricity. There are
doctors doping people with powerful drugs, who couldn't
tell whether a patient had a case of cholera-morbus or was
afflicted with an incurable itch for office who have acquired
their medical- information from the almanacs and could not
distinguish between a bunion and a stone-bruise or find the
joints in a string of sausage with a search-warrant.
I have noticed that when the doctors took to writing
their prescriptions in Latin it quickly became a dead lan-
guage that when I take the poet's advice and throw
physic to the dogs, their numbers rapidly decrease. But
the doctors are jolly good fellows. Let it be recorded to
their eternal credit, that, whatever may be their faults, pre-
cious few of them will practice in their own families. I
have often wished that I was a doctor of medicine instead
of a doctor of divinity. There are several fellows for whom
I'd like to prescribe. There's a strong affinity between the
two professions. The D. D.'s deal in faith and prayer, the
M. D.'s in faith and pills.
I have been frequently asked why, in lecturing on Hum-
bugs, I skip the lawyers. There are some subjects to
which a lecturer must lead up gradually; so I discuss the
doctors in my discourse on Humbugs and save the attorneys
for my talk on Gall.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 305
Even our boasted educational system is half a Humbug.
Too many of our professers fondly imagine that when they
have crammed the dry formulas of half a dozen sciences
into a small head perhaps designed by the Deity to fur-
nish the directive wisdom for a scavenger cart; when they
have taught a two-legged moon-calf to glibly read in cer-
tain deacl languages things it can in nowise comprehend
patiently pumped into it a whole congeries of things that
defy its mental digestive apparatus that it is actually
educated, if not enlightened. And perhaps it is after the
manner of the trick mule or the pig that plays cards. The
attempt of Gulliver scientists to calcine ice into gunpowder
were not more ridiculous than trying to transform a fool
into a philosopher by the alchemy of education. If it be
a waste of lather to shave an ass, what must it be to edu-
cate an idiot? True education consists in the acquirement
of useful information ; yet I have seen college graduates
even men sporting professional sheepskins who couldn't
tell whether Gladstone's an English statesman or an Irish
policeman. They knew all about Greek roots but couldn't
tell a carrot from a parsnip. They could decipher a cunei-
form inscription, perhaps, and state whether a pebble be-
longed to the paleozoic or some other period; but couldn't
tell a subpoena from a search-warrant, a box of vermicelli
from a bundle of fishworms.
We pore over books too much and reflect too little; de-
pend too much on others, too little upon ourselves. We
make of our heads cold-storage warehouses for other peo-
ple's ideas, instead of standing up in our own independent,
god-like individuality. Bacon says that reading makes a
full man. Perhaps so, but it makes a great deal of differ-
ence what a fellow's full of. Too many who fondly imagine
themselves educated, much resemble Mark Twain's frog
with its stomach full of shot they are crushed to earth by
the things they have swallowed.
Neither the public nor any other school system has ever
produced one really great man. Those who occupy the
dias-throne among the immortals, contended single-handed
with the darkness of ignorance and the devil of dogmatism.
Columbus scorned the schools and discovered a world.
Napoleon revolutionized the science of war and made him-
self master of Europe. Bismarck mocked at precedent, and
United Germany stood forth a giant. Jesus of Nazareth
ignored the learning of the Levites, and around the world
arose the fanes of a new faith.
Reading is the nurse of culture; reflection the mother
of genius. Our great religions were born in the desert.
306 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Our grandest philosophers budded and burgeoned in the
wilderness. The noblest poesy that ever swept the human
harpsichord was born in the brain of a beggar, came bub-
bling from the heart of the blind ; and when all the magi
of the Medes, and all the great philosophers of Greece had
failed to furnish forth a jurisprudence just to all, semi-
barbarous Rome laid down those laws by which, even from
the grave of her glory, she still rules the majestic "world.
I have been accused of being the enemy of education;
but then I have been accused of almost everything; so one
count more or less in the indictment doesn't matter. I
am not opposed to education that is useful ; but why should
we pay people to fill the empty heads of fools with soap
and sawdust?
Perhaps the most aggressive fraud that infests the earth
is the professional atheist the man whose chief mental
stock-in-trade consists of doubt and denial of revealed re-
ligion, so-called.
About the time a youngster first feels an irresistible im-
pulse to make a fool of himself wherever a female smiles
upon him; when he's reached that critical stage in life's
journey when he imagines that he knows much more than
his father, he begins to doubt the religion of his mother;
shrewdly asks his Sunday-school teacher who made God;
demonstrates by the aid of natural history diagrams, that
a large whale could in nowise swallow a small prophet
that if he did succeed in relegating him to its internal
economy it were impossible for him to slosh around for
three days and nights in the gastric juices without becom-
ing much the worse for wear. He attempts to rip religion
up by the roots and reform the world while you wait, but
soon learns that he's got a government contract on his hands,
that the man who can drive the Deity out of the hearts
and homes of this land can make a fortune turning artesian
Dwells inside out and peddling them for telegraph poles. You
can't do it, son. Religion is the backbone of the body
social. Sometimes it's unbending as a boarding-house
biscuit, and sometimes it's a bad quality of gutta-percha;
but we couldn't get far without it. Most youths have to
pass thro' a period of doubt and denial catch the infidel
humor just as they do the measles and mumps ; but they
eventually learn that the fear of God is the beginning of
wisdom.
There was never an atheistical book written ; there was
never an infidel argument penned that touched the core of
any religion, Christian or Pagan. Bibles, Korans, Zande-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 307
vestas all sacred books are but the feeble efforts of
finite man to interpret the infinite; to speak forth the
unspeakable; to reduce to intelligible human characters
the flame-written hieroglyphs of the sky. Who made
God? Suppose, Mr. Atheist, that I find thee an answer?
Who will furnish thee with an intellect to understand it?
How will you comprehend the genesis of a God when the
wisest man for whom Christ died cannot tell why water runs
down hill instead of up cannot understand the basic
principle of the law of gravitation cannot even guess why
Gov. Culberson encouraged the managers of Corbett and
Fitzsimmons to bring the mill to Texas, then knocked it
out at a special session of the legislature at the expense of
the general public.
An atheist once solemnly assured me that he couldn't
possibly believe anything which he couldn't prove; but when
I asked him what led him to take such a lively interest in
the welfare of his wife's children, he became almost as
angry as a Calvinist whose confession of faith had been
called in question. Figure up how many things you can
prove of those you believe, and you'll find that you have
got to do a credit business or go into intellectual bank-
ruptcy.
But the man who denies the existence of the Deity be-
cause he cannot comprehend his origin, is even less a Hum-
bug than the one who knows all about him the pitiful
dogmatizcr who devotes his life to the defense of some poor
little guess-work interpretation of the mysterious plans of
him who brings forth Mazaroth in his season and guides
Arcturus with his sons.
Dogmatism is the fecund mother of doubt, a manacle on
the human mind, a brake on the golden wheel of Christian
progress ; and every dogmatizer, whether in science, politics
or religion, is consciously or unconsciously, a Humbug.
You know, do you? Know what? And who told you?
Why, the man in whose mighty intellect was stored the
world's wisdom ; whose words have come down to us from
the distant past as oracles, overshadowing even Solomon and
Shakespeare, wasn't quite sure of his own existence. Men
frequently tell me that what they see they know. Well,
they've got to drink mighty little Prohibition whisky if
they do ; otherwise they are liable to see things they'll need
an introduction to. The wisest is he that knows only that
he knows nothing. Omniscient God only knows. We
you ^and I are only troubled with morbid little-ideas, sired
by circumstance and dammed by folly. We don't even know
308 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
how the Democracy stands on the silver question or what
caused the slump in the late election.
The average human head, like an egg or a crock of
clabber absorbs the flavor of its surroundings. It is
chiefly a question of environment whether we grow up
Catholics or Protestants, Republicans or Democrats, Popu-
lists or political nondescripts. And yet we adhere to opin-
ions we have inherited with all the tenacity of a dog to a
bone or an American miser to a ten dollar bill. We assume
that our faith political and our creed religious are founded
upon our reason, when they were really made for us by
social conditions over which we had little control. We
even succeed in humbugging ourselves into the belief that
we are the people and that wisdom will die with us, when
the fact is that our head is loaded with out-of-date lumber
our every idea moulded or modified by barbarians who were
in the bone-yard before Methusaleh was born.
Society is a vast organism in which the individual is
but an atom. It is a monstrous tree a veritable Ygdrasyl
penetrating both the region of darkness and the realm
of light. Whatever its peculiarities whether monarchical
or republican, Christian or Pagan it is a goodly tree when
it brings forth good fruit when its boughs bend with
Apples of Hesperides and in its grateful shade is reared
the shrine of God. Be it of what shape it may, it is an
evil tree w'hen its fruit is Apples of Sodom and it casts
a upas-shadow upon the earth. If we cannot gather grapes
of thorns or figs of thistles, how< can a society that is essen-
tially false foster that which is literally true? The body
social, of which we proudly boast, is producing dodos in-
stead of King Davids, peanut-politicians instead of
heaven-inspired poets, cranks instead of crusaders,
Humbugs rather than heroes. Instead of exercising
in the campus martius our sons cultivate the Henglish
hawkcent and the London lope. In the olden days the
glory of the young man was his strength; now it is his
chrysanthemum and his collar. And it is going from bad to
worse in a ratio of geometrical progression; for how can
effeminate men a cane-sucking, primping, mincing, af-
fected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity be-
get world-compellers? How can women who care much
what is on the outside and little w>hat is on the inside of
their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel,
a poodle-dog and another dude will make superlatively
happy, suckle aught but fops and fools?
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 309
Yet we boast of progress! Progress whither? From
the savage who knew nothing to the dude who knows less.
From the barbarian who'd plundered your baggage, to the
civilized Shylock who'd steal the very earth from under
your feet. From that state wherein American sovereigns,
however poor, considered themselves the equals of kings
and the superiors of princes, to that moral degradation and
national decay in which they purchase the scurvy spawn
of petty dukes as husbands for our daughters. By the
splendor of God, I'd rather be a naked Fiji Islander, danc-
ing about a broiled missionary with a bull-ring in my nose,
than a simpering "saiwciety" simpleton, wearing my little
intellectual apparatus to a frazzle with a study of neckties!
Some of my critics have kindly suggested that the Lord
made a great mistake in not consulting me when he made
the world; thereby ascertaining just how I would like
to have it. I was not consulted anent the creation of the
Cosmos, and perhaps it is just as well for them that I
wasn't they might not be here. Too many forget that
while the Lord made the world, the devil has been
busy ever since putting on the finishing touches. Why,
he began on the first woman before she was a week old,
and he has been playing schoolmaster to her sons ever
since. I confess to a sneaking respect for Satan, for he is
pre-eminently a success in his chosen profession. He's
playing a desperate game against omnipotent power and
is more than holding his own. He sat into the game with
a cash capital of one snake; now he's got half the globe
grabbed and an option on the other half.
1 have been called a defender of the devil; but I hope
that won't prejudice the ladies against me, as it was a
woman that discovered him. I confess to the belief that
Satan is a gentleman compared with some of his very
humble servants. We are told that he is a fallen angel
who found pride a stumbling-block that he tripped over
it and plunged down to infinite despair; but tho' (he fell
further than a pigeon could fly in a week, the world is
full of frauds who could not climb up to his level in a
month; who can no more claim kinship with him in their
cussedness than a thieving hyena can say to the royal
beast of Bengal, 'Thou art my brother." They are not
fallen angels; they are risen vermin. They didn't come
down from thrones in heaven like falling stars; they
crawled up from holes in the earth like vicious little pis-
mires. What can proud Lucifer have in common with
310 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the craven hypocrite, who prays with his lips while plot-
ting petty larceny in his heart? Imagine the lord of the
lower world seeking the miscroscopic souls of men who
badger, brow-beat and bully-rag their better halves for
spending a dollar for a new calico dress, then blow in
a dozen times as much with the dice-box in a bar-room,
trying to beat some other long-eared burro out of a thim-
ble-full of bug-juice or a schooner o' beer! I don't be-
lieve Satan wants 'em. I think if they dodged the quaran-
tine officers and got in amongst those erstwhile angels
now peopling the dark regions of the damned, the doc-
tors of that black abode would decide that they were
cholera microbes or itch-bacilli and order the place fumi-
gated.
But speaking of the devil were any of you ever in love?
I'm talking about the sure-enough, old-fashioned com-
plaint that makes a man miss meals and lose sleep,
write spring poetry and misplace his appetite for plug
tobacco ; not of the new-fangled varioloid that yields to
matrimonial treatment. There's a great deal of sugar-
coated humbuggery about this thing we call love. It re-
minds me of the sulphur and molasses my careful Presby-
terian parents used to pour into me in the gentle spring-
time. I don't remember why they gave it to me; but it
was probably because they didn't \vant it themselves. Per-
haps they thought foreordination hadn't done much for me,
and they had best get me used to sulphur gradually. I
remember, however, that, like the average case of matri-
mony, it usually contained a good deal more sulphur than
syrup.
Matches, we are told, are made in heaven; and I think
it likely, for Satan himself is said to have originated there.
I'll tell you how matches are usually made: By some hor-
rible accident John Henry and Sarah Jane become ac-
quainted. They have no more affinity than a practical poli-
tician and pure spring water; but they dance and flirt, fool
around the front gate in the dark of the moon, sigh and
talk nonsense. John Henry begins to take things for his
breath and Sarah Jane for her complexion. The young
goslings get wonted to each other, and first thing you
know they're tied up until death or divorce doth them part.
And, had they missed each other altogether, they would
have been just as well perhaps better content with other
mates and made as enthusiastic a failure of married life.
Most people marry without really knowing whether
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 311
they're in love or not mistake the gregarious habit for
the mystic fire of Hymen's torch, the pangs of a bad diges-
tion for the barbed arrows from the love-god's bow.
But when a couple's really got what ailed Romeo and
Juliet they're in no more doubt about it than was the man
after he sat down on the circular saw to see if it was run-
ning and found it the sole proprietor of a South American
revolution. They don't have to send their feelings to a
chemist for analysis and classification, nor take an invoice
of their affections to see if any have got away. Love is
really a very serious thing. Like sea-sickness, everybody
laughs at it but those who have got it. When Cupid lets
slip a sure-enough shaft it goes thro' a fellow's heart like
a Kansas cyclone thro* a colored camp-meeting, and all
the powers of hades can never head it off.
Love is the most sacred word ever framed by celestial
lips. It's the law of life, the harmony of heaven, the breath
of which the universe was born, the divine essence increate
of the ever-living God.
But love is like all other sweet things unless you get
the very best brand it sours awful easy.
Of all the pitiful Humbugs beneath high heaven com-
mend me to those intellectual doodle-bugs who have be-
come Dame Fashion's devotees and devote all their intel-
lectuality to the science of dress to the art of being mis-
erable a la mode. Thousands are to-day sailing about in
silk hats who are guiltless of undershirts, bedecked with
diamonds while in debt to the butcher for the meat on their
bones. Families that can scarce afford calico flaunt Paris-
ian finery, keep costly carriages while there's a chronic
hiatus in their cupboards, go hungry to bed six nights in
the week that on the seventh they may spread a brave feast
for fashionable fools. God have mercy on all such mutton-
heads. They are the natural breeders of good-for-naughts,
for in such an atmosphere children grow up mentally
dwarfed and morally debased.
Fashionable mothers commit their children to the care
of serving-maids while they sail out to soirees and recep-
tion s- put their babes on a bottle wihile they swing round
the social circle. No wonder their sons grow up. sapheads,
as destitute of backbone as a banana, as deficient in moral
force as a firkin of fish. Think of an infant Napoleon nurs-
ing a rubber nozzle, of rearing a Brutus on patent baby
food, of bringing a Hannibal up by hand! You can't do it.
Why, if I had a woman of that kind to wife a fashion-
312 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
able butterfly whose heart was in her finery and her feathers ;
who neglected her home to train with a lot of intellectual
tomtits whose glory was small-talk; who saved her sweetest
smiles for society and her ill-temper for the family altar
I say were I tied fast to that kind of a female, do you know
what I'd do? Eh? You don't? Well neither do I.
There are some Humbugs, however, who merit our re-
spect if not our reverence men who are infinitely better
than they would have the world believe. As the purest
pearl is encased in an unseemly shell, so, too, is many a
god-like soul enshrined in a breast of seeming adamant.
Many a man swears because he's too proud to weep, hides
a quivering soul behind the cynic's sneer, fronts the world
like a savage beast at bay while his heart's a fathomless
lake of tears. Tennyson tells us of a monstrous figure of
complete steel and armed cap-a-pie, that guarded a castle
gate, and by its awful name and warlike mien affrighted
the fearful souls of men. But one day a dauntless knight
unhorsed it and clove thro' the massy helm, when forth
from the wreck there came not a demon armed with the
scythe of death, but a beardless boy scarce old enough to
break a pointless lance upon the village green. So, too,
when with the sword Excalibur of human sympathy you
shear down thro' the helm and harness of some rough-
spoken man who seems to hate all human kind, youi find
the soul of a woman and the heart of a little child.
Even our religion is ofttimes a Humbug, else why is it
that the good Christian woman who says her prayers as
regularly as she looks under the bed for burglars says to
the caller whom she cordially detests, "I am delighted to
see you;" when she's wondering why the meddlesome old
gadabout don't stay at home when she's not wanted else-
where? Why is it that when a good brother puts a five-
dollar bill in the contribution box he flashes it up so all
may see the figures, but when he drops a nickel in the
slot to get a little grace he lets not his right hand know
what his left hand doeth ? W T hy is it that when you strike
a devout deacon for the loan of ten dollars he will swear by
all the gods he hasn't got it. when his pockets are fairly
bursting with big bills? If his religion is not hypocrisy
if he is not a Humbug why doesn't he tell you in plain
United States that he would rather have Uncle Sam's
promise to pay than yours? Oh, people are becoming such
incorrigible liars that I've about quit trying to borrow
money.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 313
Too many people presume that they are full of the grace
of God when they're only bilious; that they are pious be-
cause they dislike to see other people enjoy themselves;
that they are Christians because they conform to certain
cieeds, just as many men imagine themselves honest be-
cause they obey the laws of the land for the purpose of
keeping out of the penitentiary. They put up long prayers
on Sunday; that's piety. They bamboozle a green gosling
out of his birthright on Monday; that's business. They
have one face with which to confront the Lord and another
with which to beguile their brethren. They even acquire
two voices a brisk business accent and a Sunday whine
that would make a cub wolf climb a tree. I am always
suspicious of a man's piety when it makes him look as tho'
he had cut a tihroat or scuttled a ship and was praying for
a commutation of the death sentence. I could never under-
stand why a man who can read his title clear to mansions
in the skies who holds a lien on a corner lot in the New
Jerusalem should allow that fact to hurt him.
I have great respect for true religion; but for the brand
of holiness that's put on with the Sunday shirt that makes
a man cry ahmen with unction, but doesn't prevent him
selling 5 and lO-cent cigars out of the same box, oleomar-
garine and creamery butter out of the same bucket, benzine
and bourbon whiskey out of the same barrel; which makes
long prayers on Sunday and gives short weights on Mon-
day; which worries over the welfare of good-looking young
women, but gives the old grandames the go-by; which
fathers the orphan only if he's rich and husbands the widow
only if she's -handsome for that kind of Christianity I
have no more use than for a mugwump governor who
saddles his state with the expense of a legislative session
to gratify a private grudge against a brother gambler.
That religion which sits up o'nights to agonize because
a few naked niggers in equatorial Africa never heard Eve's
snake story, how Job scratched himself with a broken pie-
plate or the hog happened to be so full of the spirit of
hades; that robs childhood of its pennies to send prayer-
books to people whose redemption should begin with a
bath, while in our own country every town from Catta-
raugus to Kalamazoo every city from the Arctic ocean to
the Austral sea is overrun with heathen who know naught
of the grace of God or the mystery of a square meal; who
prowl in the very shadow of our temples of justice, build
their lairs in proximity to pur public schools and within
sound of the collect of our churches, is an arrant Humbug,
314 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
a crime against man, an offense to God, a curse to the
world.
People frequently say to me, "Brann, your attacks are
too harsh. You should use more persuasion and less
pizen." Perhaps so; but I have not yet mastered the
esoteric of choking a bad dog to death with good butter.
Persuasion is well enough if you're acourting or in the
hands of the vigilantes ; but turning it loose on the average
fraud were too much like a tenderfoot trying to move a
string of freight steers with moral suasion. He takes up
his whip, gently snaps it as iho' he feared it were loaded,
and talks to his cattle like a Boston philanthropist or a
poor relation. The steers look round at him, wonder, in a
vague way, if he's worth eating, and stand at ease. An
old freighter who's been over the "divide" and got his
profanity down to a fine art, grabs that goad, cracks it
like a rifled cannon reaching for a raw recruit and spills
a string of cuss words calculated to precipitate the final
conflagration. You expect to see him struck dead but
those steers don't. They're firmly persuaded that he's going
to outlive 'em if they don't get down and paw gravel, and
they get a Nancy Hanks hustle on 'em. Never^attempt to
move an ox-team with moral suasion, or to drown the
cohorts of the devil in the milk of human kindness. It won't
work.
Oh, it's possible that you may disagree with me on some
minor points of doctrine. That's your blessed privilege and
I wouldn't deprive you of it if I had the power. A pompous
old fellow once called at the office of my religious monthly
to inform me that I was radically wrong on every possible
public question. He seemed to think that I had committed
an unpardonable crime in daring to differ with him. I asked
him to be seated and whistled for the devil the printer's
devil, the only kind we keep in the office of the Iconoclast.
I told him to procure for me a six-shooter, a sledge hammer
and a boat. My visitor became greatly alarmed.
"Wh-what are you g-going to d-do?"
"Do?" I replied. "I'm going to shoot the printers,
smash the press and throw the type into the river. What
in the name of the great Sanhedrim, is the use o' me print-
ing a paper if I can't please you?"
Mr. Pomposity subsided somewhat, and I proceeded to
talk United States to him.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 315
"You say I'm wrong. Perhaps I am; but how in Hal-
ifax" I think I said Halifax ; anyhow "we'll let it go at that
"how in Halifax did you find it out? Who installed you
as infallible pope in the realm of intellect and declared it
rank folly to run counter to the ideas that roost in your nice
fat head?"
He was one of those egotistical mental microbes or intel-
lectual animalctilae who imagine that a man must be in the
wrong if he disagrees with them. And the woods are so
full of that class of fellows that the fool-killer has become
discouraged and jumped his job.
Those who chance to think alike get together and form
a political party, a society or a sect and take it for granted
that they've got all the wisdom of the world grabbed that
beyond their little Rhode Island of intellect are only gibber-
ing idiots and plotting knaves. When a man fears to sub-
ject his faith to the crucible of controversy; when he de-
clines to submit his ideas to the ballistae and battering-
rams of cold logic, you can safely set it down that he's
either a hopeless cabbage-head or a hypocritical Humbug
that he's a fool or a fraud, is full of buncombe or bile.
It is a difference of opinion that keeps the world from
going to the dogs. Independence of thought, doubt of
accepted dogmas, the spirit of inquiry the desire to know
is the mighty lever that has lifted man so far above the
brute level that he has begun to claim kinship with the
Creator. Yet we say to our brother, "Thou fool," because
he takes issue with us on the tariff, or the proper time in
the moon to plant post-holes even insist on sending peo-
ple to perdition who cannot see "the plan of salvation" thro'
our little sectarian telescope.
Men of a mind flock together just like so many gab-
bling geese, or other foolish fowl of a feather, each group
waddling in the wake of some flat-headed old gander,
squawking when he squawks and fluttering when he flieji.
Because I decline to get in among the goslings and be
piloted about the intellectual goose-pond, I'm told that I
have no policy. Well, I hope I haven't. If I thought I had
I'd take something for it, dontcherknow ! When I cannot
live among my fellows without surrendering my independ-
enceforswearing freedom of speech and liberty of
thought ; without having to play the canting hypocrite or go
hungry to fawn like a flea-bitten fice to win public favor
I'll make me a suit of leather, take to the woods *and chop bee
trees. I'd rather my babes were born in a cane-brake and
reared on bark and wild berries, with the blood of independ-
316 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ence burning in their veins, than spawned in a palace and
brought up boot-licks and policy players.
I am sometimes inclined to believe that Life itself is a
Humbug that the man who makes the best of it is the
one who escaped being born. We know not whence we
came or v/hat for, whither we go or what we'll do when
we get there. True it is that life is not altogether labor and
lees there's some skittles and beer; but the most of us
get more shadow than sunshine, more cholera-morbus than
cream. Man born of woman is of few days and full of
politics. The moment he hits the globe he starts for the
grave, and his only visible reward for long days of labor
and nights of pain is an epitaph he can't read and a tom'b-
stone he don't want. In the first of the Seven Ages of man
he's licked, in the last he's neglected, and in all the others
he's a fair mark for the shafts of falsehood. If the don't
marry his first love, he's forever miserable, and if he does,
he wishes he were dead. By the time he has learned wis-
dom he leaves the world, is hustled into a hell of fire or an
orthodox heaven, and for forty years I've been trying to
figure out which of these appalling evils to avoid. In one
place the climate is hot and unhealthy, in the other the
inhabitants never entertained an original idea believed
everything they were told. Think of having to live thro'
all eternity with the strictly orthodox people who regard
freedom of thought as foul blasphemy, millions of immacu-
late bricks cast in the same mould! No wonder there's
neither marrying nor giving in marriage in heaven. Just
imagine a couple of love-sick loons having nothing to do
but spoon from everlasting to everlasting, to talk tutti-
frutti thro' all eternity never a break or breathing spell
in the lingering sweetness long drawn out! Amelia Rives
Chanler or Ella Wheeler W r ilcox couldn't stand it. Nor
could I. By the time I had lived ten thousand years with
a female w,ho could fly, and had nothing in God's world
to do but watch me, I'd either raise a revolution or send
in my resignation. It is said that Satan had an affaire
d'amour while he was playing Seraph. If the object of his
affections wore feathers I don't much wonder that he went
over the garden wall.
I suspect that the orthodox heaven and hell, of which
we hear so much, are Humbugs. I should know something
of those interesting ultimates be qualified to speak ex
cathedra for a doctor of divinity recently denounced me
as a child of the devil. In that case you behold in me a
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 317
prince imperial, heir-apparent to the throne of Pluto, the
potential master of more than a, moiety of .mankind. But
don't tell anybody that I've got a title, that I belong to
the oldest nobility, or all the Goulderbilts will be trying to
buy me.
I promise you that when I come into my kingdom/ I'll
devise a worse punishment than physical pain. A soul is
an immaterial thing. You cannot flay it with aspic's fangs
nor kerosene it and set it on fire. A material hell for im-
material mind were too ridiculous for a progressive devil.
But it is not necessary to be a son of Satan to build a hell
in which demons dance and sulphur-fumes asphyxiate the
soul. You may transform your own home into a valley
of Hinnom, a veritable Gehenna; or you may make of the
humblest cot a heaven, illumed by love and gilded with
God's own glory a Beulah land where flowers forever
bloom, where perfumed censors swing and musi'c throbs
and thrills sweeter far than Orphean lyre or song of Isra-
feel.
The orthodox heaven is a pageant of barbaric splendor,
of gaudy tinsel and flaming gold to dazzle the eyes of in-
fants. It is a land of lotus-eaters, where ambition's star is
blotted from the firmament and the wild ecstacy of passion
beats no longer in the blood; an Oriental heaven, a Para-
dise for tired people eternal dolce far. nlente for niggers
and yaller dogs. No Celt or Saxon with aspiring mind,
with swelling muscles and heart that flames with the fierce
joy of strong endeavor, that thrills with the sweetness of
sacrifice for others' sake that swells with the mad glory of
triumph in the forum or the field, could have conceived
such a futile farce.
Give me a land whose skies are lead and soil is sand, yet
everlasting life with those I love; give me a lodge in some
vast wilderness hallowed by children's laughter; give me
a cave in the mountain crag to house those dearest to my
heart; give me a tent on the far frontier, where, by the
lambent light of their mother's eyes, I may watch my chil-
dren grow in grace and the truth of God, and I'll build
a heaven grander, nobler, sweeter than was ever dreamed
of by the gross materialists of bygone days.
Life is a Humbug only because we make it so. We are
frauds because we are fools. This is a beautiful, a glorious
world, fit habitation for sons of the Most High God. It
is a fruitful mother at whose fair breast all her children
may be filled. There should be never a Humbug nor a
318 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
hypocrite, never a millionaire nor a mendicant on the great
round globe. Labor should be but healthful exercise to
develop the physical man to furnish forth a fitting casket
for the godlike mind, appropriate setting for the immortal
soul. The curse of life arises from a misconception of its
significance. We delve in the mine for paltry gems, ex-
plore old ocean's deep for pearls; we toil and strive for gold
until the hands are worn and the heart is cold; we attire
ourselves in Tyrean purples and silks of Ind and strut
forth in our gilded frippery on the narrow bridge of time,
between the two eternities ; we despoil the thin purse of the
poor to erect brazen altars and priceless fanes, when the
whole earth's a sacred shrine, the universe a temple thro'
which rings tihe voice of God and rolls the eternal melody
of the spheres.
Perhaps it is unnecessary to state that I'm not posing
as a saint. I may eventually become an angel ctf some
sort but I'll wear no wings. We are accustomed to think
of seraphs flying from heaven to earth, flitting from star to
star irrespective of the fact that feathers are useless where
there's no atmosphere. An angel working his wings to
propel himself thro' a vacuum were as ridiculous as a dis-
embodied spirit riding a bike down a rainbow.
I do not expect to reform all Humbugs, to banish all
Fakes, to exterminate all Folly. If the world should get
too good, I might have to hunt another home. I can un-
derstand every crime in the calendar but the crime of greed,
every lust of the flesh but the lust for gain, every sin that
ever damned a soul but the sin of selfishness. By all the
sacred bugs and beasts of ancient Egypt, I'd rather be a
witch's cat or even a politician and howl in sympathy
with my tribe; I'd rather be a tramp and divide my hand-
outs with one more hungry; I'd rather be a mangy yellow
dog without a master and keep the company of my kind,
than to be a multi-millionaire, with the blood of a snake,
the heart of a beast, and carry my soul, like Pedro Garcia,
in my purse.
When I think of the three thousand children in the sin-
gle city of Chicago without rags to shield their nakedness
from the keen north wind; of the ten thousand innocents,
such as Christ blessed, who died in New York every year
of the world for lack of food; of the millions in every coun-
try whose cries go up night and day to God's great throne
not for salvation, but for soup; not for the robe of right-
eousness, but for a second-hand pair of pants and then
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 319
contemplate those beside whose hoarded wealth the riches
of Lydia's ancient kings were but a beggar's patrimony,
praying to Him who reversed the law of nature to feed
the poor, I long for the mystic power to coin sentences
that sear like sulphur-flames come hot from hell, and weave
of words a whip of scorpions to lash the rascals naked thra
the world.
We humbug our parents, the public, and then, as far as
possible, our wives; tho' the latter are seldom so blind as
they seem. The wife wiho cannot tell when her lord and
master is lying whether he's been sitting up with a sick
friend or nursing a Robert-tail flush well, she must be
the newest kind of a "New Woman,"' with a brain built for
bloomers and bike. The New Woman is she is all right;
just the Old Woman in disguise, a paradox and a coat of
paint.
Whenever I tackle this subject I'm reminded of a broth
of a boy wiho in days agone drove the team afield on my
father's farm. One rare June day, when the sun was slowly
sinking in the -west, as the novelists say and I believe
that's where Old Sol usually sinks he got mixed up with
a bevy of industrious bumble-bees who were no respecters
of persons would sting an honest delver as quickly as
they'd put the gaffles to a scorbutic duke. In about two
minutes Mike came over the hill a-w)hooping like a segment
of the Southern Confederacy reaching for a nigger regi-
ment, his head the size and shape of a red peck measure
that had been kicked by a roan mule.
"Sure, now, they didn't do a thing t' me," he said. "An
ould bumblebug came a bizzin' an' a buzzin' aluken fer all
the wurruld like an' Orangeman wid wings, so I up an'
hit him a biff. Thin all the 'rist av the haythen tuk up his
foight an' Oi kem home."
Hit one Humbug and every Fraud and Fake in Chris-
tendom is ready for the fray. They attempt to crush their
critic with calumny, to defeat him with falsehood. When
you hear a fellow railing at the Iconoclast, just look
through its stock of caps and you'll find one that will fit the
knot on the end of his neck.
Truth and only truth is eternal. It was not born and
it cannot die. It may be obscured by the clouds of false-
hood, or buried in the debris of brutish ignorance, but it
can never be destroyed. It exists in every atom, lives in
every flower and flames in every star. When the heavens
and the earth shall pass away and the universe return to
cosmic dust, divine truth will stand unscathed amid the
crash of matter and the wreck of worlds.
320 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST '
Falsehood is an amorphous monster, conceived in the
brain of knaves and brought forth by the breath of fools.
It's a moral pestilence, a miasmic vapor that passes, like
a blast from hell, over the face of the world and is gone
forever. It may leave death in its wake and disaster dire;
it may place on the brow of purity the brand of the cour-
tesan and cover the hero with the stigma of the coward;
it may wreck hopes and ruin homes, cause blood to flow
and hearts to break ; it may pollute the altar and disgrace
the throne, corrupt the courts and curse the land, but the
lie cannot live forever, and when it's dead and damned
there's none so poor as to do it reverence.
THE TEIXEIRA-MORRIS CASE.
H. Steen Morris, a young man who parts his name on
the side, was tried in this city a few days ago on the charge
of raping Antonia Teixeira, the "ward of the Baptist
church," while she was being "educated" at Baylor Uni-
versity for missionary work among the "heathen" Cath-
olics of Brazil. All the influence of Baylor was brought to
bear in favor of the man accused of invading jts supposed
sacred precincts to feed his unholy lust by the debauch-
ment of a babe. As the Baptists are all-powerful in this
county, and can easily make or break any man engaged in
a purely local business, his acquittal seemed a foregone
conclusion. No wonder the president of Baylor gleefully
rubbed his. hands and predicted that the alleged rape-fiend
"would have easy rolling," for to oppose the wishes of the
Baptist bosses were to court a social, political and business
boycott by those who boast that their cult holds a copy-
right on freedom of conscience. Yes, Steen was to have
"easy rolling"; and when the jury dismissed him with a
certificate of good moral character, Dr. Burleson was go-
ing to sue the Iconoclast for damages in the sum of 'steen
million dollars I s'pose. That's what he said but he didn't
expect that his rallikaboo bluff would ever come to the
ears of the Icon. For nearly a year now Dr. Burleson has
been assuring doting parents with young daughters to
educate that he was just about to begin to commence to do
something awfully dreadful to this great religious journal ;
but his horrid vengeance like some other things is "all
in his head." Just how much of the Apostle's wealth Bay-
lor University wants how many golden guineas it will re-
quire to heal the hurt that honor feels I do not know ; but
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST . 321
I'm convinced that when he's jumped up by Baylor before a
jury of his peers to demonstrate his right, as an American
sovereign, to denounce a damnable crime against the in-
nocence of childhood by super-sanctified hypocrites, tum-
ble-bugs will give milk and frogs will grow feathers. "Con-
science doth make cowards of us all." Baylor will carefully
lock the closet in which it keeps its interesting collection
of skeletons, and refrain from blowing in the Apostle to
see if he is loaded. That's what I said.
To make assurance of "easy rolling" doubly sure, those
especially interested in securing the acquittal of the accused,
went to the friends and temporary guardians of the ruined
girl and requested them to use their influence to secure a
withdrawal of the charge that force was employed to accom-
plish her disgrace. As her ruin was wrought before the new
law, raising the age of consent from twelve to fifteen years,
went into effect, it was really an attempt, by bringing undue
influence to bear on the plaintiff, to get her case dismissed
while convicting her of perjury. But her friends declined
to further the fraud and Antonia stuck to her original story
that she had been dragged from Dr. Burleson's kitchen
by the defendant and forcibly debauched within the very
shadow of Baylor. Rev. Zachariah C. Taylor and Dr. Rufus
C. Burleson are two of the pious brethren who thus at-
tempted to get Antonia to alter her testimony. The aged
president admitted as much in court; but protested that he
"didn't want her to swear to a falsehood." If he wanted
her to swear only to the truth why did he go to such pains
to alter her testimony? Certainly she knew better what
accorded with the facts than he possibly could. I much
fear that he is one of those "wily Jesuits" who, we are asked
to believe, can lie in sixteen languages and still avoid the
commission of a cardinal sin.
When the case was submitted to the jury it developed
that the defendant did not have such "easy rolling" as the
eminent divine had predicted. Seven of the jurors were, not
willing to turn him loose even to please the dominant polit-
ical power, while the remaining five could not quite make up
their minds that it was proper to put the brother of Dr.
Burleson's pious son-in-law in the penitentiary. So the
case goes over to the next term of court while the Bay-
lorians redouble their efforts to get the plaintiff out of the
country. Rev. Zachariah C. Taylor, who brought Antonia
to Texas as a companion to his wife, and afterwards wrote
an article for a Waco daily which the steering committee
wisely withdrew protesting that he knew at the time that
she was a foul prostitute, is back in Brazil writing letters
322 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
imploring her to return to her kith and kin in that faraway
country. Why? He declared while here that her mother
was a courtesan and all her relatives a very bad lot. Why
should the poor girl return to such immoral surrounding?
after enjoying for three years the elevating influence of
Baylor University? Does he consider that her "education"
is complete that illegitimate childbirth constitutes Baylor's
graduating exercises and that she should enter at once
upon the work of converting the Brazilian Catholics? Or
does he want her to resume her duties as companion to his
wife? I do not quite understand this good man Taylor.
When he brought Antonia here he gave her a certificate
of good character. When her downfall casts a shadow
over the great Baptist University he declared that she had
been bad from babyhood, and, that, knowing this, he first
made her an inmate of his family, then consigned her to
the companionship of scores of pure young girls, well know-
ing if he knows anything that one wanton can work more
mischief among innocent maids than can a dozen men.
Then he visited her at her present home to discuss the
situation, but declined to be left alone with her, fearing
that his morals might become contaminated. Like Joseph,
he was ready to fly to avoid being ravished after keeping
her in his household for years with full knowledge that she
was a courtesan ! I much fear that Rev. Zachariah would
be a first-class fraud if God hadn't intended him for a fool.
It has been nearly a year since H. Steen Morris was
arrested for the ravishment of Antonia Teixeira. The Icon-
oclast gave it a little attention at the time ; but as a dozen or
two people have subscribed since then, it may not be amiss
to briefly summarize the celebrated case, that new patrons
of the paper may become familiar with this crowning infamy
of the age and know what to expect should they choose to
commit their children to the care of the great Baptist sanc-
tuary of the South.
About four years ago Rev. Zachariah C. Taylor returned
from Brazil, where lie had been frying to convert the
"heathen," alias the Catholics. While in Brazil, he resided
in the same house with a widow whom he now declares
was a bawd. Whether her immorality induced the reverend
gentleman to make her house his habitat, I do not know.
He may have considered that her adherence to the Baptist
faith excused her sexual frailties, if it did not sanctify them,
for he persuaded her to allow her little daughter to accom-
pany him to Texas "to be educated for missionary work in
Brazil." The Baptists here made a great hullabaloo over
her as a brand snatched from the burning representing the
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 323
cumulative result of the long and arduous labors of their
missionary in a "heathen" land and formally adopted her
as the "ward" of that sanctified organization. She was a
frail little thing, about eleven years old, but small for her
age and possessed average intelligence. She was committed
to the care of President Burleson of Baylor with the under-
standing that, after five years of careful schooling, she
should return to Brazil and explain the heavenly water-
route to her benighted Catholic brethren. Instead of being
sent to the class-room, however, she was relegated to the
Burleson kitchen, where she served in the capacity of under-
servant. About three years later or when she was fourteen
years old it was discovered that her clothes didn't fit her.
That was not considered very remarkable, for such things
had happened before at Baylor. It would cost considerable
money to send her home, and of course it would never do
to let her be confined at the university that were contrary
to the Baylorian customs in such cases ; so the Burlesons
and Morrises began casting about for other accommodations
a kind of private lying-in hospital where the babe could be
born without attracting the attention of the general public
and frightening away good paying patrons. By repre-
senting Antonia as "a girl deserving sympathy rather than
condemnation," "a child we are so sorry for" a girl
"faithful and honest" a poor Catholic woman was induced
to give the embryo missionary to the Popish heathen a
home and minister to her in her misfortune. Despite all
precautions, however, rumors of the affair got afloat and a
nervy justice of the peace, without the fear of the Baylorians
before his eyes, proceeded to investigate the matter. The
story of the child was so plain and straightforward that
it was accepted as true by the public. She stated, albeit
with great reluctance, that H. Steen Morris, a young man
who appears to have had the run of the Baylor preserves,
solicited her .favors and, being refused, ravished her per-
son ; that she had made frequent complaints to the Bur-
lesons ; "but nothing was done about it;" that when her
condition could no longer be concealed, Rev. S. L. Morris,
son-in-law to Dr. Burleson and brother to her assailant,
had tried to bulldoze her into a confession that she was
enciente by a "coon." The remarkable fact developed at
the preliminary trial that altho' three years an inmate of
Baylor being educated with a special view to the conver-
sion of Catholics she knew almost nothing not even the
tenets of the Baptist faith, or that the ravishment of a maid
was an offense against the laws of this Christian land !
It was then that Rev. Zachariah C. Taylor came to the
324 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
front with his remarkable story anent the immorality of his
Brazilian landlady and the companion he had selected for
his "wife with such care. It was then that the Burlesons
discovered that Antonia was a born thief instead of an
honest and faithful child who had met with a grievous mis-
fortune. It was then that the reverend president of Baylor
rushed into print with a screed branding 1 as little better than
a public bawd a child in short dresses, who to this day refers
to him as "gran'pa !" It was then that the Catholic woman
who had assumed the care of a girl ravished at Dr. Bur-
leson's door, was besought to turn her adrift to send her
to the home for fallen women at Fort Worth ! It was then
that all the power of Baylor was exerted, not to ferret out
the criminal and bring him to the bar, but to forever blacken
the character of the little orphan and shield the alleged
author of her shame.
And it was then by the eternal gods! that the Icon-
oclast aligned its guns.
Antonia's babe was born three pounds white. It lived
just long enough to develop a striking resemblance to H.
Steen Morris ; but of course this may have been a remark-
able coincidence. It died, and was buried at the cost of the
poor people who had cared for its mother when deserted
by her contemptible alma mater. The Iconoclast stated at
the time that it was buried in a pauper's grave and I'm
told it is upon this inaccuracy that Dr. Burleson hangs his
slender hope of catching me for a few mental anguish plas-
ters. It would have been buried in the Potter's Field had
the poor people depended upon Baylor University to defray
its funeral expenses. Its mother might have died in the
throes of maternity had they relied upon the Burlesons-
and the Morrises to provide medical aid. The men about
town Catholics, Jews and Atheists paid the doctor's bill,
while the sainted Baylorians closed their purses and sighed
for the wickedness of this world. The Catholic woman
who played a mother's part to the poor victim of anti-Cath-
olic missionary education, assures me that all the aid sent
by the sanctified was six bits in cash and an old chemise
royal beneficence which was declined with scant courtesy.
Instead of seeking refuge in the "Reservation" whither
she would certainly have drifted had she been so "crazy
after the boys" as Dr. Burleson asserts, or so abandoned
as Rev. Taylor tried to testify when the steering committee
choked him off the childless little mother besought for-
giveness for her enemies and patiently took up her cross.
She is toiling today in an humble but honest occupation
and enjoys the respect of all manly men and noble women.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 325
Not one word has ever been breathed against her good
name except by the holy bigots and legal hirelings who
are trying to help Baylor University out of the hole. She,
is "faithful and honest," as the Burlesons bore witness when
they wanted some one to take her off their hands and ex-
pected to keep the case out of court. That is the naked
truth in nunce anent Antonia Teixeira's debauchment
though told by the "Apostle of the Devil."
BEANS AND BLOOD.
THE SOUTH AGAIN IN THE SOUP.
Massachusetts has solemnly decided to hold Dixie up by
the patent health-bustle, single-handed and alone, and shake
her until her milk-white teeth rattle like a pair o' Portuguese
castanets if she doesn't refrain from roasting nigger rape-
fiends. When Massachusetts dons her war-paint and shrieks
for slaughter she is too terribly awful to contemplate. Boston
is already grinding the sword of Gideon and flourishing
the jaw-bone of an ass over the shrinking head of the South-
ern Philistine. She has tucked her bloomers in her boots
and bade the soul of Ossawattomie Brown resume its in-
teresting itinerary. Again the beacon fires are brightly
blazing, the clans are "gathering from the hill-side, gather-
ing from the plain," while the ear-piercing fife and thrilling
trumpety-trump of the snareskin fiddle proclaim to the
wondering universe that Yankee-doodle is still something of
a dandy.
Faneuil Hall has spoken, and that with no uncertain
sound. On November 11 was gathered in that historic
pile the chivalry of the city of salt cod, the proud patri-
cians of trade who trace their lineage in an unbroken line
back to the witch-burners. The buck niggers who have
drifted to Boston in their tireless search for social equality,
were likewise present, in brotherly affiliation with long-
haired excuses for white men, and howled themselves hoarse
in an attempt to fire the Northern heart. The mayor did
himself the honor to preside over this sweet-scented as-
semblage of Meddlesome Matties, who were ready to sac-
rifice all their relatives on the altar of racial equality and
political reform. The temple of Janus was thrown wide
open like a boot-jack; Ate came whooping, hot from hell;
Bellona gazed into the assembled gold-browed spectacles,
took a long breath and shrieked for bella, horrid a bella,
326 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
which were equivalent to asking her prandial neighbor to
pass the canned blood. The orators of the evening dem-
onstrated that, as a distributor of "livers and lights," Gov.
Hogg is but an awkward amateur that if Waite wants to
ride in bright red gore he must go to Boston.
The meeting then whereased and resoluted in most
abominable English to the effect that niggers, guilty of
nothing worse than the ravishment of Southern white
women, shall not henceforth be fricasseed that these "be-
ings born in the image of God are entitled to a fair trial
by a jury of their peers." As their "peers" in these parts
have been killed as fast as caught, this means that we must
send the black beasts to Boston, where 3,000 of their mental
and moral mates were recently collected in the same corral.
If Almighty God resembles in personal appearance a nig-
ger ravisher, it is small wonder that he's devoutly wor-
shipped by the Faneuil Hall folks. They belong to that
class of mangy mavericks who are utterly destitute of race
pride who concede that "a white man is as good as a
nigger if he behave 'himself." Quite naturally, they imag-
ine that the Deity is the prototype of Fred Douglas that
Christ was conceived from such a source by a white woman
without her consent. The Faneuil Hall meeting declared
in the name of Massachusetts that the Ethiopian is not an
immoral race, nor addicted to the crime of rape; that the
raison d'etre of Southern roasting-bees is to keep their noble
black brother in political subjection.
It was the barbecues at Tyler and Paris, Texas, that oc-
casioned Boston's remarkable outburst that led to the
renaissance of the erstwhile John Brown. Massachusetts
will make just one mouthful of Texas, then devour the rest
of Dixie. We may expect the knight-errantry of Boston
before the roses bloom again. Sergeant Fight-the-Good-
Fight and Captain Smite-'em-Hip-and-Thigh will swoop
down upon us with a Bible in one hand and "The Sword
of Bunker Hill" in the other. Not even a special session
of the Legislature can keep the Puritan and the Cowboy
apart. Dallas can transform the J. Harvey, Jr., into a man-
o'-war and seek shelter beneath its guns, and Waco protect
herself by putting up a few of those awful lithographs of
the erstwhile Cotton Palace; but the rest of the state will
be naked before its enemies. Mexico has an idea concealed
about her person that she could whip the United States
and not half try if Texas would keep out of the muss, and
the South is nursing a sneaking suspicion that she could
make the effete East whistle peccavi through her proboscis
if the West would give bond to keep the peace. Of 1 course
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 327
both are mistaken. Mexico imagines that San Antonio is
the "Gringo" metropolis, while the South forgets that the
New Woman has appeared in Massachusetts since Lee
made a monkey of McClellan. Furthermore, President
Cleveland 'has taken up his summer residence at Buzzard's
Bay, and his experience with substitutes would enable him
to select a veritable Sir Launcelot. Boston does not run
so largely to beans and wind as in the erstwhile even
China has adopted new military tactics.
Suppose that Texas and Massachusetts hold a conference
between the lines before the ball opens with the musical
"Rounder of the iron six-pounder,
hurling death."
Massachusetts should not execute us without affording
us an opportunity to ask forgiveness and bid the world
farewell. In matters so serious as civil war it were well
to carefully examine the casus belli before making a break.
We call for a parley with a view to coming to an accommo-
dation; for has not Job said that "all a man hath will he
give for his life?" We humbly ask that the brigadier-gen-
erals of the Faneuil Hall Grand Army Corps be commis-
sioned to confer with us and may the pitying gods move
them to compassion !
What in the devil's name does Massachusetts, or any
other Northern state, know about the nigger? You have
studied the -coon at long range, and through the bottle-
green glasses of such vindictive blatherskites as Tourgee
and Cockcrill. Occasionally a "smart nigger," educated at
our expense, drifts to Boston and plays upon the mis-
guided sentiment of its citizens with Munchhausenisms pat-
terned after Uncle Tom's Ca'bin. The Ethiop is better
treated in the South than in any other portion of the Ameri-
can Union. We freely tax ourselves to educate his off-
spring and build hospitals and asylums for his unfortunate.
Now that Boston is turning up her nose at Texas, it may
be well to remind her that during slavery times the niggers
dreaded a Massachusetts driver worse than the devil
that to this good day the elder Ethiops have no use for
the bean-eaters.
Despite the ukase of Faneuil Hall, the nigger has no
more conception of morality than a hyena. There is not
one buck in a hundred who will not steal a pair of pants
from the white man who has given him a coat who will
not despoil his chicken coop after being presented with a
capon. There is not one wench in a thousand who will not
sell her supposed soul for the price of a circus ticket. Most
328 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
nigger preachers will steal anything they can carry, and the
only one who would not lie when the truth answered
equally as well, died "befo' d' wah." You can no more
educate honor and chastity into a coon than into a brindle
cat. We, who know the nigger, do not expect much of
him. We incur large expense to afford him every oppor-
tunity, but it is seldom that he rises above the intellectual
level of a camp-meeting pulpiteer. Those who do so are
usually bastards borne by black women to soldiers from
Boston. We give him our cast-off-clothes and broken vis-
tuals. We find employment for him wthen more compe-
tent white labor stands idle, because we have become used
to providing for his physical well-being. He was our ward
for many generations, and his regard for "massa" and
"missus" was little short of worship. A starving horse may
obtain a square meal where a man would be turned away
hungry. All recognize the helplessness of the animal and
are moved to compassion. For the same reason the most
worthless coon may keep fat and sleek in the Southland
while his betters go hungry to bed.
The South long held the blacks in bondage, and this
has been charged up against her as an unpardonable crime.
It was a sin against herself, and cruelly ihas she suffered.
The South should have permitted the Ethiop to remain
in Africa, a snake-worshipping, cannibalistic savage. The
civilization of the black man, such as it is, is due to his
enslavement by a superior race. The motive of the Ameri-
can slaveholder was doubtless selfish. The North freed
her slaves because she found' free labor the shortest road
to fortune; the South retained her niggers because unfa-
miliar with a great economic fact. Had slave labor proven
profitable, Mayor Curtis might to-day be calling the roll
of his bondsmen on Bunker Hill. Despite the efficient
cause of slavery, the South may say to Sambo, as Prospero
to the son of Sycorax:
"I have used thee, filth as thou art, with human care.
I pitied thee. When thou did'st not, savage,
Know thy own meaning, but would'st gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known: But thy vile race,
Though thou did'st learn, had that in't which good natures
Could not abide to be with."
While held in slavery the negro recognized his inferi-
ority, and no more aspired to mate with the dominant race
than does the buzzard with the eagle. During the civil
war the blacks were left on lonely plantations with the fam-
ilies of their masters while the latter went to t'he front.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 329
They were precious little protection, despite the Yankee
idea to the contrary; but no more fear was felt that they
would invade the sanctity of their master's families than
tho' they had been so many mules. I have heard of but
one instance of such infamy. The negroes had not then so
much as dreamed of crossing the chasm that separates
them from their superiors; but when accorded their free-
dom and the elective franchise they began to long for social
equality. Their preachers who in ante bellum days were
chiefly valuable for breeding purposes wanted white
wives, and as new generations arrived at the age of puberty,
violations of white women by black fiends became frequent.
More than a thousand reputable maids and matrons have
been ravished' and many of them murdered -by black
bucks during the last dozen years. White babes have been
torn from the cradle and sacrificed upon the unclean altar
of Ethiopian lust. No Southern woman is safe from as-
sault beyond the reach of the six-shooter. No white babe
is secure in its crib unless guarded night and day. The
buck nigger is a black cloud hanging over every Southern
home. The dread of our women is not death, for a worse
fate may at any moment befall them.
We have tried "due process of law" on the ledherous
devils "born in the image" of Boston's deity. We have
put rapists in prison and given them to the gallows. We
have bored them with bullets. We have hanged them be-
tween heaven and earth and left their brutish carcasses for
the buzzards. We have flayed them 1 alive, and all without
effect. Having found the law a failure and respectable lynch-
ing futile, we have begun to kerosene 'em and set 'em on
fire. If we cannot insure the sanctity of our homes, by the
Lord God of Israel, we will have the satisfaction of making
the black demons suffer all the tortures of the damned.
And Boston might as well refrain from ripping great
orifices in her undershirt; for if we knew that the roasting
of a negro rape-fiend would bring down upon us all the
ardent admirers of Ida Wells in Old and New, England,
all the powers of earth, the legions of hell and the eternal
wrath of heaven, we would apply the torch and brave
extermination. It were better to be dead, damned and
delivered; it were better the South should be made a
desert of desolation forever and a day; it "were better that
the owl and the jackal should make our ruined homes their
habitat, than to live, a race of cowardly curs, breeding
babes for black demons to debauch.
So much doth the South urge in her defense. Now
stand forth, thou city of baked beans and buncombe, and
330 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
answer to a counter accusation : The blood of every white
babe butchered by the blacks, of every maid and matron
who has suffered death and despoliation by these demons,
is upon the heads of those mischievous meddlers who freed
the slave and made him a political sovereign ; upon the
heads of those unhung idiots who have been prating of
racial equality; upon the heads of such unclean cattle as
those who, herded together in Faneuil Hall, compared a
negro rape-fiend to the Deity, and threatened to take up arms
in his defense. Just such infernal guff by ignorant gillies,
whose chosen vocation is vicious intermeddling with mat-
ters anent which they know less than nothing, led the foul
victims of the Paris fricassee to rip open a white babe and
debauch the poor little innocent after it was dead!
It is easy enough to make excuses for the "war waged
upon the South in behalf of the slave. We long ago con-
ceded that it was the result of an honest misconception.
The most serious of its consequences to the South was not
our broken altars and ruined fanes, not the improverish-
ment of a people little inured to labor, nor yet the lonely
graves that dot our land thick as autumn leaves ; it was the
transformation, as if by infernal magic, of millions of
stupid slaves into American sovereigns. Improvident,
idle and ignorant, it is small wonder that they become crim-
inals and courtesans. Being political incapables, they are
the easy prey of designing demagogues. The South shoul-
dered this appalling burden uncomplainingly and proceeded
to make the best of it, for the ci-devant master is really
the freedman's best friend. Had the carpet-baggers, profes-
sional reformers and other pestiferous busy-bodies let the
newmade citizen alone, it would have been infinitely better
for all concerned; but they proceeded to fill his fat head
with false ambitions, to preach to him that his poverty, born
of idleness, was the result of persecution, to hint that no
social distinction should be drawn between political equals
in the same republic that the only solution of the negro
problem was miscegenation. Then followed, as a natural
sequence, those conditions that have alarmed our self-consti-
tuted critics.
Educating the Ethiopian were like casting pearls be-
fore swine. You may discover jewels in the head of a toad,
but you'll find no wisdom in the skull of a nigger. The
"brainy black men," to whom the Bostonese point with
pride, are simply featherless poll-parrots. Education only
serves ^ to make the Ethiopian impudent, more inclined to
live without honest labor. Politically he is a commodity,
ever for sale to the highest bidder, while industrially he
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 331
isn't worth a tinker's dam when beyond white domination.
The idea that the Southern whites rule the ballot-box with
shot-guns is all moonshine. We can buy a nigger's vote
for fifty cents, while it costs four dollars to bury him.
The black is here, and I see but one way to get rid of
him, and that is to drive him en masse beyond the Ohio
and give our nigger-loving neighbors an opportunity to
test their fine theories by conditions. Boston can have the
whole caboodle if the Faneuil Hall crowd will pay th$
freight. But it is our duty, as honest men, to give her an
idea what to expect of her black "images of God." She will
have to build more prisons and poor-houses. 'She will
have to chain Bunker Hill monument to the center of gravity
or they'll steal it. She will have to put sheet-iron lingerie
on her marble Goddess of Liberty or some morning she'll
find the old girl with her head mashed in and bearing marks
of sexual violence. By all means, let Massachusetts take
the nigger away from the wicked Texans and carry him
in triumph to the land of racial equality, political reform
and gods who resemble colored ravishers. That were much
better than bruiting it about that we make bonfires of in-
nocent blacks both "men and women" just to see them
burn. All the niggers roasted by Texas freely confessed
their guilt. They were identified beyond the peradventure
of a doubt. There may have been rape fiends roasted in the
South who "protested their innocence even in the very jaws
of death." There have been criminals hanged, shot or
beheaded in every country who declined to confess. So far
as I know, there has been but one colored woman burned in
the South since the war. If I remember aright she assisted
a syphilitic negro lover to [debauch two little girls, both
less than ten years of age. Massachusetts has put a num-
ber of white women to death on the suspicion that they were
witches ; hence her criticism of the South seems a trifle too
much like the devil rebuking sin.
Massachusetts' war talk is all damphoolishness. It were
impossible to raise in the entire state a thousand men for
the invasion of the South on behalf of the Senegambian.
The great body of the Massachusetts people have sense
enough to know that the South is civilized and that the
negro is a semi-savage. In the Faneuil Hall aggregation
of long-haired he-virgins there were not a dozen men who
would fight their own shadows on compulsion. They repre-
sent the crank element of the Old Bay State, an element
that will say more in a minute than it will stand to do in a
month. The better element of Boston is not meddling in
other people's business. It understands the South. It ap-
332 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
predates the black burden under which every Southern state
is struggling. It holds female chastity in high esteem. It
rejoices whenever a ravisher is done to death. Boston runs
to brains as well as to beans and brown bread. But she is
cursed with an army of cranks whom nothing short of a
straight- jacket or a swamp-elm club will ever control. Bos-
ton has no cause to blush because of Southern roasting-
bees ; but the wild yodel of her own irrepressible damphools
"one of whom her mayor is which" might well tinge
with shame the brazen cheek of Sodom. If Massachusetts
really wants war she should wage one of extermination on
her own busybodies. When Cleveland again hires a sub-
stitute he should select the Fool-Killer and assign him to
duty in the lobby of Faneuil Hall.
THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER.
WILL THE EAGLE CEASE TO SCREAM ?
How long will the American Union endure? It is cus-
tomary to speak and act as tho' it could only end with Time ;
as if nothing short of the final crash of the Universe rushing
back into the formless realm of Chaos and Night could pos-
sibly subvert it.
And yet it is but a new thing a great straddling polit-
ical calf standing doubtfully upon its four wobbly legs,
the bones of which are still but gristle, the tendons mere
fatty strings. Thus it stands, fronting Time; foolishly im-
agining itself a winged-lion or hippogriff, one of the few
immortal things that were not born to die! 1 Really, if it
meet with no mishap until its bones have time to harden
until its principles still in a nebulous state are finally fixed
it will doubtless become, if not an immortal winged-creature,
at least a fine horned-bull, able to paw up the dirt and bellow
with the proudest of bovines. But infant governments, like
other juveniles, have their perils to pass through ; their
colics and cramps, measles and mumps, and it is a long cry
from the baptismal font to the toga virilis from wobbly,
foolish calfhood to mastership of the herd. It were well,
perhaps, not to forget that other republics have filled earth
and heaven with their self-glorification and boasts of im-
mortality, and then, quietly or otherwise, meandered out
into the great inane, leaving behind as monuments but a few
scraps of half intelligible history, of interest chiefly to the
foolish antiquary.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 333
"The soul politic having departed, what can follow but
that the body politic be decently interred, to avoid putres-
cence?"
We are no longer American citizens, brothers with corn-
mutual interests ; we are capitalists and laborers, farmers
and manufacturers each class fighting desperately not to
promote the general welfare, but its own selfish interest.
We are divided into classes-social and classes-industrial,
and the lines of demarcation are becoming ever more
strongly drawn. Patriotism has been throttled by greed,
fraternity by jealousy. We no longer send our best men
to Congress. We do not ask what a candidate can do to
make the Union stronger ; we do not inquire what he knows
of the science of government but rather how deep a haul
he can make on the treasury for the special behoof of our
section; how large an appropriation he can secure for the
"improvement'' of intermittent creeks and impossible har-
bors ; for the erection of useless public buildings ; how much
"protection" he can secure for our products at the expense
of the rest of the nation; how many fat federal offices he
can distribute among us. We are after spoils; -we have
made of our votes levers to pry open the public treasury ;
we will follow any demagogue if he but lead us to the flesh-
pots, reckless of the future. Where is hope? What is to
prevent our plunging headlong- into that mad vortex of ruin,
temporal and spiritual, to which we are hastening with con-
stantly accelerating speed? To what political party shall
we turn for salvation? There are but two possessing
power for good or ill, and, like two bad roads, if we
take the one we are apt to regret the other. Principles?
What principles does either party possess that it will not
willingly sacrifice to secure the mystic sesame that makes the
doors of the public treasury fly open?
Is it possible that co-operation in government, as in
business, is foredoomed to failure that here as elsewhere
it is true that "too many cooks spoil the broth?" Or will
the mad wreck and ruin that must inevitably follow this
dividing of the national house against itself but prove a
purgation by fire, from which representative government
will rise, phoenix-like, purer and stronger? We shall see
what we shall see.
Those who fear the downfall of the Republic through
so-called centralizing tendencies are but striving desper-
ately to frighten themselves with a spectre of their own
contriving. The danger lies not in a strong central gov-
334 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
eminent, but in a weak one. It is not "imperialism 1 " we
have to fear so much as the State sovereignty hydra, which
was scotched, not killed, by the Lerncan serpent slayers of
'61-5. This double sovereignty of State and Nation is a
weak spot in the pillar of American government, one preg-
nant with danger. It made the war of 1812 a pitiful farce
would have given us a slhameful defeat within the mem-
ory of men now living had Mexico bred true fighting men
instead of beggars and lice. It has several times threatened
the integrity of the Union and once cost a million precious
lives. It has on divers occasions very nearly embroiled
us in war with foreign powers, and may do so at any time
then handicap us, as it has ever done, in the hour of peril !
Truly was it said of old that the house divided against itself
cannot stand. So long as these United States of America
are a congeries of Nations instead of a Nation with one
supreme head to whom all petty governors must bow it
will be so divided, ready to melt into nothingness.
Pessimism? Not a bit of it. A pessimist, with an eye
to see and mental apparatus to digest such pabulum as the
visual nerve provides w,ould not believe that the rickety
pile we name American Union and brag about and rob
on every possible occasion could stand upright a single
year; could sustain the faintest adverse wind from any
quarter of tlhe compass whatsoever. Forty odd separate
and distinct buildings of different styles of architecture
huddled together helter-skelter under one rickety patch-
work roof, hovering aloft with painful effort, pulled at,
even shot at, the props all rotten and worm-eaten the fact
scarce concealed by liberal paint and cheap gilding.
That the rebellion of 1861 did not bring that composite
covering down with a crash; that it did not tear apart those
grotesquely grouped Nations and scatter them to the four
winds of heaven or hades, was but an accident, happy or
otherwise, as you chance to view it. The people of the
North and South were at swords' points; a collision was
inevitable cupping had become a necessity. The very
fact that the South was determined to get out of the Union
made the North equally as determined that, cost what it
might, the Union should be preserved intact. It was not
that the people of the North loved the Union more, but
that they loved the South less, that gave vigor, even viru-
lence, to their war cry of "the Union forever," with hurrah
boys attachment. They "had it in for the nigger drivers"
and were only too happy when the latter gave them an ex-
cuse to shuck their linen. Really, it was not so much a
question of whether the Union should be preserved as
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 335
\\hrthcr John Brown's soul should be permitted to go
inriiiidrriiig musically on, lhat caused the Northerner to
gird sword on thigh and go marching from Atlanta to the
sea doing his share meanwhile to solve the negro prob-
lem from an ethnological as well as a political standpoint.
Now that the negro can knock off work without asking
leave; can give over petit for grand larceny whenever he
can get elected to office and John Brown's soul goes
marching unchallenged Mason and Dixon's semi-mythical
line is slowly but surely fading from a grand canyon to a
mere scratch in the ground; but a new sectional line is
being drawn between the East and the West that bids fair
to make no end of trouble in the near future. The most
dangerous of all lines, however, is that being drawn ever
broader and deeper between the capitalist and the laborer;
or, to dodge the hair-splitting of political economists, be-
tween Dives and Lazarus between the man who has mil-
lions in excess of his needs and the man whose chief capital
is an active .appetite. It is along this line that t'he first
sputtering of that revolution which is destined to try to
the uttermost our present form of government will first be
heard nay, is even now audible. This is a revolution, re-
bellion or what you will, that no marching to the sea, fall
of Richmond and the like will put down; one there is no
force able to cope withal. Once well under way, it will
run its course; no flag-flaunting, resolution by prominent
citizens, enactment of Congress not even an appropria-
tion will suffice to check it. The only safety for our estab-
blished forms and formulas lies in their quiet but rapid
metamorphosis. Our wise men, if they would "save the
country," must no longer waste time trying to prop up
buildings that arc even now tumbling down; but break the
force of the fall the best they may, clear away the rubbish
and supervise the erection of more useful edifices. They
must not seek so much to repress the gathering storm as
to give it direction, that it destroys not the useful with the
useless.
The workingman must be made to feel that he, too, has
a country and that it is in very truth "the land of tine free
and the home of the brave" of men courageous enough
to say to the employing capitalist: We, too, are men like
thce; we are your fellow-countrymen, not your serfs. Our
labor you can only secure by giving therefor a just propor-
tion of its product ; our votes our manhood you can in
nowise command. These are not for sale or rent.
336 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
One great trouble with our government is that it is be-
coming too complex, too redundant. There is danger of
its breaking down with its own weight. We must study to
simplify it, to dispense with many of our present offices,
instead of creating more. The number of our tax-eaters
is becoming alarming. They already constitute a vast non-
productive army; their support is becoming a serious drain
upon American industry. We have too many laws and
law-makers ; too much red tape that hinders rather than
helps Justice in the manipulation of her sw,ord and scales.
Government, municipal. State or National, is a corporation
in which every citizen is a stockholder, sharing in the gains
or losses. The public service should, therefore, be reduced
to a purely business basis. The demagogue who mounts
dry-goods box or editorial tripod and prates about rota-
tion in office should be gagged with his own stupid
nescience. When we secure faithful and efficient servants
we must keep them as long as possible instead of turning
them adrift to make place at the public teat for partisan
"workers." The idea that public treasure is legitimate spoil
must be weeded out. It is a rank, infectious growth that
is rapidly strangling all that is good in our boasted repre-
sentative government.
MARRIAGE AND MISERY.
SOME SANCTIFIED DEBAUCHERY.
There are probably a million women in this land living
lives of legalized prostitution; who conceive -children in
hate of husbands they abhor, bring them forth in bitterness
of spirit to be reared in an atmosphere of discord off-
spring stamped from their very inception with the die of
the criminal or the courtesan. Yet the purists and pietists
''view with alarm" the vast increase in the number of
divorces; are weeping and wailing because women will not
suffer in silence a bondage that is bestial a prostitution
pre-eminently the worst in the world, that of loveless mar-
riage. Day and night the doleful jeremiad goes up from
these pious pharisees that the laxity of American divorce
laws is imperiling the morals of the people, sapping the
home and threatening to topple our entire system' into ruin
irremediable.
And what remedy do they propose? Uniform divorce
laws and a reduction of the number of causes for w'hich
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 337
marital bonds may be legally broken. This would be equiv-
alent to enacting a law that people should not summon a
physician except in certain dire exigencies. Those who
would elevate public morals by repressing legal separations
appear to consider lax divorce laws the cause rather than
the result of marital misery. They are pounding away
vigorously at the shadow, leaving the substance untouched.
These foolish philosophers appear to be harboring the
hallucination that where divorce is not difficult, husbands
and wives are taken on trial; that matches are made just
for amusement or to gratify a prurient passion, and that
women pretending to respectability change their lawful
companions much as men of the world do their mistresses ;
also that where it is next to impossible to break the mar-
riage bond it is regarded with greater veneration and en-
tered into with much greater caution. Doubtless a few old
roues and adventuresses might make a business of marry-
ing if divorce could be had for the asking, but it is an insult
to the better class of American women to suggest that any
law could so demoralize them that they would deliberately
wed men with whom they did not expect to pass their lives.
Wedlock is holy only where there exists mutual love and
respect. Such unions do not need to be reinforced by strict
marriage laws. They mean much more than a "civil con-
tract;" they mean devotion unto death, and would stand
unshaken if every law known to man should perish from
the earth. Only such unions should endure. All others
arc unholy and unclean civil contracts to commit a crime
against posterity and should be dissolved. Those who
protest so bitterly against divorce, who would compel peo-
ple to live together after love has flown, appear to think
the marriage ceremony a thaumaturgic incantation which
sanctifies debauchery, a modern correlative of the ancient
rites of Bacchus.
That eminent statistician, Hon. Carroll D. Wright, has
recently stated that during the twenty years ending with
1886, there were granted in the United States 328,716 de-
crees for divorce; that the number in 1867 was 9,937 as
against 25,535 in 1886, being an increase of nearly 157 per
cent., while the population of the country increased during
the same period only about 60 per cent. Mr. Wright added,
almost unnecessarily one would think, that "the divorce sta-
tistics do not fully indicate or measure the marital infelicity
or social misery of the country ; they only measure the mis-
ery which can no longer abide conditions, and when parties
have the courage to publicly seek release from demoralizing
burdens."
338 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Those words in quotation are worthy serious study.
"When they have the courage'' to go into court and recite
their grievances, to lay bare their torn hearts to the world,
to be badgered and baited by shyster lawyers, made the cyn-
osure of the rabble, and have the degradation and despair
which they would fain hide from their dearest friends,
caught up by a prurient press and heralded to the four
winds of heaven ! Only people who have the courage can
stand that kind of thing, can hope for legal relief from bonds
that make life a burden. And what kind of people possess
this courage? Those who least deserve relief brazen
women and brutish men. How can a high-bred gentleman
go into court and brand the wife to whom he poured the
whole wealth of his heart, as a wanton confess himself
that most pitiable of all objects, a cuckold? If they have
children, how can he deliberately cloud their whole lives?
How can a modest, sensitive woman go before a rabble and
rehearse the brutal scenes that have made her home a hell ?
No, they cannot do it ; they must suffer in silence or quietly
depart, leaving their unworthy mate to explain the separa-
tion as their interest or maliciousness may suggest.
The number of divorces has indeed become appalling ; but
this is but a partial suppuration of the sore. It argues, not
that divorce laws are too lax, but that society is rotten.
Marital misery cannot be decreased by denying it relief. If
a woman does not love and honor her husband above all
other men, she might as well be in a brothel as compelled to
share his bed. If a man does not love his wife, happiness
cannot abide in that home. People who do not desire to live
together should be allowed to legally separate without being
compelled to go into court with their grievances. It is a
matter which they alone are competent to wisely decide.
They have entered into a ''civil contract" to make each other
happy. If either wishes to annul that contract it is prima
facie evidence that it has not been fulfilled, is void, and
should be so pronounced by the courts.
To guard against hasty and ill-considered action the law
might provide that application for divorce be followed by a
separation of six months, during which period the marital
relations would be suspended in law and in fact. At the
expiration of that period, an application that the divorce
be made absolute should be followed by a decree to that
effect, proper provision made for the children, if any, result-
ing from the union. Unquestionably such a regime would
increase the number of divorces. More people would "have
the courage" to seek separation from uncongenial mates if
they did not have to go into court with a lingering tale of
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 339
woe to explain to all Christendom, through the columns
of a sensation-seeking, garbage-grabbing press, why said
mates were to them a source of misery. It would afford
relief to many cultured gentlemen and refined ladies to
whom our present barbarous system of procedure offers only
a cure infinitely worse than the complaint.
The objections that libertines would marry young ladies
with deliberate intent to secure divorces is not without
weight ; but we cannot well condemn those already in the
Slough of Despond to remain there because to help them out
will afford a few fools golden opportunity to fall in. With
the law as suggested, young ladies really deserving our con-
sideration would not be so ready to contract hasty marriages
with men of whom they knew little. As matters now stand
many incautious women are victimized by adventurers who
do not hesitate to marry as often as opportunity offers.
While we may properly look to law-reform to relieve
much of the marital misery now existing, we should strive
to prevent, rather than to provide a panacea for this ill in
the future. The church might profitably allow the heathen
a holiday and devote a little more of its energies to teach-
ing the American people that marriage is more than a "civil
contract" that may be entered into much as one does into a
contract for a car-load of cotton or a pound of putty. It
should set its face like flint against "marriages of con-
venience ;" should launch some of its thunderbolts it is now
wasting on the heads of harmless agnostics, at those pious
people who teach their daughters that the chief end and aim
of their lives must be to marry money instead of men. Our
public schools should not waste quite so much time ascer-
taining the number of bones in the caudal appendages of the
ichthyosaurus, or determining just when the paleozoic gave
place to the mesozoic, and that in turn was tumbled into the
unlamented erstwhile by the cenozoic time ; but should de-
vote an hour occasionally to teaching the rising generation
something of the sacredness of Lamartine's trinity the
trinity of the father, mother and child.
That is the only hope for the future. Laws cannot make
a people virtuous or happy. They cannot prevent mistakes
in marriages. They cannot guard the sanctity of the home.
340 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
WAR OR WIND?
UNCLE SAM AS DON QUIXOTE.
Britain's royal beast and Columbia's bald-headed bird are
evidently preparing to give an interesting imitation of the
historical monkey and parrot to have "one hell of a time."
President Cleveland slipped a cannon cracker into Queen
Victoria's Christmas sock, and is now waiting to receive in
return the courtesies of the season. The old girl has got
to sand her hands, seize her soap-stick and call the ripsnort-
in', hades-erecting bluff of the Western warrior bold, else
concede Uncle Sam's right or ability to put a red fence
around the Western hemisphere and compel the royal guys
of Europe to keep off the grass. The party in the Populist
pants and the Tippecanoe tile is trailing the flowing narra-
tive of his star-spangled cut-away in the middle of the road,
carrying an adult cypress shingle on each shoulder and os-
tentatiously biting his thumbs at John Bull. He has gone
deliberately forth, with a search-warrant in one hand and a
forty candle-power arc light in the other, to look for trou-
ble, and either Cranfill or Christ hath said, ''Seek and ye
shall find."
In browsing around, seeking whom he may devour, the
British lion has encountered something he can't digest.
While gaily despoiling the nests of ospreys he has inad-
vertently run his muzzle into the eyrie of the American
eagle, and unless the brute removes it with neatness and
despatch, he will be sent home with his tail frozen to his
belly-band and both optics swinging in the breeze.
In my humble opinion, Cleveland made a large, piebald
ass of himself when he penned that arbitrate~or-fight pro-
nunciamento. Some public enemy had probably slipped a
little gunpowder into the presidential demijohn, for Grover
evidently mistook himself for that substitute v/ho subdued
the Southern Confederacy. He longed once again to hear
the roar of battle and set his brisket against the bayonet
to drink hot blood out of a camp skillet and satisfy his mar-
tial soul with the glorious pomp and circumstance of war.
It is difficult indeed to break these prancing war-steeds to the
plow. The smell of holiday powder and the roll of the toy
drum causes them to stand on their hind legs and neigh for
a renascence of the days that are dead.
There is nothing for it now but to back the President's
foolish bluff to the last extremity. That is the penalty we
must pay for having placed at the head of Federal affairs a
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 341
man more skilled in pinochle than diplomacy, who runs to
belly rather than brains and drinks bourbon as if it were
Weiss beer. According to reliable reports, the President
sat him down in a fit of pique, and, while his "hair was pull-
ing" penned in a few minutes that message which may in-
volve the world in war and set back the hand on the human
horologue a thousand years. His case of katsen jammer is
likely to cost us dear. Had he embroiled us with almost any
other transatlantic power, we might have crawfished out of
it with credit by consigning him to a Keeley-cure establish-
ment or lunatic asylum ; but we cannot afford to temporize
even a little bit with John Bull. Such a policy would be
interpreted by this professional bluffer as a square back-
down, and would render him more insolent and overbearing
than ever.
Sooner or later, Uncle Sam has got to give his British
cousin a lesson in international courtesy has got to hold
Britain's marauding beast up by the narrative and bump its
fat head against Plymouth Rock until his fangs fall out-
and this disagreeable duty cannot be long delayed. Another
war between the two great English-speaking powers has
been brewing for half a century and cannot be permanently
side-tracked by even the most careful diplomacy or skilled
hypocrisy. It is inscribed in the Book of Fate either Rome
or Carthage must feel upon her neck the heel of the con-
queror. We might just as well settle the hash of the world's
bully and leave to posterity the privilege of paying the bills.
It will serve to remind them of their glorious ancestors
and, while in the throes of hysterical patriotism, they'll place
all the war-bonds and greenbacks on a gold-basis and pro-
vide our whiskered orphans with liberal pensions.
The trade relations of the two countries are particularly
close and mutually profitable. John Bull and Brother Jona-
than wine and dine, toast and taffy each other indulge in
a great deal of gush anent the common ancestry, kindred in-
stitutions and the high destiny of the great English-speaking
Brotherhood; but all the time they know they are lying
like Cretans are indulging the hypocritical courtesies of
commerce, the artificial smiles and effusive hand-shakings
of the shop. Ethnologically, the English and Americans are
as little alike as are the Germans and the French. There is
a mighty tide of English blood in America ; but it has been
modified by climatic conditions and the admixture of Danish
and German, while the Gael has tinctured it with iron and
the Celt with Tabasco sauce. England may have been our
"mother country" a century or so ago ; but to-day she is not
even our anthropological step-dame. We are no more
342 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Englishmen because we employ the language, than a parrot is
a Baptist preacher because it stands on two legs and gabbles
anent things of which it know r s nothing.
We owe to England no "debt of gratitude." She has
done nothing for us except to fatten upon the fruits of our
industry, oppress and insult us in the day of our infancy
and conspire against us in the day of our strength. Despite
the "many expressions of good will," down deep in the
heart of each nation is a fervent desire to humiliate the
other a feeling that needs little nursing to flame forth in
hate so rancorous as to make peace impossible. John Bull
has never forgotten nor forgiven the Boston tea-party and
Bunker Hill. Yorkto\vn has been a thorn in his side for a
century, New Orleans is a fly in his ointment. But it is
the growing commerce and the expanding power of the
new Nation, born of his o"wn brutality, that aggrieves him
most. He aspires to be the autocrat of the earth; to place
all nations and peoples under tribute to "the Tight Little
Isle" to make them the industrial peons of his grasping
tradesmen ; and day by day the truth of Napoleon's prophecy
that America was destined to put an everlasting crimp in
Britain's vaulting ambition is being driven home to the
wolfish heart, the iron has entered his sordid soul. When
not \vrestling with Brother Jonathan for the best end of the
bargain in beeves, cotton and corn, or striving, by the pur-
chase of political Benedict Arnolds, to shape our financial
system for his profit and our impoverishment, his tone is
exasperating if not actually insulting. His globe-trotters
take a peep at our institutions from the windows of a
palace-car, enjoy our hospitality, then meander home to fill
their pockets with dirty pence by pandering to anti-Amer-
ican prejudice by caricaturing us in stupid plays and lying
periodicals. Even Charles Dickens, whom we enriched
and worshiped as a god beneath whose feet Columbia
laid her shining hair repaid our love with the base ingrati-
tude characteristic of his brethren. In our joy at meeting
the author of Little Nell we forgot that he was a Briton
that tho' he might be the brightest and the wisest, he must
of necessity be "the meanest of mankind."
John Bull's pauper "nobility" with bawds and panders
for progenitors consider American heiresses their legiti-
mate game. Englishmen come hither in the steerage of
tramp steamers and accumulate fortunes; but when their
wives become enciente they send them across the sea that
their brats may be born British subjects instead of American
sovereigns, then bring back these cringing slaves of a rotten
monarchy to be educated at the expense of a people whom
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 343
they profess to despise. They fatten beneath the American
flag, but when asked to bear arms in its defense, plead the
exemption of aliens. The Gael and the Celt, the Dane and
the Pole, the German and the Russ consider a flag worthy
to shield their roof-tree good enough to fight for, and be-
come enthusiastic American citizens, ready to do and die for
the country of their adoption ; but once an Englishman, al-
ways an Englishman. They are so inordinately proud of
being the "humble subjects" of a beery old female, and so
ready to pour into her ample ear their tale of woe at every
opportunity, that their presence here is a constant menace
to the peace of a nation that has afforded them an oppor-
tunity to rise superior to that state in "which they were born
to develop from grimy paupers into pot-bellied plutocrats,
from menials existing on "tips" contemptuously tossed
them by gentlemen, into pompous millionaires.
When John Bull attempts to be pleasant with us he only
succeeds in being patronizing. His diplomacy is deceit
that might shame a disciple of Machiayelli, while his friend-
ship is bounded by the shilling. During our civil war the
present prime minister openly declared that the disruption
of this nation would make to the commercial advantage of
England, and those brutal words made him the political idol
of his coldly-calculating countrymen. And yet the Anglo-
maniacs are prattling of the "indissoluble ties that bind to-
gether the great English-speaking brotherhood," and snivel-
ing about John Bull's "friendship for Brother Jonathan !"
It is a friendship akin to that of Judas Iscariot he kisses
only to betray.
True, these are but trifles, at which Americans, conscious
of their country's invincible strength, affect to laugh ; but it
is the laugh of men who long to express their hilarity witH
martial music and double-shotted guns. People in this
frame of mind can easily find a pretext for booming the
coffin trust. In fact, the official casns belli in nearly every
bloody struggle has been but a specious apology to the world
for letting slip the dogs of war. Petty grievances accumulate
and bitterness is fostered, until, without apparent cause,
there comes the conflagration.
I sincerely trust that the political buncombe of President
Cleveland will not prove a match in the great powder mag-
azine; but if the sword is once drawn it should not be
sheathed while the shadow of Britain's flag falls upon one
acre of the western world. When Columbia strikes again
in the name of human liberty she must strike to kill must
make her flag a terror to tyranny. We have already had
two wars with England, and we must make it "three times
344 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and out." We gave the British lion a breakfast in 1776,
a dinner in 1812, but the omnivorous beast is not yet sat-
isfied. If he puts his paws under our mahogany again,
we must serve him with a supper that will forever satiate
his lust for Yankee gore.
Nothing short of dismemberment of the Britism Empire
will put England permanently on her good behavior, and
this Uncle Sam can accomplish in half the time it required
to conquer the Southern Confederacy. For generations
Erin, prostrate and bleeding beneath the feet of Britain's
marauding beast has appealed to us for aid. We have
given her our sympathy and opened to her our purse; now
let us given her the sword, beneath whose keen edge her
ancient enemy has learned to cower. In case of war, let it
be emblazoned on every battle-flag that Ireland's autonomy
is a pre-requisite to peace. Let us throw fifty thousand
fighting men into the Emerald Isle, as a nucleus around
which the Irish, scattered throughout the world, may rally,
and strike one herculean blow for God and native land. Do
this, and the Irish who have constituted England's right
arm for a hundred years will fight this war, and they'll
fight it to a finish. From every land and clime upon which
shines the sun the fiery Celts will come trooping to the
fray, and unless held in check by Columbia's strong hand,
they'll make of Ireland's oppressor a desolation forever
and a day. Twice has England allied herself with the
American savages in war upon this country. While she as-
sailed us in front, she incited the murderous redskins to
attack the defenseless cabins and isolated villages scattered
along our western frontier. It were but retributive justice
to turn the Celts, maddened by generations of cruel out-
rage and brutal robbery in their thirst for vengeance
loose in their marts of trade.
Those milk-and-water Anglo-maniacs, who are crying
aloud in the mugwump press that, in case of war we would
be at the mercy of England's ironclads, should be sent
across the sea where they may feel safe. They are the lin-
eal descendants of those tories who preached humble sub-
mission to crazy King George, and put their "white livers
on exhibition when John Bull was impressing American
seamen. They told America then that she was not pre-
pared for war, and that "the British navy would dictate
terms of peace off New York and Boston." They gave an
imitation of Jonah, who went bawling up and down the
earth, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
But despite the calamity cackling, Nineveh stood and so
did New York. The Yankee tars rigged up a lot of rotten
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 345
scows, armed them with old smooth-bores, and either cap-
tured England's terrible seventy-fours or drove them under
cover, while Washington's ragged Continentals or Old Hick-
ory's coon-skin riflemen were making the British redcoats
and Hessian mercenaries hard to catch. The best defense
of a nation is not ships of iron and forts of stone, but hearts
of oak. With three million poverty-stricken people, the
American eagle got in its gaffles. Back of the bird o' free-
dom to-day are seventy millions of the same fighting stock,
and more wealth than is owned by any other nation in the
world. America has passed thro' the fiery furnace has
been welded into one homogeneous nation. In case of
another war with England that country will not have vast
tribes of Indians and traitorous tories to assist her. She
will not find one great section of America inimical to the
other and indifferent to national glory, as in 1812. Lee's
veterans will keep step with Grant's boys in blue will set
foot as far as who goes farthest in defense of the old flag ;
and I here do prophesy that when Northern valor and
Southern chivalry make common cause tho' the sea be
black with England's ships and her shores girt with fire
the red tide of war will soon roll thro' London's streets and
Old Glory be planted in triumph on the Tower.
I have been called a "jingo." If by that is meant that
I am jealous of my country's honor ; if by that is meant
that I am all aweary of seeing the most powerful nation
that ever graced the mighty tide of time truckle like a
whipped spaniel at the feet of a neighbor it could erase
from the map of the world ; if by it is meant that I long
to hear the mighty bird o' freedom emit one scream that
will cause every arrogant monarchy on earth to hunt its
hole, and hunt it p. d. q., then I am a jingo for your Van-
dyke beard.
England is the modern Attilla, the Scourge of God, the
curse of the world. Her arrogance and insolence are only
equalled by her consciencless cupidity. She is the avatar
of Discord, the abettor of Strife, the incarnation of Greed.
Her power must be broken before a permanent peace is
possible. Not until she is humbled in the very dust need
the poet dream of that Saturnian age, when
"The war-drum throbs no longer,
And the battle flags are furled
In the parliament of man,
The federation of the world."
America is the only power that can, single-handed and
alone, cut short the career of this professional filibuster,
346 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and this duty seems to have been assigned to us by the
Deity. Still, we might have awaited a tenable excuse for
hostilities. The Monroe doctrine is a political back num-
ber that should cut no ice in our national affairs to-day.
Even when first enunciated and properly interpreted, it
was a piece of flamboyant nonsense not worth fighting
for. We were induced to adopt it by England herself,
who was jealous of other European powers, and employed
us as a tool to accomplish her own ends used as the
monkey did the feline's paw, to pull chestnuts out of the
fire. If Europe owned every foot of soil from the Rio
Bravo to Magellan Strait, and from the St. Lawrence to
Symme's Hole, the autonomy of this mighty Yankee na-
tion would be in nowise endangered. On our own soil
the world in arms would find us invincible. Uncle Sam
is a giant who towers, like Saul, above his brethren.
There are not men and money enough in the great round
globe to trail Old Glory in the dust, or tear one gleaming
star from Columbia's diadem. Seventy million Ameri-
cans, who know exactly what they are here for, can breed
fighting stock to fill the ranks faster than the combined
armies of the earth can decimate them. We can build a
Chinese wall around these United States and defend it,
from generation to generation, against all the world, and
at the same time grow in population and increase in
wealth.
Such being the case, is it not arrant folly to say that
European colonization of other American countries is
inimical to our peace and safety? If we have managed to
exist all these years with the British possessions abutting
our entire northern border, Spain holding the key to the
Gulf, and the American-hating Mexican dynasty on the
southwest, why should we become panic-stricken if Eng-
land adds a few malarial acres to the crown on another
continent? We look idly on while generation after gen-
eration of Cubans sacrifice themselves in a futile struggle
for freedom. We see a spirited and industrious people
oppressed by a transatlantic power and shot to death at
our very door, and if one of our citizens attempts to do
for them what Lafayette did for us under similar condi-
tions, we consign him to a dungeon, then contract a
double-barreled bellyache anent the outraged Goddess of
Liberty because a few thieving Venezuelans cannot agree
with Great Britain anent the Guiana boundary !
It would be infinitely better for us if progressive Euro-
pean powers took forcible possession of all Central and
South America and developed those fertile countries, in-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 347
stead of leaving them to a lot of lazy, semi-barbarous half-
breeds, who are of less importance in the world's economy
than so many agency Indians. The idea that the coun-
tries south of us are "Sister Republics," whom it is Uncle
Sam's duty, as a modern Sir Tristram or Don Quixote, to
protect from the bities, is all buncombe. This is the only
government of the people, for the people and by the peo-
ple existing in the Western World and even it is not
so to any alarming extent. There is as much liberty in
Mexico as in any of the so-called republics further south ;
yet Diaz is as supreme on Mexican soil as the Czar at St.
Petersburg. The average South American "citizen"
couldn't distinguish between the elective franchise and an
ichthyosaurian. Oligarchies, cabals and dictators rule the
roost, and whenever a man becomes rich enough to own
two dogs and an antiquated gun he revolts and grasps
the reins of government. The people of those "republics"
are divided into two classes those on rule or ruin bent
and those content to sit in the sun and roll corn-shuck
cigarettes until an opportunity occurs to steal something
which they are not too tired to carry.
In case of war we want no alliance with the so-called
republics of the south. We would have to provide them
with guns and grub, and neither their fighting ability nor
their faithlessness justifies the expense. They are first-
class assassins, but very poor soldiers. A British regi-
ment would go through them like a thunderbolt through
a swarm of gnats. Had the famous Light Brigade
charged the mobilized armies of South America it would
not have lost a dozen men ; but the chances are that every
horse would have been stolen from under it.
It is urged that an attempt on our part to enforce the
Cleveland-Olney interpretation of the Monroe doctrine
would bring the continental powers of Europe to Eng-
land's aid. That is beyond the pale of the probabilities.
Spain, France, Holland and some others do not like the
Monroe doctrine a little bit ; but none of them are anxious
for a "go" with the giant of the Occident. Uncle Sam
ran a bluff on both France and Spain, and made England
herself sing small while the Southern Confederacy was
in the very heyday of its power. Russia could not be
drawn into an anti-American alliance, for she doesn't
care an Austindam about the Monroe doctrine ; but while
America was entertaining Western Europe, the Great
White Czar, by pushing his fortunes in the Far East,
would cut out some lively work for his neighbors nearer
home. France, Spain, et al., will give Great Britain theiii
348 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
moral support, then sit on the fence and wait for their
slice of Turkey, while discussing the balance of power.
Continental Europe has troubles of her own, and John
Bull will have to tell his to Brother Jonathan.
If war is the result of the present complication the
world will be none the worse for it ; but Grover Cleveland,
like the fool who fired the Ephesian Dome, will be damned
to everlasting fame. The blood of every American patriot
who falls before the batteries of Great Britain will be
upon his head. After being for years John Bull's man
Friday, the subservient tool of DoAvning street, he blos-
soms forth as facile princeps of the genus "jingo." Hither-
to his Anglomania has been offensive to the very mug-
wumps ; now his Americanism slops over like a toy bucket
in a cloudburst. After truckling to England in all things
like a slave to his master, he hurries us into war with that
country without provocation or excuse puts Uncle Sam
in the position of the fool jackass who kicked before he
was spurred. Because Great Britain desired to preserve
the Hawaiian monarchy, Cleveland exceeded his author-
ity in a feverish attempt to degrade Old Glory and
strangle the new-born republic. He ignored the Monroe
doctrine when it was flagrantly violated under his very
nose in the case of Nicaragua, then placed upon it a
strained and hitherto unheard of construction as a pretext
for making a flamboyant war-talk that by appealing to
American patriotism would cause his political errors to be
forgiven and forgotten.
THE COMMON COURTESAN.
A GLIMPSE OF GEHENNA.
I published an article in the February number of the
Iconoclast entitled "Woman's Wickedness," which gave
many supersensitive people a shock from which they have
not yet recovered. I have no particular objection to kill-
ing that class of cattle, for I believe the good God would
be glad to get the rickety breed exterminated; but I
would not ambuscade even a canting hypocrite or sheep-
killing dog, so I here put up a sign warning the whole
pestiferous crew of Pharisees to dive no deeper here,
under pain of death, and heaven alone knows what here-
after. I am going to indulge in some plain talk, and those
who wear their modesty on their sleeve will please betake
themselves to a milder diet one of Sam Jones' aesthetic
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 349
sermons or the quack doctor ads. in the daily papers, for
instance.
In my former article I discussed how courtesans are
made ; here I propose to consider how they can be re-
claimed. Next to learning how to do a thing is learning
how not to do it. The world has had a vast and varied
experience with the negative side of the question and
seems to have settled it to its satisfaction that the only
way to lift a woman out of hell is to bar the door of egress
and shoot fireballs at her through the gratings ; that the
only way to persuade her to leave off her sinning is to
inform her that, though she repent in sackcloth and
ashes, she will never be forgiven; that the only method
of elevating the fallen woman is to get after her with
scorpion whips when she breaks away from the brothel
and scourge her back again ! This system of moral thera-
peutics is not without its advantages ; if it seldom cures,
it at least kills quicker than any other that could be de-
vised, thus abbreviating the misery of the patient.
It were as idle to expect to eliminate Prostitution as to
extirpate Poverty and Greed. Just so long as Lust runs
riot in the veins of Adam's sons, women will be degraded
and debauched. Just so long as Want and Wretchedness
stalk like grisly phantoms through the earth women will
be found who will brazenly barter their souls for gold or
for bread. There are women who are wantons by nature ;
whom no wealth, education or moral surroundings can
withhold from evil.
"But virtue, as it never will be mov'd,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage."
It were idle to talk of "reforming" women who never
possessed the faintest conception of modesty; in whom
the brutish nature dominates the divine; but these form
a very inconsiderable portion of that vast array upon whose
brows blazes the scarlet brand of the courtesan. A vast
majority of these unfortunates feel their degradation as
no male malefactor ever felt his disgrace ; would, were it
possible, wash the stains from their souls with their heart's
blood. Every year of the world thousands of them, unable
to further bear their weight of shame, to longer endure the
fierce scourgings of the fire-whips of an avenging con-
science, burst the gates of death, hide in the grave from a
cold world's bitter scorn. Other escape there is none;
350 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
society will not receive them back; its doors are irrevo-
cably closed to them. They may knock, but it will not be
opened unto them ; they may come on their knees, groping
their way through penitential tears, but they will be spurned
from its portals with foul reproach. Society made them
what they are; it now sits in judgment upon them and de-
clares that they shall be no other. From the lips of the
stern judge are never heard those words, the sweetest that
ever fell on mortal ears, divinest sentence that ever passed
the lips of God or man, "Go and sin no more." Other crim-
inals reform. The thief becomes an honest man ; the forger
lives down his crime ; the manslayer purifies his bloody
hands with a life-time of noble deeds ; but once a courtesan
always a courtesan. There is no place in all the wide world
but the bagnio for the woman who has once erred, no
matter how youthful or inexperienced, how foul her betrayal.
"No; gayer insects fluttering by
Ne'er droop the wing o'er those .that die,
And lovlier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister's shame."
* * *
Those good people who drag her hence but plunge her
into tortures beyond her powers of endurance ; but place
her on exhibition for the world to mock, set her up as a
mark for the cold unmoving finger of scorn. Those who
can stand the ordeal are seldom worth saving ; are women
scarce conscious of their degradation, mere animals to
whom all life is alike who care little whether they take
their food from the hand of a boorish husband or a dash-
ing paramour. Crazed by the world's contempt, by its
brutal scorn, trampled beneath the feet of women not
worthy to serve them as waiting maids or scullions, the
most rush back into the old evil life and madly plunge to
more fearful depths.
What salvation can be devised for the thousands of
noble women who have fallen benealh the terrible ban of
public opinion? There is only one way: to reform public
opinion itself; to lift from these daughters of shame the
dead weight that is crushing them down to the deepest
hell ; to throw open to them the gates of the upper as well
as of the nether world.
Such a task will appear to many almost as hopeless as
an attempt to change the ocean's tides or alter the law
of gravitation ; but such forget that Falsehood and Folly
fade before Truth like night's black shadows before the
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 351
faintest light ray that trembles from the great sun. The
world is naturally honest, just, pitiful; its attitude toward
the fallen woman is an unnatural one, the result of centuries
of false education and fatuous religion. Pessimist as I am
called, I still have sufficient faith in my fellowmen to believe
that they will not persist in a grievous, a brutal crime, when
they can once be made to see that it is such.
But who is to convince them? The press? The pulpit?
Is not the present deplorable condition the result of their
teaching? They have created a false, a vicious public opin-
ion, before which they now cower and tremble. Is there
a minister living with the courage to urge his parishioners
to throw open their homes to and receive on a footing of
social equality the repentant Magdalen? Is there a daily
paper between the two oceans that would dare make such
a suggestion, that would, even for a fat bribe, state in
its editorial columns that the most abandoned courtesan
that ever made night hideous with her drunken brawling,
may become the peer of the President's wife by discarding
her evil ways and thenceforth living a life of purity and
nobleness? Not one! Yet is it not true? If not, why not?
If there is any truth in our religion, the portals of heaven
will fly wide open at her approach; yet we close the door in
her face! Almighty God thinks her good enough to asso-
ciate with the Virgin Mary, yet we raise a devil of a row
if we see her talking across the back fence to our daughters
or wives! The Creator of the Cosmos is waiting to crown
her amid the glad acclaim of the heavenly host; yet our
nice American gentleman does not consider that she is
good enough to wear his name and cook his hash! His
honor would be irremediably smirched by such an alliance!
Yet if he can but toll her 'back into the old life and be one
of a hundred to visit her foul bed, his honor will not show
even a fly-speck will shine like a new tin pan at a Repub-
lican powwow! Curious this thing male bipeds are wont to
call their honor!
* * *
The world, ever gross despite centuries of civilization,
makes no distinction in illicit intercourse of the sexes. To
it all women found even one step outside the prescribed
path are equally vile, alike deserving unmitigated censure;
yet from the highest to the lowest of those so outlawed and
placed beneath society's ban, is a sweep as far from the
highest heaven as to the deepest hell. Some of the noblest,
grandest women ever sent into this dreary world by a
beneficent God to brighten its cimmerian gloom are known
to have lived on very intimate terms with the men they
352 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
loved, and that, too, without the formality of securing soci-
ety's sanction. Love is a celestial flame that has not yet
been educated to burn ever according to terrestrial law.
Sometimes it will overlap such fences as secular statutes
and religious dogmas and set the world on fire! Many a
noble woman has become a man's mistress because she
could neither become his wife nor trample her heart be-
neath her feet at the dictates of society. With some
women love is a higher law, before which canons of church
and State shrivel into nothingness. No saintly anathema,
no fiat of society can disturb their devotion. Though the
world reel, the heavens fall and black chaos come again,
they will cling closer to the shrine upon which they have
cast their hearts. Of these we need not speak further here.
Society has no power over them for good or ill. From
its fallible judgment they calmly and confidently appeal
to an infallible God.
For those at the other extreme, the law of whose lives
is Lust instead of Love, children of the slums, the spawn of
criminals, who were courtesans from the very cradle, there
is no hope. There is no method by which those now ex-
istent can be successfully reached. All that we can hope to
do, is, by improving society, to curtail the class which
breeds them. This cannot be done by dogmatizating or
founding ''homes for fallen women;" we must do our
most effective work in our industrial system. When the
laborer's lot is made easier; when it becomes possible for
all men and women to earn an honest living, society will
have fewer crimes and courtesan-breeding "dregs."
It is that vast class of women, once as pure as the snow
but now foul as the hags of hell, yet who still retain a
shadow of that "divine shame" which distinguishes human-
ity from the brute, and who long to return to the upper
world, to win back the respect they have forfeited that
chiefly concerns us here. Naturally the first step would be
to so reform society that it will not year by year pour
thousands upon thousands of fresh recruits into the ranks
of the fallen. Here, too, the need of industrious reform
becomes apparent. Bitter poverty is as potent to make
prostitutes of young women as thieves of young men.
Make it possible for every young woman to earn an honest
and respectable living and you will save more souls than
have been garnered by all the priests and preachers from
Melchizedek to Sam Jones. You make it possible for
thousands of young women to choose between good and
evil whose only alternative now of degradation is death.
You prepare a field in which it is possible for moral max-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 353
itns to take root. It is useless to hurl homilies at people
suffering for food and fuel while the devil is clinking his
gold pieces and dazzling their eyes with gems.
But the most effective method of checking an evil that
threatens to engulf the world, is the easiest; it is to repeat
to every repentant sinner the words of the Saviour: "Go
and sin no more." Let the past perish and be forgotten:
we will not judge you by what you have been but by what
you are. Come out of the depths! If the God who made
you forgives your transgressions, can we petty creatures,
resting in the hollow of his hand, annul his judgments?
If he says that your repentant tears have washed you white
as snow, shall we appeal from his great court to that of
Mrs. Grundy?
THE "COUNTESS" CASTELLANE.
And now a tale of woe comes drifting across the dark
blue sea another American woman who wedded a titled
nonentity is, like Niobe, all tears. Miss Anna Gould is the
latest American girl to learn that the European "nobility"
is not composed of noble men the new-made "countess"
is already pining for her own country. I expected it. I
confided to Anna that her "Count" was utterly no ac-
count, and advised her to use him for fish bait instead of
for breeding purposes. I counselled her to give the mis-
erable tramp a cold "hand-out" and the marble heart. I
implored her to consider her latter end and have no deal-
ings with titled dudes. I suggested that she spill her gild-
ed affections on some honest American mechanic who
could be trusted to carry in the coal, come home reason-
ably sober, avoid the company of courtesans and sure-
thing gamblers and love her as long as there was any of
her left. But it's a sheer waste of advice to give it to a
woman. Anna found the "Count" on the matrimonial
bargain-counter and gathered him in paid for him, much
as one might purchase a hairless Mexican pup. And the
undiscriminating dailies fairly chortled in their joy. They
informed the world that the union was a love match pure
and simple as tho' the average daily editor could dis-
tinguish between a Cupid-shaft and an affection of the
kidneys ! They slobbered over the young turtle doves
until the bridal wreath floated in the lather, and prattled
of the "holy union 6f two young hearts." Rodents ! And
while sassiety and the press was slopping over, the Cas-
tellane family was recalcitrating like mule colts because
354 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Miss Gould would not turn over her entire fortune to her
fiance even threatened to break off the alliance at the
very steps of the altar. But the Goulds knew the market
quotations of expired patents of nobility, kept a stiff upper
lip, and "the great house of Castellane" grew hungry and
came off its perch with the frigid hauteur of a lame parrot
making a sneak on a rotten peanut. Anna captured the
erstwhile coronet encumbered by an early morning ac-
cident, such as will sometimes happen in respectable fam-
ilies. And now we are getting the second chapter of this
"true love 1 ' tale. According to apparently reliable reports,
the "Countess" Castellane is one of the most miserable
of mortals. Ze count without a coronet is blowing in
her boodle on bawds and boozers while neglecting and
humiliating his wife in every possible way. So brutal in
his treatment, so ostentatious his neglect of the woman
who has paid for the very clothes he wears and the bread
in his belly, that even the heartless cosmopolites of the
wickedest city in the world profess to pity her. I have
tried to be sorry for the "countess ;" but I can't. I am in-
dignant that a scrawny little French flee, who insults his
own country by pretensions of "nobility" in the days of
the Republic, and whose forefathers were kicked across
the frontier like so many sheep-killing curs by the out-
raged peasantry should dare mistreat a countrywomen of
mine; but reason tells me it is retributive justice. When
the daughter of a mouse-trap-maker and map-peddler be-
comes too purse-proud to marry an American sovereign,
and seeks among the syphilitic dudes of a fallen dynasty
a companion for her bed, she deserves to suffer the tor-
tures of the damned. It is a grim satisfaction to know that
most of these title-hunting Yankee dunderheads get their
just dues. If any American woman has wedded a Euro-
pean "nobleman" and "lived happily ever afterwards," I
have yet to hear of it. Social clap-trap and sacerdotal
ceremony cannot sanctify a contract to commit a crime
against nature, nor purge "a marriage of convenience" of
the taint of prostitution. The woman who barters her
beauty for a title, her soul for social distinction is even
more culpable than the courtesan of Boiler avenue, whose
fee is a dollar bill. In both cases it is cold-blooded bar-
ter and sale, but to the crime of a loveless marriage is
added the vice of hypocrisy. The bawd may be driven
to sell her body for bread, but the title-hunter sacrifices
her purity to gratify a prurient ambition. It is scarce
to be expected that women who purchase their marital
companions should make model wives that is not a
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 355
clause in the contract. The penurious "nobleman'' mar-
ries such a woman not because he cares for her com-
panionship, but because he needs money which he is too
indolent to earn and too cowardly to steal. Having given
her his name in exchange for a grub-stake, he feels that
he has performed his part of the contract, has discharged
his entire duty. He understands full well that the woman
wedded him solely for his title that it was social ambi-
tion instead of love's passion that brought her to his bed
and he heartily despises her, as all hypocrites do their
fellow humbugs. There is no contempt so profound, no
hatred so implacable as that with which the impoverished
patrician regards the aspiring parvenu ; and scarce has the
epithalamium ceased ere this feeling begins to make itself
manifest. The man who weds a woman solely for her
wealth cannot possibly possess the instincts of a gentle-
man. Tho' he wear a crown, he is at heart a human hy-
ena, capable of any crime that requires no courage just
the kind of a creature to find a fiendish joy in torturing
the helpless, in making a woman's life a hell. All the
manhood which the "older nobility" of Europe ever pos-
sessed was bred out by selfish marriages and shameless
bawdry years ago. Most royal families were originally es-
tablished by the plunder and oppression of the weak by
the strong. The "nobility" was 'composed of the obse-
quious servants of marauding sovereigns, the hired as-
sassins of crowned hoodlums, its ranks regularly re-
cruited from professional panders and the spawn of pros-
titutes. For centuries the European "nobility" was but a
foul cesspool into which emptied the social sewer. The
throne was surrounded by "ennobled" bastards and shame-
less bawds swayed the sovereign's sceptre. "An evil tree
cannot bring forth good fruit." Idle lives, vicious habits
and inherited disease have degraded the present "nobil-
ity" below even the brutish level of its progenitors has
transformed it into a disreputable omnium-gatherum of
wife-beaters and sure-thing gamblers, scorbutic cowards
and brazen cuckolds. Here and there may be found a fam-
ily, lately ennobled, that has not yet become irremediably
rotten ; but the tendency is almost invariably downward
each succeeding generation drifting further from the
distinctive virtues of manhood. And it was one of these
hoodlums that Miss Gould bought for a husband. Her
marital experience is that of most American women who
have traded cash for coronets. The "Countess" Castel-
lane and the "Princess" Colonna should retire to the
woodshed and mingle their tears. They might retrieve
356 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
their mistakes by employing a half-grown "coon" to
bump together the empty pates of their titled nincom-
poops until they pop like a pair of painted bladders, then
marry good Texas Democrats and rear a crop of boys
with brains in their heads and iron in their blood.
THE MORMONS OF MEXICO.
After suffering unremitting persecution at the hands
of religious bigots for half a century, the Mormons are
moving into Mexico, where, I am informed, there is little
inclination to interfere with their polygamous practices.
And they are repaying the hospitality of our sister repub-
lic by transforming her arid wastes into fruitful farms.
A dispatch announces, as an item of news, that "they are
industrious and law-abiding citizens who are aiding won-
derfully in the development of the country." The same
could be said of the Mormons in America so long as the
religious fanatics could be kept off their collars. The
United States never had better citizens than were the
Mormons so long as they were let alone. Their industry,
thrift and penchant for attending strictly to their own
business has passed into a proverb. This much may be
said or them without endorsing their religious doctrines.
I have ever been undecided whether Joe Smith was a
faker or a fool ; but certain am I that the brutal treatment
accorded him and his followers in this country should
call a blush of shame to the cheek of every American citi-
zen. It was a crime unparalleled since the persecution of
the Quakers by the Puritans ; was committed by a coun-
try posing as the refuge of the world's oppressed the
chief exponent of individual liberty. There was not the
slightest danger that polygamy would become a serious
menace to American morals ; the attempt to engraft it
permanently upon Anglo-Saxon civilization were as futile
as the labors of the Del Rio idiot to convince men who
have circumnavigated the globe, that it is flat as a cellar
floor. Instead of warring upon the seraglios of the Latter
Day Saints, we should have considered ways and means
for the abolishment of our own bagnios. We should have
gotten the beam out of our own eye before going for the
mote in the optic of the Mormon. The Church of the
Latter Day Saints would have quickly perished had we let
it alone. A religious craze thrives on persecution "the
blood of martyrs is the seed of the church." Having mur-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 357
dered the founder of the new faith, we drove his follow-
ers men, women and children into the snow-clad, bliz-
zard-cursed western waste. It was not a social convulsion
that expelled the Mormons from the older states, but re-
ligious intolerance pure and simple. New York, where
Joe Smith began his ministry, suffered a free-love colony
to exist in its midst in peaceful prosperity ; but the Mor-
mons were aggressive proselytizers and thereby evoked
the undying enmity of other religious sects. Polygamy,
as subsequently practiced, appears to have had no place in
the Mormon cult until after the murder of Joe Smith ; but
they were hated and harried as vindictively by their
Christian neighbors before as after it became an accepted
tenet of their faittu They were expelled, not because of
their immorality, but because of difference with their
neighbors anent religious dogma. They abandoned their
magnificent city of Nauvoo, their fruitful farms and pleas-
ant homes in Illinois and Missouri, and tramped reso-
lutely a thousand miles into the wilderness, hoping that
they might there enjoy that religious liberty to which
they were entitled as American citizens. Tireless industry
soon retrieved their fallen fortunes, but with prosperity
came the development of polygamy. Utah was at once de-
nounced as a moral plague-spot demanding heroic treat-
ment, and the Federal officials became the agents of the
new persecution. I rejoice that polygamy exists no longer
on American soil ; but the remedy adopted was infinitely
worse than the disease. Religious liberty and local self-
government are the very pillars of this Republic, and the
integrity of both was fiercely assailed in our dealings with
the Latter Day Saints.
It is questionable whether we have done the mono-
gamic doctrine any real good by the persecution of a few
polygamists. Our crusade sufficed to call the world's at-
tention to the fact that, while dominated by the polyga-
mous Saints, Utah was a veritable Arcadia, practically
free of pimps and prostitutes, bloated millionaires and
groveling mendicants strange contrast to those com-
munities where our religious ideas and code of social
ethics have long been paramount. It has served to remind
untold millions that, while accepting the Hebrew proph-
ets and patriarchs as God's anointed, we have persistent-
ly hounded as public enemies a people who moulded their
social life by those divine models. True, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob lived in an age of general ignorance ; but if they
had Graeco-Roman wrestling matches with angels, fed
those feathered songsters and washed their feet, we may
358 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
presume that they learned how many female bosses is
permitted to the average pilgrim whether polygamy is
displeasing to the Lord. Of course the old dispensation
has passed away; still it is difficult to imagine the Al-
mighty permitting a sawed-off dude like King Solomon to
have a thousand pretty women and compelling a fine
lusty animal like the Rev. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill to
worry along with one.
Furthermore, the anti-Mormon crusade has set the an-
thropologists to prattling again; and, shocking as it may
seem to our modern civilization and its monogamic ideas,
they are inclined to agree with Solomon that it is difficult
for a man to get too much of a really good thing. Science
does not show much respect for modern creeds and cults,
environment and education; but tells us plainly that man
is naturally a polygamous animal even intimates that a
thousand years of monogamy, strictly enforced, would
sweep the human race from the face of the earth. Pro-
gressive physicians inform us sub rosa, of course that
loss of virility is the reward of male virtue even pre-
scribe an occasional violation of moral law as a preventa-
tive of impotency. This is indeed a serious matter, and I
submit it to my brother ministers and humbly ask : What
are we going to do about it? Does the Seventh Com-
mandment repeal the imperative order issued to Adam
and Eve to be fruitful and multiply? That is a knotty
theological problem which should be decided without de-
lay, and I move that it be referred to the faculty of Baylor
University.
Monogamy has become with us a sacred thing, the cita-
del of social purity; and I am in nowise responsible for
the demoralizing example of King David, the beloved of
the Lord, nor for the conclusions of science that it runs
counter to the law of man's life.
If the conclusions of the anthropologists be correct
which I am not prepared to admit, and it were presump-
tion to deny the question naturally arises : Were it bet-
ter for the race considered either morally or physically,
that man should have a plurality of wives, or only one le-
gal mate and many mistresses? that he should legitima-
tize all his children and accord them a father's care, or
disown a part turn them adrift to grow up as best they
may beneath a social blight? Were it better that their
mothers have a legal claim upon him for life, and feel that
they are within the pale of respectability, or remain the
mere creatures of his caprice and suffer a social ostracism
that is more demoralizing than the worst of marriage sys-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 359
terns? The seraglio or the bagnio which shall it be, oh
brother ministers mine? Is the courtesan more desirable
to our civilization than the concubine? We have answered
this important question in one way, the Mormons in
another. I believe that the Gentiles are in the right. I
opine that a handful of women, who are true wives, are
worth more than untold millions living lives of legalized
concubinage. I believe that of monogamic marriage were
born the bravest and brainest men that ever fronted des-
tiny. Still, candor compels the admission that the polyga-
mists have both science and the cumulative wisdom of
sixty centuries on their side, while we are little more than
experimentalists, who may be riding to a fall. In the dis-
cussion of all problems of such import, we should be rig-
idly honest with both our opponents and ourselves. In
considering the relation of the sexes we should remember
that marriage, the most sacred of our human institutions,
had its origin in selfish lust. When men attempt to live
together in communities that they may be mutually help-
ful, they must, perforce, make rules for the measurement
and conservation of individual rights. The institution of
marriage, like the law against theft, was originally in-
tended to guarantee to each male member of the com-
munity peaceable possession and enjoyment of his prop-
erty. From such an unseemly grub sprung the winged
Psyche which we now worship. Female purity was not
handed down from heaven like Promethean fire ; it was
born behind the war-club and developed with the criminal
code. It is sometimes necessary to a proper understand-
ing of the phenomena with which we are confronted, to
examine the compost from which springs the Rose of
Sharon. Careful examination into the origin and develop-
ment of social and religious phenomena signs the death
warrant of dogmatism and makes us tolerant of the ideas
of others. The more a man knows the more he doubts.
Wisdom stammers while Ignorance out-bawls Stentor.
Fools approve or condemn according to the creeds and
customs to which they are born; the philosopher rises
superior to his environment and education and views hu-
man institutions and habits by the light of the whole
world's history.
Polygamy has gone, but America has forever lost her
reputation for religious tolerance. Columbia can pose no
longer as the champion of liberty of conscience. The man
who desires to worship God according to the dictates of
his own conscience had best charter a balloon. The Mor-
mons are drifting to Mexico, and while these home-build-
360 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ers and desert-subduers are going- out at one gate, the an-
archists and ignorami of Italy and Russia are rolling in at
the other. Even the Mormons who remain, and have re-
nounced polygamy, are subjected to gross indignities. We
send our missionaires among the Mohammedans and
Buddhists of Asia to destroy the time-honored faith of
their fathers, and shield them from insult with double-
shotted guns. If one of them chance to catch an o'er ripe
egg in his ample ear, we shriek about "Moslem fanati-
cism" and demand that the government tie loose the dogs
of war ; but let a Mormon elder come into a Christian
community and begin proselyting for his faith even
since shorn of polygamy and he is given time to leave
town. Should he stand upon the order of his going, in-
stead of humping himself down the plank turnpike with
his back to the burg, he is treated to a coat of tar and
feathers, supplemented by a ride on a triangular rail. The
fact is that despite our boasted civilization and prattle
anent freedom of thought, we are about the most narrow-
brained bigots and intolerant fanatics to be found on
God's foot-stool. Our very atheists are dogmatists in
their denial; our agnostics are pharisees in their pride of
ignorance, while the American definition of a liberalist is
a man who thinks as he durn pleases and protests against
others exercising the same prerogative.
POTIPHAR'S WIFE.
STORY OF JOSEPH REVISED.
For more than six-and-thirty centuries the brand of the
courtesan has rested on the brow of Potiphar's wife. The
religious world persists in regarding her as an abandoned
woman who wickedly strove to lead an immaculate he-vir-
gin astray. The crime of which she stands accused is so
unspeakably awful that even after the lapse of ages we
cannot refer to the miserable creature without a moan.
Compared with her infamous conduct old Lot's dalliance
with his young daughters and David's ravishment of Uriah's
wife appear but venial faults, or even shine as spotless vir-
tues.
The story of Mrs. Potiphar's unrequited passion may be
strictly true; but if so the world has changed most won-
drously. It transcends the probable and rests upon such
doubtful ex parte evidence that a modern court would give
BRANN. THE ICONOCLAST 361
her a certificate of good character. It is not in ac-
cord with our criminal code to damn a woman on the un-
supported deposition of a young dude whom she has had
arrested for attempted ravishment. Had Joseph simply
filed a general denial and proven previous good character
we might suspect the madame of malicious prosecution; but
he doth protest too much.
Mrs. Potiphar was doubtless a young and pretty woman.
She was the wife of a wealthy and prominent official of
Pharaoh's court, and those old fellows were a trifle exacting
in their tastes. They sought out the handsomest women of
the world to grace their homes, for sensuous love was then
the supreme law of wedded life. Joseph was a young
Hebrew slave belonging to Mrs. Potiphar's husband, who
treated him with exceptional consideration because of his
business ability. One day the lad found himself alone with
the lady. The latter suddenly turned in a fire alarm, and
Jacob's favorite son jogged along Josie in such hot haste
that he left his garment behind. Mrs. Potiphar informed
those who responded to her signal of distress that the
slave had attempted a criminal assault. She is supposed to
have repeated the story to her husband when he came
home, and the chronicler adds, in a tone of pained surprise,
that the old captain's "anger was kindled." Neither Mrs.
Potiphar's husband nor her dearest female friends appear
to have doubted her version of the affair, which argues that,
for a woman who moved in the highest social circles, she
enjoyed a reasonably good reputation.
But Joseph had a different tale to tell. He said that
the poor lady became desperately enamored of his beauty
and day by day assailed his continence, but that he was
deaf to her amorous entreaties as Adonis to the dear blan-
dishments of Venus Pandermos. Finally she became so
importunate that he was compelled to seek safety in flight.
He saved his virtue but lost his vestments. It was a narrow
escape, and the poor fellow must have been dreadfully
frightened. Suppose that the she-Tarquin had accom-
plished her hellish design, and that her victim had died of
shame? She would have changed the whole current of the
world's history! Old Jacob and his other interesting if less
virtuous sons, would have starved to death, and there would
have been neither Miracles nor Mosaic Law, Ten Com-
mandments nor Vicarious Atonement. Talmage and other
industrious exploiters of intellectual tommyrot, now lad-
ling out saving grace for fat salaries, might be as unctu-
ously mouthing for Miimibo Jumbo, fanning the flies off
some sacred bull or bowing the knee to Baal. The Pot-
362 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
iphar-Joseph episode deserves the profoundest study. It
was an awful crisis in the history of the human race !
How thankful we, who live in these latter days, should be
that the female rape fiend has passed into the unreturn-
ing erstwhile with the horned unicorn and dreadful hip-
pogriff, the minotaur and other monsters that once af-
frighted the fearful souls of men that sensuous sirens do
not so assail us and rip our coat-tails off in a foul attempt
to wreck our virtue and fill our lives with fierce regret.
True, the Rev. Parkhurst doth protest that he was hard
beset by beer and beauty unadorned; but he seems to> have
been seeking the loaded "schooner" and listening for the
siren's dizzy song. Had Joseph lived in Texas he could
never have persuaded Judge Lynch that the lady and not
he should be hanged. The youngster dreamed himself into
slavery, and I opine that he dreamed himself into jail. With
the internal evidence of the story for guide, I herewith pre-
sent, on behalf of Mrs. Potiphar, a revised and reasonable
version of the affaire d 'amour.
Joseph was, the chronicler informs us, young, "a goodly
person and well favoured." His Hebraic type of manly
beauty and mercurial temperament must have contrasted
strangely with Mrs. Potiphar's dark and stolid country-
men. Mistress and slave were much together, the master's
duties requiring his presence near his prince. Time hung
heavily on the lady's hands and, as an ennui antidote, she
embarked in a desperate flirtation with the handsome fel-
low, for Egypt's dark-eyed daughters dearly love to play
fast and loose with the hearts of men. Of course it was
very wrong; but youth and beauty will not be strictly
bound, the opportunity seemed made for mischief, and Mrs.
Potiphar cared little for her lord a grisly old warrior who
treated her as a pretty toy his wealth had' purchased, to
be petted or put aside at pleasure.
A neglected wife whose charms attract the admiring eyes
of men may not depart one step from the straight and
narrow path, but her husband's honor stands ever within
the pale of danger. Let that husband whose courtship
ceased at Hymen's shrine, who is a gallant abroad and a
boor at home, keep watch and ward, for homage is 'sweet
even to wedded women.
While Potiphar played the petty tyrant and exacted of
his wife a blind obedience, Joseph sang to her songs
she loved plaintive tales of tender passion, of enchanted
monarchs and maids of matchless beauty. He culled the
fairest flowers from the great garden and wove them into
garlands to deck her hair, dark as that lingering night which
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 363
Moses laid upon the Valley of the Nile. He gave her a
thousand little attentions so grateful to womankind, and
worshipped her, not presumptuously, but with the sacred
awe of a simtple desert child turning his face to greet trie
rising sun. They were of the same age, that age when the
heart beats in passionate rebellion against cold precepts,
the blood riots in the veins like molten rubies and all
life seems made for love, for day dreams golden as the
dawn, for sighs and sweet companionship. What wonder
that she sometimes left her lord to his heavy slumbers and
crept into the cool gardens with the handsome Hebrew boy ;
that they walked, hand clasped in hand, beneath the tall
palms that nodded knowingly, and whispered sweet noth-
ings while the mellow moonlight quivered on the Nile and
sad Philomela poured forth her plaintive song like a flood
of lover's tears? All day long they were alone together,
those children of the world's youth, when life was strong
and moral law was weak. When the summer sun rode
high in heaven and sent his burnished shafts straight down
into the white streets and swooning gardens; when the
great house was closed to shut out the blinding glare and in
the court cool fountains cast their grateful spray, what
wonder that she bade him sit at her feet and sing the love
songs of his native land, wild prototypes of those which
Solomon poured from the depths of his sensuous soul to his
sweet Rose of Sharon?
"Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair;
Thou hast dove's eyes, thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,
Thy breasts like young roes that feed among the lilies.
Set me as a seal upon thy heart, a seal upon thy arm,
For love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave.'*
The song dies out and the languorous stillness is' broken
only by the splashing of the fountains in the great marble
basins and the drowsy hum of a bee among the 'blossoms.
The lad's head has sunk down upon the lady's knee and
she is watching the tears trembling on his drooping lashes
and wondering, with a little thrill of pain, if he has a
sweetheart in his own land, of whom he is' so sadly dream-
ing. She thanks him for the song in a voice low and sweet
as the musical ripple of the sacred river among the reeds
she dazzles him with her great Egyptian eyes, those ebon
orbs in which ever lurks the sensuous splendor of a sum-
mer night's high moon. Her hand strays carelessly among
his curls as she punctuates with sighs and tears his oft-told
tale of unkind brethren, the gloomy cave, the coat of many
colors dipped in blood of the slaughtered kid, the cruel
goad of godless Midianite, driving him on and on thro*
364 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
burning sands and 'neath a blazing sun, far from his tearful
mother and mourning sire. How cruel the fates to con
sign to slavery one born to be a king! His master is a
hard man and covetous, but her pleadings shall yet purchase
sweet liberty for old Jacob's son, that he may fulfill the
high dreams of which he has told her may answer the.
midnight messages of Israel's God and triumph over those
wicked brethren. Perhaps who knows ? in his own
land he will become a mighty prince and treat with proud
Pharaoh on equal terms. Will he remember Her, his only
friend in a land of foes? Will he think of her w r hen Am-
mon is o'erthrown and proud Moab pays his tribute? Ala,
no! When a crown of jewels blazes on his brow and the
sack-cloth of the slave is exchanged for imperial purple,
he'll think no more of the lonely little woman by Nilus
bank, who prays that Isis will magnify his power, that Osiris
will shield him when the Hebrew sword rings on the Hivite
spear. He will take to wife some fair cousin of Esau's
house, a maid more beauteous far than those who drink the
sweet waters of the south. Old Abram's daughters are fair
and have dove's eyes; their lips are as threads of scarlet and
their breasts like young roes that feed among the lilies.
Does not the song say so? But those of Egypt oh, un-
happy Egypt!
"Love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."
She bends low and whispers the line upon his lips, while
her fragrant breath, beating upon his cheek, sinks into his
blood like the jasmines' perfume, more dangerous to the
soul than Aphrodite's kisses or Anacreort's drunken song.
By such arts did Cleopatra win the master spirit of the world
and make the mailed warrior her doting slave, indifferent
alike to honor and to duty, content but to live and love.
What wonder that the callow shepherd lad, unskilled in
woman's wile, believed that his mistress loved him? that
his heart went out to the handsome coquette in a wild,
passionate throb in which all Heaven's angels sang and
Hell's demons shrieked!
A beautiful woman! Not the beauty of Greece, on
which we gaze as upon some wondrous flower wafted from
Elysian Fields, and too ethereal for this gross world; nor
that of Rome, with Pallas' snow-cold bosom and retro-
spective eye ; but the sensuous beauty of the far south, that
casts a Circean spell upon the 'souls of men. Her eyes
are not dove's eyes that softly shine along the path to
Heaven, but wandering fires that light the way to Hell.
Her lips are not a thread of scarlet, chaste as childhood
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 365
and dewy as the dawn, but the deep sullen red of a city
swept with flames. Her breasts are not like young roes
that feed among the lilies, but ivory hemispheres threaded
with purple fire and tinged with sunset's tawny gold. Rev-
erently as though touching divinity's robe, Joseph caresses
the wanton curls that stream like an inky storn>cloud over
the shapely shoulders he puts the little hands, heavy with
costly gems, back from the tearful face and holds them with
a grasp so fierce that the massy rings of beaten gold bruise
the tender flesh. Mrs. Potiphar starts up, alarmed by his
unwonted boldness she reads his face with a swift glance
that tells her he is no longer a lad, a pretty boy to be
trifled with for the amusement of an idle hour. The Cupid's
bow had faded forever from his lip and childhood's inno-
cence from his eye; he has crossed life's Rubicon, has pass-
ed at one stride from the Vale of Youth with its trifles and
its idle tears, its ignorance of sex and stainless love, to
Manhood's rugged mountains, where blazes Ambition's
baleful star and the fires of passion ever beat, fiercer than
those that sweep Gehenna's sulphurous hills.
Even while' her cheek crimsons with anger .and' her
heart flutters with fear, the woman glories in Joseph's
guilty love, sweet incense to her vanity, evidence of her
peerless beauty's infernal power. She retreats a step as
from the brink of an abyss, but farther she cannot fly, for
there is a charm in her companion's voice, potent as old
in dreams by maids who sleep in Dian's bosom, yet wilder,
fiercer than trumpets blown for war. As a sailor drawn to
his doom by siren song, or a bird spellbound by some nox-
ious serpent, she advances fearfully and slow until she is
swept into his strong arms and held quivering there like a
splotch of foam in a swift eddy of the upper Nile. The room
swims before her eyes and fills with mocking demons that
welcome her to the realm of darkness; the fountains' rip-
ple sounds like roaring thunder, in which she reads the
angry warning of Egypt's gods, while beneath the ac-
cursed magic of the kisses that burn upon her lips, her
blood becomes boiling wine and rushes hissing thro' a
heart of vice. The mocking demons turn to angels with
Joseph's handsome face and crown her with fragrant flow-
ers: the thret'ning thunders to music sweet as Memnon's
matin hymn or accepted lover's sighs, heard 'neath the
harvest moon, she is afloat upon a sapphire sea beneath a
sunset sky, the West Wind's musky wing wafting her,
whither she neither knows nor cares.
But the angels and the fragrant flowers, the music sweet
as lover's sighs and the sapphire sea, the sunset sky and
366 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Zephyrus' musky wing are dreams; the blistered lips and
poor bruised bosom, the womanly pride humbled in the
dust and wifely honor wounded unto death these alone
are real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry
that is half a prayer and half a curse a cry that rings
and reverberates through the great sleepy house like a
maniac's shriek heard at midnight among the tombs
she flings herself sobbing and moaning upon the marble
floor. The drowsy slave starts up as from a dream, quiv-
ering in every limb like a coward looking upon his death.
He tries to raise the groveling victim of his unbridled
lust, but she beats him back; he pleads for mercy, but she
calls him ungrateful slave, base Hebrew dog and prays all
Egypt's gods to curse her conqueror. There's a rush of
feet along the hall, there's a clash of weapons in the court,
and here and there and everywhere tearful maids are call-
ing to their mistress, the Sweet One and Beautiful, dear
Daughter of the Dawn, Lily of the Nile, while brawny
eunuchs, barelimbed and black as Hell's own brood, are
vowing dire vengeance even upon the King himself if he
has dared to harm her. The culprit glances with haggard
face and wildly pleading eyes at the woman, once so im-
perial in her pride, now cowering a thing accursed, clothed
only with her shame and flood of ebon hair. The great
sun, that hung in mid-heaven like a disc of burnished brass
when she first forgot her duty, descends like a monstrous
wheel of blood upon the western desert and thro' the case-
ment pours a ruddy glow over the prostrate figure a mar-
ble Venus blushing rosy red. Joseph casts his coarse gar-
ment over his companion as one might clothe the beauteous
dead, and turns away, the picture of Despair, the avatar of
guilty Fear.
* * *
Love is a dangerous game to play, and oft begun
in wanton mischief ends in woeful madness. In the first
flush of shame and rage Mrs. Potiphar was eager to punish
the slave's presumption, even tho' herself overwhelmed in
his ruin ; but hate, tho' fierce, is a fickle flame in the female
heart, and seldom survives a single flood of tears. Al-
ready Joseph's handsome face is haunting her already
she is dreaming o'er the happy hours by Nilus' bank, where
first he praised her wondrous beauty beneath the nod-
ding palms when the fireflies blazed and the bulbul poured
its song. The love that has lain latent within her bosom,
or burned with friendship's unconsuming flame, awakes like
smouldering embers fanned by desert winds and fed with
camphor wood, enveloping all her world. She longs to
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 367
leave the loveless life with her sullen lord; to cast from her
as things accursed the gaudy robes and glittering gems;
to fly with the shepherd lad to the deep cool forests of the
far east and dream her life away in some black tent or
vine-embowered cot to take his hand in hers and wander
on to the world's extreme verge, listening to the music of
his voice. The great house, once her pride, has become a
gruesome prison, the jailor a grizzly gorgon who conjured
her with the baleful gleam of gold to cast her beauty on
Mammon's brutish shrine. She hardens her heart
against him and pities herself, as wives are wont to do who
have dragged the dear honor of their husbands in the dust
she persuades herself that love has cast radiant glory about
her guilt and sanctified her shame. Oh woman, what a
paradox thou art! When the descending sun touched the
horizon's rim Mrs. Potiphar could have plunged a poisoned
dagger through the heart of her paramour and mocked his
dying moan; the great globe of fire has not bid the world
good night, yet she is weeping because of the bitter words
witli which she drove him' forth.
"Love is strong as death."
She repeats the line again and again. Oh my Israel, is
the grave the limit of 1 thy love? Wert thou dead, fair boy,
Egypt would enclose thy sacred ashes in a golden urn and
wear it ever between her breasts would make for thee
a living sepulchre and thou shouldst sleep in the vale of
Love, between the rosy mountains of Desire. Wert thou
dead
The slaves! They will tell their master the wild words
she spoke against her love against his life. She must
seal their lips, must command their silence. Too late!
[Even as she lays her hand on the silver bell the heavy
tread of her husband's brass-shod feet is heard in the
long hall, ringing upon the bare stone floor in rapid, ner-
vous rhythm, so different from the usual majestic tread of
Pharaoh's chief slaughterman. The slaves have already
spoken! A faintness as of death falls upon her; but she
is a true daughter of false Egypt, and a wiser than Potiphar
would find in her face no shadow! of the fear that lies heavy
on her heart. The game is called and she must play not for
name and fame, but for love and life. Her husband con-
fronts her, ferocity incarnate, the great cord-like veins
of the broad, low brow and massive neck knotted and
black, his eyes blazing like the orbs of an angry lion
seen by the flickering light of a shepherd's fire. He essays
to speak, but his tongue is thick, his lips parched as one
stricken with the plague, and instead of words there comes
368 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
through his set teeth a horse, hissing sound as of the
great rock serpent in its wrath. His glance falls upon
Joseph's garment, the gleaming sword leaps from its sheath
and he turns to seek the slave. She lays her hand lightly
upon his arm, great Egypt's shield, a pillar of living brass;
she nestles in the grizzly beard like some bright flower in a
weird forest; she kisses the bronzed cheek as Judas did
that of our dear Lord and soothes him with pretty truths
that are wholly lies.
Joseph is a good boy, but sometimes over-bold. Poor
child! Perhaps her beauty charmed away his senses and
made him forget his duty. She bade him sing to beguile
a tedious hour, and he sang of love and looked at her with
such a world of worship in his eyes that she grew angry
and upbraided him. Let it pass; for, by the mystic mark
of Apis, she frightened the boy out of his foolish fever.
She laughs gleefully, and the gruff old soldier suffers
her to take his sword, growling meanwhile that he likes
not these alarms that she has marshalled Egypt's powers
to battle with a mirage. The game is won; but guilt will
never rest content, and oft reveals itself by much con-
cealment. It is passing strange, she tells him tearfully,
that every male who looks upon her, whether gray-headed
grand-sire or beardless boy, seems smitten with love's mad-
ness. She knows not why 'tis so. If there is in her con-
duct aught to challenge controversy she prays that he will
tell her. The old captain's brow again grows black. He
leads her where the fading light falls upon her face, and,
looking down into her eyes as tho' searching out the
secrets of her soul, bids her mark well his words. The
wife who bears herself becomingly never hears the tempt-
er's tone or knows aught of any love but that of her right-
ful lord. Pure womanhood is a wondrous shield, more
potent far than swords. If she has been approached by
lawless libertine, he bids her, for the honor of his house,
to set a seal upon her lips, instead of bruiting her shame
abroad as women are wont to do whose vanity outruns
their judgment.
* * *
Potiphar determines to watch his wife. It had never
occurred to him that she could possibly go astray; but he
has learned from her own Confession that she is a flirt,
and he knows full well that a married coquette is half a
courtesan. Suspecting that Joseph's offense is graver than
his wife set forth, he casts him into prison. The inex-
perienced youth, believing the full extent of his guilt has
been blazoned to the world, and frightened beyond his
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 369
wits by armed men and clank of chains, protests with
tears and sighs that he is more sinned against than sin-
ning. Tt is the old story of Adam improved upon he
not only damns the woman, but denies the apple.
Joseph's posterity, hating Egypt with their whole heart
and intent on glorifying Israel and Israel's God, became
the only historians of this original scandal in high life; and
thus was a youth, probably neither better nor worse than
his brethren, raised to the dignity of a demi-god, while a
vain young wife is condemned through all the ages to wear
a wanton's name. The story probably contains a moral
which wives mav look for if thev will.
Of course this account of Mrs. Potiphar's seduction is
a fancy sketch ; but it is a true pen-picture of what too often
happens in this fair land of ours, and may be perused with
profit by many a Benedict. The number of unfaithful
wives whose sin becomes the public shame is simply ap-
palling; yet no criminal was ever so cautious, so adept
in the art of concealment as the woman who values her rep-
utation above her honor. There is no secret a man will
guard with such vigilance as his amours, no copartner in
iniquity he will shield with such fidelity as a paramour.
The bandit may turn state's evidence, and the assassin
confess beneath the noose; but the roue will die protesting
that his mistress is pure as the driven snow.
And yet woman is by nature as true to her rightful
lord as the needle to the magnetic north, as faithful to her
marriage vows as the stars to their appointed courses.
When a wife "goes astray" the chances are as one to infin-
ity that the mis-step is her husband's fault. Love is the very
life of woman. She can no more exist without it than
the vine can climb Heavenward without support, than it
can blossom and bear fruit without the warm kiss of the
summer sun. Woman's love is a flame that must find an
altar upon which to blaze, a god to glorify ; but that sacred
fire will not forever burn 'mid fields of snow nor send up
intense sweet to an unresponsive idol, even tho' it bear
the name of husband. The man who courts the wife as
assiduously as he did his sweetheart, makes the same sac-
rifice to serve her, shows the same appreciation of her
efforts to please him, need never fear a rival. He is lord
paramount of her heart, and, forsaking all others, she will
cleave unto him thro' good and thro' evil, thro' weal and
thro' woe, thro' life unto death. But the man who imag-
ines his duty done when he provides food, shelter and fine
370 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
raiment for the woman he has won; who treats her as if
she were a slave who should feel honored in serving him ;
who vents upon her hapless head the ill-nature he would
like to pour into the faces of his fellow-men, but dares
not, were wise to heed the advice which lago gave to the
Moor.
Woman is more subtle than her ancient enemy, the
serpent, and woe to the man who attempts to tread her
beneath his feet! True it is that all women who find the
hymenial rites but an unreading of that enchanted spell
in which they worshipped devils as demi-gods; between
whose eager lips the golden apples of Hesperides prove
but Dead Sea fruit ; for whom the promised Elysium
looms but a parched Sahara, do not seek in forbidden fields
to feed their famished hearts; but it is well for the peace
of mind of many a husband who neither dotes nor doubts,
that black dishonor oft goes hand in hand with blissful
ignorance.
The philosophic world rejects the story of Joseph, having
long ago learned that he-Dians live only in childish legend
and Della-Cruscan poetry. As an ideal it reverses the
natural relation of the sexes; as an example it is worse
than worthless, for instead of inspiring emulation the young
Hebrew's heroic continence only provokes contempt.
Men worship at the shrine of Solomon's wisdom, of Moses'
perseverance, of David's dauntless courage, but crown the
altar of Joseph with asses' ears. Such foolish Munchhaus-
enisms give to young girls a false idea of the opposite sex,
relax their vigilance and imperil their virtue. From such
ridiculous romances, solemnly approved by an owl-like
priesthood, sprung that false code so insulting to woman-
kind that a wife's honor is not committed to her own
keeping, but to the tender care of every man with whom
she comes in contact. When a wife goes wrong a hypo-
critical world rises in well-simulated "wrath which is too
often envy and hurls its anathema maranatha at the head
of the ''designing villain," as tho' his companion in crime
were born without brains and reared without instruction!
The "injured husband" who probably drove his wife to the
devil by studied neglect that starved her heart and wounded
her vanity is regarded with contempt if he does not "make
a killing" for a crime against the social code which he would
himself commit.
I paint man as I find him, not as I would have him.
I did not create him, or did his Architect ask my advice;
hence it is no fault of mine that his virtue's frail as ocean
foam not mine the blame that while half a god he's all a
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 371
beast. Mentally and sexually man is a polygamist, and,
whatever its moral value may be, monogamy does violence
to the law of his being. It is a barrier against which he
ever beats like some wild beast of prey against restraining
bars. Give him Psyche to wife and Sappho for mistress
and he were not content would swim a river to make mad
love to some freckled maid. It is likely that Leander had
at home a wife he dearly loved when he lost his life trying
to reach fair Hero's bower. That the Lord expects little
even of the best of men when subjected to beauty's bland-
ishments is proven by his partiality to various princes and
patriarchs who, in matters of gallantry, may be regarded as
pace-setters.
I am not the apologist of the godless rake, the defender
of the roue; but I have small patience with those mawkish
purists who persist in measuring men and women by the
same standard of morals. We might as well apply the
same code to the fierce Malay who runs amuck and to
McAllister's fashionable pismires. We might as wisely
bring to the same judgment bar Bengal's royal beast, crazed
with lust for blood, and Jaques wounded deer, weeping in
the purling brook. Each sex and genus must be considered
by itself, for each possesses its peculiar virtues and inherent
vices. In all nature God intended the male to seek, the
female to be sought. These he drives with passion's fiery
scourge, those he gently leads by maternal longings, and
thus is the Law of Life fulfilled, the living tide runs ever
on from age to age, while divine Modesty preserves her
name and habitation in the earth. A man's crown of glory
is his courage, a woman's her chastity. While these remain
the incense rises ever from Earth's altar to Heaven's eternal
throne; but it matters not how pure the man if he be a
cringing coward, how brave the woman if she be a brazen
bawd. Lucrece as Caesar were infamous, and Caesar as
Lucrece were a howling farce.
BRO. EARLY'S BAZOO.
THE FOREIGN MISSION FAKE.
I am always discovering something new and strange.
While Prof. Roentgen is experimenting \vith the X ray and
Dr. Depew is unearthing ante-diluvian almanac jokes, I
am bringing to the garish light of day wonderful differen-
tiations of the intellectual doodlebug. I am not wont to
boast over-much of my services to science; still it is but
372 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
fair that I be accorded due credit for having discovered
Dr. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, where he lay buried in the
sub-stratum of the azoic period by the anti-prohibition
majority, and the Hon. Whoopee Kalamity Homan, of
Dallas, after he had been trodden into the quicksands
by the political bull elephant. And now patient research
in the field of micrology has been rewarded by the addition
to my cabinet of curios of Rev. M. D. Early, superintendent
of missions for the State of Texas. He is also managing
editor of a Baptist periodical whose name I disremember.
My discovery of Early was purely an accident. He was
out on the "Katy" road, giving the Iconoclast a "roast" that
made the paint on the car-ceiling curl. He lamented that
people persisted in purchasing such a paper, while that into
which he poured his sacred lucubrations would not sell. As
he talked his indignation grew until he was telling his
troubles to the entire car. The tearful lamentations of Jere-
miah and the uncanny yodel of Jonah were as nothing to
the heart-ache which Supt. Early poured forth because of
the literary perversity of the American people. He insisted
that he had never read a copy of the Iconoclast and "would
not do so, yet declared it awfully immoral, which proves that
Early is a great man. He does not have to acquire knowl-
edge by patient industry like other people, but takes it by
absorption as the sponge does stale beer on a mahogany bar,
and when he wants to leak it he has only to squeeze his
nice soft head. Like the patient ox and the megalophanous
ass, Early is guided by instinct.
I regret that the good man cannot secure patrons for
his paper. If the copy I have seen be a fair sample, the
public is missing much by giving it the frozen face. It is
almost as interesting and equally as coherent as the ser-
mons of Sin-Killer Griffin, or the editorial page of the
Houston Post. Reading it were like standing in the vortex
of chaos and trying to size up the phenomena. It is the
province of intellectual topsy-turvy, where the living lie dor-
mant and the dead do gibber in the streets. When the
writers are serious the reader is convulsed, and when they
uncork their wit the wooden tobacco signs weep. It is
a journalistic rara avis that none with a taste for the bizarre
should let go by. Now is the time to subscribe. I am de-
termined to work up such a circulation for the Missionary
Mistake that Supt. Early need no longer subsist on pennies
torn from the toy savings banks of babes. It may be well
enough for small-fry preachers to fill their lank bellies "with
candy money coaxed from kids in the name of Christ ; but
a man calling himself a journalist should be above such
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST . 373
shameful business. Of the hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars collected annually in this country for the ostensible pur-
pose of informing the Ahkoond of Swat that Christ is dead,
by far the greater part comes from the thin purse of poverty
and the chubby hand of childhood. What becomes of this
cash ? I am told that $2,500 per annum goes to pay the sal-
ary of this one State Superintendent. That represents
250,000 pennies per year taken from children's pockets. If
each state has a missionary superintendent and Early 's is
the average salary, here is a snug item of $112,500 per
annum paid men by the very poor to ride about the country
and advertise the Iconoclast. Then there is the national
organization, the secretaries and other salaried officers, not
to mention the money appropriated to the support of mis-
sionary journals guiltless of readers, and to pay pet pub-
lishing houses for the printing of tracts and other utterly
useless tommy rot. Think of the little tin savings banks de-
spoiled to supply the missionary fund ! And not one dollar
in three collected ever gets east of Castle Garden, while the
small percentage that does sift abroad might just as well be
squandered here at home, for the so-called labors of our
foreign missionaries have had about as little effect on
"paganism" as Bro. Early's paper on the public. It has
been estimated by men who have spent much time abroad,
that it cost $14,600 to convert a Buddhist to Protestant
Christianity, and nearly double that sum to pull a Mussul-
man loose from his prophet. Yet while we are peddling
high-priced saving grace in pagan lands, our own country
is cursed with godless heathen and reeking with crime, and
in the garrets of our great cities starving mothers give the
withered breast to dying babes. It will be time enough to
carry bibles to barbarians when our own children are pro-
vided with bread.
The Protestant missionaries have made precious little
progress in their attempt to convert the "heathen," but they
have done much to engender bitterness and precipitate fa-
natical outbreaks, such as those recently witnessed in China,
and now making a hell of Armenia. As a rule the Catholic
missionaries adapt themselves to the customs of the country
and win the respect of the people. They have sufficient tact
to appeal to the taste of barbarians by impressive cere-
monies, and aid their understanding by the use of religious
symbols, while others attempt to cram into the heads of in-
tellectual infants abstruse tenets that puzzled even the
scholastics. They substitute the host for heathen charms,
the crucifix for the caaba-stone, and, by teaching savage
people the gentle arts of peace, bring them gradually to a
374 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
full realization of the love and power of God. How far
"the plotting Jesuit stoops to conquer," what "unholy com-
promises he makes with heathendom" I do not know ; but
experience has amply proven that the Catholic missionary
is, while his Protestant brother is not, capable of combating
successfully the dark superstitions of semi-savagery. The
former can go alone among the most murderous tribes and
win his way; the latter must be protected from outrage by
the double-shotted guns of his government. A Catholic
mission makes for peace; a Protestant mission is a storm-
center of physical strife. I am not a Catholic all my edu-
cation and environments make for Protestantism ; but the
whole truth should be told, however it may hurt. The re-
former, like the surgeon, must sometimes be cruel in order
to be kind. The Protestant missionaries begin wrong. They
denounce as crass heathendom everything that runs counter
to their creed, whether it be paganism or a differentiation
of their own religious cult. They affect a superiority to
the people they are sent to serve, insult their holiest tradi-
tions, and when this brutish folly and unbridled insolence
results in violence to themselves, appeal to their home gov-
ernment for protection and preach a war of extermination.
They are usually forced upon barbarous nations as was
opium upon "Pagan China" by "Christian England," and
protected by ships of war while they denounce people who
dissent from their religious dogma.
About two years ago a Baptist missionary stationed in
Mexico and living on the fat of the land by the same means
that Dr. Early receives his $2,500 salary issued a pamphlet
grossly insulting to the people of that Republic. He was
mobbed by the outraged populace and sentenced by the
courts to acquire the art of courtesy in the penitentiary.
Of course a tremendous roar anent this "Mexican atrocity"
was made to the Ame.ric.an government, and the consul-gen-
eral succeeded in securing his release. He protected him
from the mob and landed him safely on the soil of Uncle
Sam, when Mr. Missionary at once began a tirade of abuse
of Catholics in general and Mexicans in particular. The
diplomat said quietly: "Had Mexico given you your just
deserts she would have shot you as a professional mischief-
maker or caged you for life as a malicious damphool. I
extricated you from the penitentiary and protected you when
you were scared to death and afraid to run. My mother
was a Catholic. Now take my advice and head for the
rising sun."
That is a fair sample of Protestant missionary endeavor
in both the Occident and the Orient. That's what the kids
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 375
are giving up their toys and tidbits for! Our theological
cxportations belong to the same class with Early men who
condemn without investigation; who consider that in the
little knots on the end of their necks God has cached all the
wisdom of the world. They are the intellectual heirs of
those Smart Alecks who condemned Christ unheard, poison-
ed Socrates on an idle supposition and refused to even con-
sider the Copernican theory lest they get an idea into their
fat heads that would fracture their theological hats.
GOLD, SILVER AND GAB.
TALKING OUR INDUSTRIES TO DEATH.
It was said of old that "speech is silver and silence is
golden." Yet people wonder that Cleveland has to sell
bonds to keep the "reserve" intact, while the supply of sil-
ver seems to be inexhaustible! Clearly the parity of the
two metals is impossible until this generation applies a
Westinghouse brake to its tireless jawbone.
The wordy war now raging between the gold and silver
advocates the "robbers" and the "repudiators," the "soap-
tails," and "tool of Wall Street" indicate that the fool-
killer is enjoying a furlough. Deafened by the universal
din, wading neck deep in the turgid tide of dialectical ditch-
water, I fain would exclaim with Mercutio, "A plague on
both your houses !"
In the name of the great horned beast, what is this ear-
splitting, nerve-destroying cackle all about ? The currency ?
and not one in ten thousand of those who are forcing so
much foul air thro' their faces could define a "dollar" to
avoid being damned! It's a political war for pie, rather
than a legitimate controversy anent our currency. There's
just one jackass on earth with longer ears than the free-
silver agitator who isn't after office, and that's the goldite
who's weeping anent "repudiation" while he hasn't a dollar
at interest. The two should be tethered out in the Amer-
ican desert, where their braying would disturb nobody, and
they could comfortably kick each other to death. I some-
times think that the great American public keeps its head
open so much that the sun shines into its bazoo and sours
its brain.
There is no "currency problem" outside the minds of a
few plotting politicians, who want "pap," and their dupes,
jyho eagerly embrace every opportunity to air their igno-
376 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ranee. While featherless geese have gabbled, business men
cut the knot of Gordius. The case of gold vs. silver is now
of precious little more importance to this people than that
of Bardell vs. Pickwick.
Commerce has practically removed our exchange media
beyond the jurisdiction of congress, and is now giving us
an" elastic currency, which adapts itself automatically and
infallibly to the requirements of the country. The occupa-
tion of governmental money is almost gone. It has been
supplanted by what some economists call a "deposit cur-
rency," but which I prefer to nominate a mercantile money.
If money be but "a tool that trade works with an exchange
medium" then is our commercial or deposit currency, by
means of which 93 per cent, of all exchanges are effected,
entitled to be classed as money. However, we will not
pause in the midst of the howling babelian mob to split hairs
there are too many damphools trying to "save the coun-
try" by the science of definition.
More than a hundred years ago Dr. Adam Smith, the
greatest of all economists barring, of course, those Solo-
monic twins, Hardy and Dudley, of Texas advised gov-
ernments that they need not worry much anent the currency,
as commerce is competent to provide itself with ample ex-
change media ; and there is certainly less occasion now than
then for political intermeddling.
Year by year commercial paper has been doing more and
more of our money work ; year by year it has been rendering
governmental currency of less and less importance, until
to-day we find Cleveland and Carlisle, Stewart, Peffer, and
all their paladins and peers tearing their blessed undershirts
snent an exchange media employed only in the most trifling
transactions, representing less than 7 per cent, of our volume
of business ! Think of making a red-hot, hell-roaring polit-
ical "issue" anent the amount of copper in the penny [ Yet
the cent coinage bears about the same relation to the volume
of governmental money that the latter does to the entire
currency of commerce. Hundreds of millions of dollars are
received and paid out every day without the shifting of a
coin, the transfer of a paper dollar. Checks and drafts have
so far supplanted the old-time "money current with the mer-
chant" that the cashiers of great business concerns almost
forget the existence of a national currency.
Buying and selling, it must be remembered, is but a con-
venient method of barter, and commerce naturally seeks
the best possible intermediary. In olden time gold and sil-
ver, being indestructible commodities and representing large
values in small bulk, constituted the exchange media. To
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 377
avoid the trouble of weighing and testing with every trade
ihe weight and fineness were stamped on each piece of
metal, and it thus became money. As civilization progress-
ed, paper representatives were substituted for the cumbrous
metals, and exchange thereby expedited. The next im-
provement in the trade-tool was the bank check or draft,
which is but the shadow of a shade the promise of an in-
dividual, which may be exchanged at the option of the
holder for a promise of the government. It does the nec-
essary money-work as well as gold, and far more expedi-
tiously than any other exchange medium yet devised.
The money issued by government amounts to about two
billions. As it is equal to less than 7 per cent, of the money-
work required by commerce, we may reasonably infer that
it is supplemented by more than 28 billions of commercial
currency, making an actual circulating media of some 30
billions ; yet we are asked by the silverites to believe that the
country will go to hades awhooping if half a billion more
is not added to this enormous sum, while the goldites are
equally certain that such inflation would amount practically
to a repudiation of all debts!
I implore both parties to this idiotic controversy to be
calm. Opening the mints to the white metal could not in-
flate, nor would the utter destruction of all silver coin con-
tract the volume of our currency. Commerce will use no
more than it needs, while, if we may believe Adam Smith
and the evidence of our own eyes, it will have as much as
its necessities may require. If the volume be sufficient you
cannot force government money into the channels of trade
without displacing an equal amount of commercial cur-
rency. Contract the volume of governmental money and
commerce at once provides a substitute. It were strange
indeed if the Yankee, with all his shrewdness, could not
manage to "swap" corn for cotton and soap for sad-irons
except by the grace of an omnium-gatherum of pot-house
politicians yclept the American congress! It is to ex-
peditiously effect exchanges that we need an intermediary
a "'wheel of circulation." Whatever serves this purpose
well is "good money," tho' made of the hickory shirt-tails
of Texas Populists ; that which serves it ill is "bad money/*
tho' it be gold of Ophir or pearls of Ind.
"But," I am told, "the almighty dollar must be back of
every check and draft, just as it is behind the greenback
and silver certificate." Quite true ; but what is a dollar? It
is something that was never seen of man was never coined
or counted. It is a pure abstraction, a thing supposed, a
term by which we express the relative value of one commod*
378 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ity to all other commodities. It is our unit of value, and
would stand, tho' all the gold and silver were sunk a thou-
sand fathoms into the sea. A gold coin does not measure
the value of a bushel of corn one whit more than the corn
measures the value of the metal in the coin. The "dollar"
the unit of value measures both, expresses their commer-
cial relation to all other commodities. But let us concede
the truth of the dogma of financial transubstantiation ; let
us admit that 25.8 grains of gold constitute a sure-enough
dollar instead of a foolish trade fiction handed down to us
from ancient days : What then ? Are our commercial checks
and governmental greenbacks based only upon the gold coin
extant in this country? or upon all the gold in the world,
coined and uncoined, mined and unmined? A promissory
note, payable in gold, is not based upon the amount of yel-
low metal in the possession of its maker, but on his aggre-
gate wealth his ability to command gold. The real basis
of our circulating media, governmental and commercial, is
the wealth of the makers. Our astute economists of the
Cleveland school, insist that unless 100 millions of gold be
kept horded up as a guarantee fund, Uncle Sam's promises
to pay will not do the money-work required of them, while
93 per cent, of all our exchanges are effected by means of a
currency made by the people from day to day, and guiltless
of a governmental guarantee.
The "currency question" is really the most ridiculous
craze that ever took possession of a supposedly intelligent
people. "Money," as the term is generally understood, is
becoming of less importance in the world's economy every
day. In a few years more our system of commercial ex-
changes will be so perfected that government currency will
become a curiosity.
One would suppose from the tearful plaints of the "soap-
tails," that the country was suffering because of a dearth of
white dollars ; from the clamor of the "cuckoos" anent "our
commercial relations with gold-using countries," that our
entire foreign trade depends upon an abundance of the yel-
low metal. We have, in fact, more silver than can be kept
in circulation, and we cannot use one dollar of any kind in
our international trade. Our money will not circulate in
Europe, that of other countries does not pass current here.
When gold or silver crosses the Atlantic it does so as mer-
chandise and not as money, as a commodity and not as cur-
rency.
The idea that free coinage of silver would cause a gen-
eral revival of business is the merest moonshine. We al-
ready have more trade tools than trade. Money transfers
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 379
the ownership of wealth from hand to hand, just as a rail-
way moves merchandise from place to place. When a
company has sufficient cars for its carrying trade were not
the manager an ass to put on more and run them empty?
the theory that it would "bring us down "with a crash to the
5O-cent silver basis" and smash the immortal ichor out of
business, is unworthy any man of brains. It might, in con-
formity with Gresham's law, drive out gold; but you cannot
arbitrarily change the commercial standard of value by an
alteration of less than one-seventh of our circulating media.
To a fool, a bob-tail may appear to wag a big dog ; but the
wise man knows that the canine controls his caudal append-
age. The war era certainly demonstrated to both North and
South that the unit of value may be one thing, and the cir-
culating medium quite another.
It is urged that the silver agitation is depressing the value
of our bonds and securities hejd abroad. If true, this is in-
deed distressing; still it might be well to allow our foreign
creditors to do haH the worrying. As we can pay our for-
eign debts only with our products, valued in the currency of
the country to which they are carried, the tears with which
the goldites are drowning our transatlantic creditors seem
to be a wicked waste of water.
Mexico is frequently cited as an awful example o-f the
evils of free silver. Were I a sixteen-to-oner I'd weave
our sister Republic into song and sing her on every stump.
I could pour forth a strain of argentiferous melody that
would transform Pefrer's whiskers into a halo of glory and
waft him into the White House, while Carlisle regretted that
he sold his presidential birthright for a bad mess of cabinet
pottage. We are told that wages are nominally lower in
Mexico than with us, and are paid in currency one-half the
value of our coin; that the country is poverty-stricken, in
debt, and has to give two silver dollars for one of gold with
which to meet the interest on her bonds. Granted. Now
let's view the other side of the hen-coop awhile: For ten
years past wages have been rising in Mexico and declining
in Texas. You can procure more of the necessaries and
comforts of life over there with a Mexican dollar than here
with an American gold dollar. And that's no fairy tale
I've tried it. For instance : You can buy a better cigar for
5 cents, Mexican money, in the land of the Montezumas, than
with 15 cents gold-basis coin in McLennan county. Mexico
pays her foreign indebtedness with her products, just as she
does her big sister on this side of the Rio Grande. If she
sometimes buys gold with her silver "dollars" at the ratio
of two to one, she is only giving two pints for a quart, two
380 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
halves for a whole, so there's nobody hurt. The Eastern
states of our Union, which are making the most noise anent
the "5O-cent dollar/' ship their capital clear across this
blessed gold-standard country and invest it in free-silver
Mexico. The country is still poor and labor scandalously
cheap; but it is a semi-barbarous Indian nation that is but
now feeling the thrill of progress, while America has been
peopled with the dominant race for more than two centuries.
Skilled white workmen obtain better wages in Mexico
both nominally and relatively than with us ; common Mex-
ican labor receives precious small pay on both sides of the
Rio Grande, but the least it gets is usually more than it is
worth. The plea that free silver coinage is responsible
for low wages in Mexico is rank dishonesty. Spain is the
"mother country" of Mexico and South America. She is
on a gold, while they are on a silver basis. According to the
United States consular reports, the average weekly wages
paid the building trades in Spain is $3.80. In Mexico it is
$10, in Peru and Venezuela $9. The same disproportion pre-
vails in all occupations. Italy is on a gold basis, and the
average weekly wages of her shoemakers is $2 ; in Mexico
and South American countries it ranges from $9 to $12, and
this disproportion extends to all occupations. Wages are
five times as high in the United States as in many other
countries, some on a gold, some on a silver basis, which
clearly demonstrates that wages may be high or low regard-
less of the character of the currency. It is time the people
ceased listening to these partisan blatherskites, with govern-
mental axes to grind, and considered economic questions
solely upon their merits.
It is not free silver that is pushing Mexico to the front
despite the general worthlessness of her people. Her prog-
ress is chieflv due to the fact that commerce there knows
pretty well what it can depend upon, is not clapper-clawed
every new moon to make a political picnic. Commerce can
adapt itself to almost any condition and prosper if assured
that said condition will be permanent ; but when change is
ever imminent capital plays a waiting game or emigrates,
while labor goes hungry to bed. If we would either double
our tariff tax or abolish it altogether; if we would either
open our mints to the unlimited coinage of the white metal,
or dispense with silver currency altogether, then adopt a
constitutional amendment making it a capital offence for a
congressman to even discuss these matters during the next
dozen years, industry would quickly revive and America
blossom like a rose. Our commerce is being killed by too
much economic cackle. Everybody from "Cyclone" Davis
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 3S1
down to the "Little Giant," from G. Cleveland up to "Gen-
eral" Coxey, is prescribing for the country, and prostrating
it with their feculent lung power. All it needs is to be let
alone. Men and brethren, go cork yourselves.
WOMAN IN JOURNALISM.
This subject is at present receiving a great deal of at-
tention from writers of both sexes, the women insisting
that they are doing much to elevate journalism, while not
a few male critics flatly accuse them of bringing the craft
into contempt. The time is not yet come to correctly esti-
mate woman's worth or worthlessness in this new field
of her endeavor. She is not thoroughly "broken in har-
ness ;" not educated to the elimination of sex in the prac-
tice of her profession. We have as yet few women who,
in the terminology of the craft, are competent to "hold
down" any department of a great daily ; but we have a
veritable swarm of female scribblers and scrawlers lay-
ing claim to the journalistic toga. The South can boast
but one "lady journalist" in the strict construction of that
term ; and this rara avis in newspaperdom is a Texas
product. I allude, of course, to Julia Truitt Bishop, now
of New Orleans.
The late Mrs. Nicholson, also of the Crescent City, was,
I believe, a newspaper proprietor and thrifty business
manager rather than a working editor; and your thor-
oughbred newspaper man does not consider "the gang
down stairs" even distantly related to the brotherhood of
the "brainery." They are pariahs, altogether without the
pale mere hucksters for the creative power. Mrs. Bishop
is competent to "stop a gap" in any department of a great
newspaper, from the composing room to the sanctum of
the chief. There's a force and finish to all her work that
adds charm even to a sluggish market report and makes
the most pitiful sassiety slop palatable. Her mind is pe-
culiarly masculine. She has nothing in common with that
crowd of petticoated scribblers who are "padding" so
many of our Southern dailies with inane drivel. It is
somewhat remarkable that in all that has been written of
late about the "lady journalists" of the South her name
has not been so much as mentioned. The Will Allen Drom-
goozles and other noisy purveyors of literary hogwash
are dragged in on every occasion ; but the impression ap-
pears to be general because she works so quietly and so
382 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
well that Madame Bishop is a man. Such women wo-
men who do the work of men in the making of great
newspapers and refrain from mounting to the housetop to
exhibit themselves as abnormalities are certainly a
credit to the craft; but candor compels the admission that
they are few and far between. As a rule women are either
dilettanti in journalism or professional panders to an un-
healthy literary appetite. Thus far the newspaper labor
of the Southern ladies has been, for the most part, con-
fined to chronicling the inconsequential doings of society,
inflicting school-girl essays on an inoffensive public, or-
ganizing press clubs and throwing bouquets at them-
selves. Publishers employ them to keep tab on Mrs. Ham-
fat Krupper and sound the alarm when Chappie Chry-
santhemum changes his cravat ; not because they can do
this work better than their brothers, but because they
will do it cheaper and a self-respecting male jour-
nalist is apt to jump such a job. A number of sensational
sheets, like the unsavory nuisance known as the New
York World, have employed women to fall off ferry-boats,
get locked up in lunatic asylums or girdle the globe alone
and without a change of lingerie, then spill their ever
useless and ofttimes offensive experiences upon the pub-
lic. Women have actually been detailed by such panders
to the prurient as Josef Spewlitzer to interview pugilists,
flirt in the parks with professional mashers, visit hovels
of prostitution to subject themselves not only to certain
insult, but to the dangers of criminal assault to add
spice to "great family journals." The female pencil push-
ers of whom we hear the most are built on the model of
Nellie Bly. Personally they may be pure as the lilies of
the field for aught I know; but their neurasthenic slum-
gullion is no credit to their sex. It is even more mere-
tricious than such putrescent papers as the Police Gazette,
for it is usually cloaked with a specious morality that
gives it entree to the home, while the Gazette stops at the
lo-cent barber-shop and the nigger saloon. To call these
sensation-mongers "journalists" were equivalent to desig-
nating a faith-cure fraud as a physician. According to
Webster any regular writer for the press is a journalist;
but the term is applied by the craft only to those who can
transform a few sheets of blank paper into a mirror of the
world. Col. McCullagh of the Globe-Democrat once de-
fined journalism as "knowing where hell will break loose
and having a reporter on the spot." Magazine and sketch
writers are not journalists in the usual acceptance of the
term. Unquestionably many bright and noble women are
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 383
employed in minor capacities on legitimate newspapers.
They are useful or they would not be retained. Some of
them may develop into Greeleys or Bennetts, Danas ^or
McCullaghs for aught I know; but while in this peculiar
field of ephemeral literature a number of women have ac-
quired unsavory notoriety, none have attained to em-
inence. Woman's experience in journalism has thus far
proven even more unsatisfactory than her attempts upon
other professions. All the great women lawyers and doc-
tors, scientists and essayists, politicians and preachers
may be counted on the fingers of the two hands. They
are never path-finders in the great field of knowledge. In
all the hoary centuries woman has originated no religious
cult, made no great discovery, enunciated no fundamental
law. As a poet, dramatist and novelist she has risen high ;
but far above and beyond the most exalted of her sex
stand the thousand immortelles. Women are flocking in-
to journalism and medicine in larger numbers than into
the other professions. Why I know not, unless it be that
these offer greatest opportunity for charlatanism. They
are rapidly appropriating to themselves the dirty work of
both professions the unhealthy sensationalism of the one
and abortion practice of the other. The ratio of female to
male physicians is probably less than I to 100, yet compe-
tent authorities estimate that one-half the crimes against
motherhood must be laid at the door of the "lady" doc-
tors. The ratio of women to men in newspaper work is
probably less than I to 12; yet a careful examination of
the "great" dailies will demonstrate that at least half the
intellectual slime that is befouling the land is fished out of
the gutter by females.
ADAM AND EVE.
After God had expended five days creating this little
dog-kennel of a world, and one in manufacturing the re-
mainder of the majestic universe out of a job-lot of po-
litical boom material, he "planted a garden eastward in
Eden, and there he put the man he had formed." Adam
was at that time a bachelor, therefore, his own boss. He
was monarch of all he surveyed and his right there was
none yet to dispute. He could stay out and play poker all
night in perfect confidence that when he fell over the
picket fence at 5 g. m. he would find no vinegar-faced old
female nursing a curtain lecture to keep it warm, setting
384 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
her tear- jugs in order and working up a choice assortment
of snuffles. There were no lightning-rod agents to in-
veigle him into putting $100 worth of pot metal cork-
screws on a $15 barn. He didn't care a rap about the "law
of rent," nor who paid the "tariff tax," and no political
Buzfuz bankrupted his patience trying to explain the sil-
ver problem. He didn't have to anchor his smoke-house
to the center of gravity with a log chain, set a double-
barrelled bear trap in the donjon-keep of his hennery nor
tie a brace of pessimistic bull-dogs in his melon patch, for
the nigger preacher had not yet arrived with his adjust-
able morals and omnivorous mouth. No female commit-
tees of uncertain age invaded his place of business and
buncoed him out of a double saw-buck for the benefit of
a pastor who would expend it seeing what Parkhurst saw
and feeling what Parkhurst felt. Collectors for dry-goods
emporiums and military parlors did not haunt him like an
accusing conscience, and the pestiferous candidate was
still happily hidden in the womb of time with the picnic
pismire and the partisan newspaper. Adam could express
an honest opinion without colliding with the platform of
his party or being persecuted by the professional heresy-
hunters. He could shoot out the lights and yoop without
getting into a controversy with the chicken-court and be-
ing fined one dollar for the benefit of the state and fleeced
out of forty for the behoof of thieving officials. He had
no collar-buttons to lose, no upper vest pockets to spill
his pencils and his patience, and his breeches never bag-
ged at the knees. There were no tailors to torment him
\vith scraps of ancient history, no almond-eyed he-wash-
er-woman to starch the tail of his Sunday shirt as stiff as
a checkerboard.
Adam was more than 100 years old when he lost a, rib
and gained a wife. Genesis does not say so in exact words,
but I can make nothing else of the argument. Our first
parents received special instructions to "be fruitful and
multiply." They were given distinctly to understand that
was what they were here for. They were brimming with
health and strength, for disease and death had not yet come
into the world. Their blood was pure and thrilled with
the passion that is the music of physical perfection yet
Adam was 130 years old when his third child was born. If
Adam and Eve were of equal age a marriage in American
"high life" the mating of a scorbutic dude with a mil-
liner's sign could scarce make so poor a record. After
the birth of Seth the first of men "begat sons and daughters"
seems to have become imbued with an ambition to found
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 385
a family. As the first years of a marriage are usually the
most fruitful, we may fairly conclude that our common
mother was an old man's darling. Woman does not ap-
pear to have been included in the original plan of creation.
She was altogether unnecessary, for if God could create one
man out of the dust of the earth without her assistance he
could make a million more could keep on manufacturing
them as long as his dust lasted. But multiplication of
"masterpieces" was no part of the Creator's plan. Adam
was to rule the earth even as Jehovah rules the heavens. As
there is but one Lord of Heaven, there should be but one
lord of earth one only Man, who should live forever, the
good genius of a globe created, not for a race of marauders
and murderers but for that infinitely happier life which we
denominate the lower animals. This beautiful world was
not built for politicians and preachers, kings and cuckolds;
but for the beasts and birds, the forests and the flowers, and
over all of life, animate and inanimate, the earthly image
of Almighty God was made the absolute but loving lord.
The lion should serve him and the wild deer come at his
call. The bald eagle, whose bold wings seem to fan the
noonday sun to fiercer flame, should bend from the empy-
rean at his bidding, and the roe bear him over land and
sea on its broad pinions. As his great Archetype rules the
Cherubim and Seraphim, so should Man, a god in minia-
ture, reign over the earth-born, the inhabitants of a lesser
heaven. As no queen shares God's eternal throne, so none
should divide the majesty of earth's diadem. There is
neither marrying nor giving in marriage, we are told,
among the angels. They rise above sex, into the realm of
the purely spiritual, scorning the sensual joys that are the
heritage of bird and beast, for intellectual pleasures that
r.ever pall; and why should Man, the especial object of
God's providence, be grosser than his ministers?
Were I a poet I would ask no grander theme than Adam's
first century upon the earth that age of gold when Man
was sufficient unto himself. A century undisputed master
of the world! A century of familiar converse in Eden's
consecrated groves with the great First Cause the om-
nipresent and omnipotent God. Picture one day of such
existence! Ambition and Avarice, Jealousy and Passion,
those demons that have deluged the world with blood and
tears, have no place in Adam's peaceful bosom. He is not
in the Grove of Daphne, where lust is law, but in the
Garden of God where love is life. His subjects, not dumb
as now. or speaking a language strange to our dull ears,
greet him as he comes forth at break of day from his
386 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
aromatic bower. A thousand feathered songsters drown his
soul in melody divine, while every bud and blossom, a liv-
ing censer, sways in the balmy breath of morn and pours
forth its grateful perfume. The forest monarch lays his
massy head on Adam's knee, the spotted leopard purrs
about him and the fawn nestles between his feet. High
above the Caucasian peaks a condor poises motionless in
mid- heaven, the unrisen sun gilding him as with beaten
gold. Now the saw-like summits, cloud-kissing and crowned
with eternal snow, burst into the brilliant sea and gleam
like the brow of God, while the purple mists are drawn up
from the deep valleys as tho' the giants fain woud hide
from earth their splendors, reserving them alone for heaven.
Higher and higher wheels the great sun, driving the river
mist before it and sending down through the softly whis-
pering foliage a thousand shafts of burnished gold that seek
out the violet, drain the nectareous dew-drop from its
chance and kiss the grape until its youthful sap changes to
empurpled Wood beneath the passionate caress. In the
cool shadows by the great spring a magic mirror in whose
pellucid depths are reflected heaven's imperial concave and
Eden's virgin splendors God walks familiar with Adam
as with a younger brother, explains to him the use and
beauty of all that is, and spreads before his wondering
eyes Creation's mighty plan.
And yet God suspects that Adam is not content, for we
hear him soliloquizing: "It is not good that the man should
be alone." The clay of which the first of men is formed is
beginning to assert itself. He watches the panther fondling
his playful cubs, the eagle's solicitude for his imperial
brood perched on the beetling crag, and the paternal in-
stinct awakes within him. He hears the mocking-bird
trilling to his mate, the dove pitying the loneliness of Crea-
tion's mystic lord, and a fierce longing for a companionship
dearer than he has yet known takes possession of him. To
the swarming life about him his high thoughts are in-
comprehensible; in God's presence his soul swoons be-
neath an intellectual glory to which he cannot rise, en-
cumbered as he is by earthly clay. He sends his swift-
winged messenger forth to summon before his throne every
fowl of the air and every beast of the field. Down thro'
the gates of the garden they come, countless thousands, and
pass before their king. "But for Adam there was not found
a helpmeet for him." Sick at heart he turns away. The
sunset has lost its glory, the spheres their music, life its
sweetness. The beams of the moon chill his blood and
Arcturus leads forth his shining sons but to mock his bar-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 387
renness. The flowers that wreathe his couch stifle him with
their sensuous perfume and he flies from the nightingale's
passionate song as the slave flees the scourge. Thro' the
dark paths and over the moss-grown boulders he stumbles
on, across the fields where the fire-flies glow like showers
of flame, beneath the tall cedars whose every sigh seems
drawn from the depths of an accepted lover's soul. Ex-
hausted, he sinks down where the waters burst from the
foundations of the earth and, dividing into four, seem to
reiterate in ceaseless monotone, "Behold my mighty sons."
A feeling of utter loneliness, of hopeless desolation falls
upon him, such as hammers at the heart when Death has
despoiled us of all that Life held dear. He pillows his
head upon the sleeping lion and shields himself from the
sharp night air with the tawny mane. A cub, already hunt-
ing in dreams, comes whining and nestles down over his
heart, while Love's brilliant star pours its splendors full
upon his face. The long black lashes, burdened with un-
shed tears, drop low, a drowsiness falls upon him and
Adam sleeps. The heavens are rolled together like a scroll
and God descends in the midst of a legion of Angels, bright-
est of whom is Lucifer, Son of the Morning, not yet forever
fallen. "It is not good that the man should be alone." The
fitful slumber deepens; the winds are hushed; the song of
the nightingale sinks lower and lower, then ceases with an
awe-struck sigh; the lynx and the jackal, the horned owl
and the scaly serpent slink away into the deepest wood,
while Love's emblem glows like a globe of molten gold.
Then comes a burst of melody divine, beneath which the
earth trembles like a young maid's heart when, half in
ecstacy, half in fear, she first feels burning upon her own
the bearded lips of her life's dear lord. It is the Morning
Stars singing together! There is a perfumed air on Adam's
cheek, sweeter than ever swooned in the rose garden of
Cashmere or the jasmine bowers of Araby the Blest; there
is a touch upon his forehead softer than the white dove's
fluttering bosom; there is a voice in his ear more musical
than Israfeel's marshaling the Faithful in fields of aspho-
del, crying, "Awake my lord!" and the first of men is
looking with enraptured soul upon the last, best work of an
all-wise God, a beautiful woman.
388 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
THE LOCAL OPTION LUNACY.
[Mr. Brann was billed to lecture at Hillsboro, Texas, on the eve
of the local option election. The Antis took possession of the opera
house and changed his subject. Following is a synopsis of his
address:]
Ladies and Gentlemen: I came here to talk on "Gall/*
and I find that I m/ust speak on "Prohibition" a distinc-
tion without a difference. I hold in my hand a printed
challenge from the Prohib committee to meet Hon. W. K.
Homan in joint debate to-night a challenge issued when
they were well aware that I was to lecture here this even-
ing. They felt certain that I would not forego a lecture fee
to mix it with them without money and without price; but
they -didn't know their man. I'm always willing to make
some sacrifice to secure the luxury of a red-hot intellectual
scrapping match. We proposed to make it a Midshipman
Easy duel, a three-cornered fight Brothers Homan and
Benson vs. the "Apostle," but they wiggled in and they
wiggled out, they temporized and tergiversated until we saw
there wasn't an ounce of fight in the whole Prohibition
crew that, after their flamboyant defi, we couldn't pull' em
into a joint debate with a span of mules and a log-chain.
I last saw 7 Bro. Bill Homan at Hub-hard City. He was
getting out of town on the train I got in on after prom-
ising that he would remain over and meet me. In his
harangue the night before he told his auditors that I'd sim-
ply "abuse the church and make ugly faces." Well, I didn't
abuse the church on that occasion, nor upon any other,
albeit I sometimes make it a trifle uncomfortable for some
of its unworthy representatives. I cannot help "making
ugly faces." It's my misfortune, not my fault. I was
born good and Bro. Bill was born beautiful. He's the
Adonis of the rostrum, the Apollo Belvidere of the bema.
He's so dodgasted "purty" that the children cry for him.
Had he come to earth two thousand years ago some Gre-
cian goddess would have stolen him. Bro. Bill couldn't
make an ugly face if he tried. If he ever catches sight of
his own personal pulchritude as reflected in some trans-
lucent lake, I much fear that he'll meet with the fate of
Narcissus. Some of you Prohibs don't know who Nar-
cissus was. Well, he was one of those fellows whom cold
water killed.
I'm no professional anti-Prohibition spouter, and have
been jumped up here without preparation ; but it occurs
to me that it requires no careful rehearsal of set orations
before an amorous looking glass, no studied interming-
ling of pathos, bathos and blue fire to demolish the Pro-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 389
hibition fallacy. Liberty is ever won by volunteers; the
shackles of political and religious slavery are forged by
the hands of hirelings. Prohibition cannot withstand the
light of logic, the lessons of experience, nor the crucible
of the commonest kind of common sense.
Milton tells us that the angel Ithuriel found the devil
"squat like a toad," distilling poison in the ear of sleep-
ing Eve; that he touched the varmint with his spear, and
forthwith Satan resumed his proper shape and fled shriek-
ing out of Paradise. Prohibition is another evil spirit that
is breeding trouble in man's Eden; but when touched by
the spear-point of legitimate criticism its disguise falls
away, and we see, instead of a harmless toad, a malic-
ious Meddlesome Mattie stirring up strife and bitterness
among brethren.
Whenever a man opposes the plans of the Prohibs he is
forthwith denounced as an enemy of morality, a slave of
the saloons, a hireling of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing As-
sociation. Well, I had rather be the emissary of the saloons
than the assassin of liberty, the slave of a brewer than the
blind peon of ignorant prejudice, while if morality consists
in attending to my neighbor's business to the neglect of
my own, then I'm ferninst it, first, last and all the time.
As a good German friend of mine once remarked. "Dot
beoples who lives py stones shouldn't trow some glass
houses, haind id?" Who is making money out of this
agitation? The professional Prohibs. Did you ever know
of one of these gentry making a Prohibition speech except
for filthy lucre unless he was electioneering for office or
taking subscribers for a cold-water journal ? They are the
cattle who are out for the stuff; they are the mercenaries
the n/en who pump foul air thro' their faces for a fee. Did
you ever hear of a man getting paid for defending the doc-
trine of personal liberty? Did you ever see a collection
taken up at an anti-prohibition meeting to pay some im-
portant spouter for pointing out to the people their political
duty? (A voice: "Nix.") And you never will. These
prohibition orators have the impudence to denounce me
as "the peon of the rum power" while I am fighting the
battles of personal liberty at my own cost, yet not a dad-
burned one of 'em will open his head unless paid for his
wind-power ! They are "reformers" for revenue only.
I have noticed that, as a rule, men who speak against
Prohibition have never been in the gutter, while those who
pick up a precarious livelihood by chasing the "Rum De-
mon" around a stump have usually been his very humble
slaves. I have noticed that the men who oppose Prohibi-
390 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST .
tion are usually the solid, well-to-do men of the community,
the heavy tax-payers the men upon whom the schools, the
churches and the state chiefly depend for support, while
those who champion it on the rostrum, are usually living in
some way upon the industry of others. The man who has
brains enough to make money and keep it usually has too
much sense to be a Prohibitionist. It is the fellows who
have made a failure of life; who live on donations; who
weep over the world's wickedness, then take up a collection
to enable them to get to the next town; who haven't suf-
ficient moral stamina to stay sober, that are prating of
Prohibition. If we required a property franchise you
couldn't muster five thousand Prohibition votes between
the Sabine and the Rio Grande.
And yet we are told that licensing the saloons is a bad
business investment; that it costs more than it comes to;
that the way to abolish poverty is to abrogate the liquor
license law. Strange that the Prohibs should possess such
transcendent business heads and such empty stomachs!
Doubtless the drinking 1 of liquor adds to the cost of our ju-
diciary; doubtless it is responsible for some crime; but the
question at issue is not one of liquor-drinking vs. teetotalism
it is a question of drinking licensed liquor or Prohibition
aquafortis. It is not a question of reducing the cost of our
courts, but of making liquor bear its due proportion of
the burdens it foists upon the people.
I am neither the friend nor enemy of liquor, any more
than I am the enemy or friend of buttermilk. I have drank
both a third of a century and have been unable to see that
they did me any especial good or harm. I was never befud-
dled on the one nor foundered on the other, and have
managed to get along very well with both. Whether in
eating or drinking, a man should keep his brains above
his belt, and if he cannot do that he's a precious poor ex-
cuse for an uncrowned King, an American Sovereign.
The statistics furnished by the Prohibition orators are
fearfully and wonderfully made. It has been asserted in
this campaign that a million Americans die every year
of the world from the effects of strong drink and all this
great army goes direct to hell. The man who made that
statement is a preacher, and presumably familiar with the
Bible; but he has evidently overlooked the story of An-
anias and Saphira. I learn from the United States census
report, which I hold in my hand, that in the very year in
which this Prohibition apostle claims a million Americans
were slain by strong drink, the statistical experts could find
but 1,592 victims of John Barleycorn. The doctors have
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 391
ever claimed that more people die of over-eating than of
over-drinking, and the census report bears out the asser-
tion, for in the year in which 1592 people were filed away
by "alcoholism," 30.094 deaths are accredited to "dis-
eases of the digestive organs." What causes indigestion?
Over-eating, or eating" food difficult of digestion. Now I
submit that if Brothers Benson, Homan, et al, are trying
to save the people of this land from premature graves and
bear the stock of the coffin trust, they should direct their
crusade against indigestible food, reduce the people of
this Nation by means of statutory law to a diet of corn-
bread and buttermilk. Let them bring all their ballistae
and 'battering-arms to bear upon the toothsome mince pie,
the railway sandwich, the hard-boiled egg and pickled pigs'
feet that pestilence that walks in darkness. Indigestion
is indeed a fruitful source of crime. It casts the black
shadow of chronic pessimism athwart the sunniest soul
and transforms happy homes into dens of despair. It makes
men irritable, morose, and prompts them to homicide.
Who can tell how much misery and crime the wretched
cookery of female Prohibitionists is responsible for? How
the cost of our criminal courts might be reduced if these
she-reformers would but attend to their kitchens and dish
up for their lords and masters grub that would more easily
assimilate with the gastric juices ! If a man be fit for
treasons, stratagems and spoils when loaded with a half
a pint of red licker, what must be the condition of his
mind and miorals when he's full of sodden pie, half baked
beans and soda-biscuits that if fired from a cannon would
kill a bull?
The theory that strong drink is an unmixed evil that
must be abolished, is not in accord with the genius of this
government, which would give to the individual untram-
meled liberty in matters concerning only himself. Ex-
perience has proven Prohibition a rank failure and the cus-
toms of mankind from the very dawn of history brand it
a rotten fraud. The people of every age and clime have
used stimulants, and we may safely conclude that, despite
the Prohibs, they will be employed so long as man exists
upon the earth. Banish liquor and man will find a substi-
tute even tho' it be opium, morphine or cocaine. It is
said that Thor, the great northern god of war, once tried
to lift what he supposed was an old woman, but found to
his sorrow that it was a mighty serpent which, in Norse
mythology, encircles the world. The Prohibs are warring
upon what they foolishly imagine to be frivolous habit of
man, but will yet learn that they are running counter to
392 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
an immutable decree of God are trying to alter the phys-
ical constitution of the human race by means of local op-
tion elections.
So far as I am personally concerned, I would care but
little if every ounce of liquor was banished from the earth
and its method of manufacture forever be forgotten; but I
object to having! a lot of he-virgins and female wall-flowers
sit at my muzzle and dictate how I shall load myself. If
I'm an American sovereign I propose to be supreme auto-
crat of my own stomach. When I want advice regarding
what I shall eat and what I shall drink I'll consult a doctor
of medicine instead of a doctor of divinity.
I do not oppose Prohibition because I am the friend
of liquor, but because I am the friend of liberty. I would
rather see a few boozers that a race of bondmen. I am
not interested in preserving the liquor traffic, but I am
interested in the perpetuation of those principles that en-
noble a people and make manly men men who rely upon
themselves for their social salvation rather than upon a
public policy which may change with the phases of the
moon or the arrival of some new demagogue from distant
parts. I have but little use for men who must swing to the
apron- strings of a public errand-dame or sro to the dogs.
Let us reserve the nursery for children. Men whom we
cannot trust with the guardianship of their own appetites
should not be allowed to run at large. How would you
young ladies like to marry "American Sovereigns" who
must 'be tied up, like a lot of mangy cayuses when white
clover is in blossom to keep 'em from catching the
"slobbers?"
But, the Prohibs inform us, the brightest men of the
world are ruined by strong drink. They assure us that
"it is not a question of intellect, but of appetite." What
was judgment given us for if not to control our appetites?
If appetite be paramount to judgment why do we hang
rape-fiends? Let me tell you the idea that the brainiest
men of the world die drunkards is the merest moonshine.
If only men of genius drank liquor a one-horse still would
supply the demand and be idle six months in the year.
Take the thousand greatest men the world has produced
the Thousand Immortelles and not 2 per cent, of them
died drunkards, yet 98 per cent, of them drank liquor. If
the Prohibs have ever produced an intellect of the first
class they must have hidden it under a bushel. Its pos-
sessor is probably one of those village Hampdens or mute
inglorious Miltons of whom the poet sings. The Prohibs
don't run to great men they run to gab.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 393
Stripped of all its superfluous trappings, the thesis of
Prohibition is simply this : "Some men drink to excess ;
therefore no one should be permitted to drink at all. The
human race must reserve its inherent tastes and time-hon-
ored habits lest some wild-eyed jay get on a jag." The
question at issue, the riddle for us to unravel, is simply
this : Can we afford to sacrifice human liberty to save the
sots? Is the game worth the candle, and if we burn the
candle will we win the game ?
The Pros assure you that Prohibition prohibits. It
does. It prohibits the sale of liquor and supplies its place
with coffin paint. It prohibits the sale of good, ice-cold
beer and gives us forty-rod bugjuice. Theories are not
worth a continental when slammed up against conditions.
What I hear I take with a grain of salt; but what I see
that I do know. I tell you candidly that next to a pretty
woman I love a cocktail. If the liquor is good and the
barkeeper understands his business, I consider it a thing
to thank God for occasionally. Like religion, a little of
it is an excellent thing, but an overdose will put wheels
in your head. I have never yet been in a Prohibition pre-
cinct where I needed to go thirsty if I had the price of a
pint flask concealed about my person and my stomach
could stand the poison.
When high license prevailed in Hillsboro you had a
dozen saloons, each contributing to the revenues of the
state, the country, the municipality and the school fund.
You voted local option in, and now you've thirty-two unli-
censed and unregulated doggeries selling rot-gut to
schoolboys and contributing not one cent to the public
revenues. The cost of your courts has increased, drunk-
enness was never so common, brawls never so frequent.
It is said that even fools can learn in the bitter school of
experience ; but there be idiots upon whom even such les-
sons are lost. But you say, "Vote local option in again
and we'll elect officers who will enforce the laws." Have
you yet to learn that a law cannot be enforced that is not
steadily upheld by public opinion ? And do you not know
that there's not a considerable town in Texas where pub-
lic opinion demands at all times a strict enforcement of
such a law ? If you really desire to have a sober city, raise
a purse and hire the operators of your blind tigers to place
their booze on the sidewalk in buckets, accompanied by
tin dippers and signs, "Help yourself funerals furnished
free." Men would then run away from the very smell of
the stuff who now sneak up dirty alleys and pay 15 cents
394 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
for the privilege of poisoning- themselves. On the same
principle some men and they are not all anti-Prohibs
either will leave a beautiful and charming wife to mope
at home while they are flirting with some female whose
face would frighten a freight-train. Man is just like a dog
only more so. Perhaps a marauding old muley cow-
would be a better comparison. A muley cow will eat any-
thing on this majestic earth that she can steal, from a
hickory shirt to a Prohibition newspaper, and if she can't
get it thro' her neck she will chew it and suck the juice.
That's human nature to a hair. Man values most what is
hardest to get. And until you reverse the law of nature
the legitimate effect of Prohibition will be blind tigers and
back-door sneaks, the breeding of spies and the sale and
consumption of an infinitely meaner brand of booze.
That liquor has done a vast amount of damage I freely
concede ; but shall we banish everything that has added to
the mighty tide of human ills? Then what have we left?
A hole in the atmosphere. God has not bequeathed to man
an unmixed blessing since he expelled him from Paradise.
Even woman, his last, best gift, hath grievous faults. The
very first one brought into this world, according to Pagan
legend and Holy Writ, was the author of all our ills. But
for her we would be to-day in a blessed state of innocence,
where mothers-in-law and millinery bills, political issues
and itinerant preachers, mental freaks and professional
reformers, jim-jams and jag cure joints disturb us not. In-
stead of all this toil and trouble we would lie like gods re-
clining on banks of asphodel, pull the heavenly bell-cord
when hungry and live on from age to age, ever young
Apollos. Perhaps the Almighty made a mistake when he
gave to man a wife, and another when he gave him the
vine ; but when he corrects 'em I'll crawl off the earth.
Woman has filled the world with war's alarms, and the
bacchic revel has ended in the brawl. Troy flamed because
Menelaus' wife was false, and Philip's all-conquering son
surrendered to the brimming bowl. Ever is our dearest
joy wedded to our direst woe. The same air that comes
stealing round our pillow, laden with the sensuous per-
fume of a thousand flowers, rips our towns to pieces and
turns our artesian wells inside out. The same rains that
fructify the earth pour the destructive flood. The same in-
tellectual power that bends nature's mighty forces to
man's imperial will, enables him to trample upon his
brethren. The same reckless courage that breaks the ty-
rant's chain ofttimes stains the hand with a brother's
blood. The same longing for woman's sweet companion-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 395
ship that leads these to rear happy homes sacred shrines
from which incense mounts night and day to the throne
of Omnipotent God goads those to lawless love. The
empurpled juice that warms the cold heart and stirs the
sluggish blood that gives to the orator lips of gold, to the
poet promethean fire abused doth breed the hasty quarrel
and make the god a beast.
It was said of old that a middle course is safest and
best, and the axiom still holds good. All the Utopias thus
far inaugurated were greased at the wrong end. The fact
that since the dawn of history aye, so far back that
legend itself is lost in the shadows of the centuries the
winecup has circulated about the social board, proves that
it supplies a definite, an inherent human want that it fills
a niche in the world's economy. One of the first acts of
a people after passing the pale of savagery is to supply
itself with stimulants. Why this is so, I do not pretend to
know ; but so it is, and it argues that the Prohibition
apostles have tackled about as big a contract as did Dame
Partington that they had best "pluck a few feathers
from the wing of their fancy wherewith to supply the tail
of the judgment."
The Prohibs declare that 999 out of every 1,000 crimes
are caused by liquor. Suppose this to be true: Does it
take the cussedness out of liquor to drive it from the front
room into the back alley? Is it not a fact that the worst
brand of "fighting booze" is dispensed at the illicit dog-
gery? But the Prohibs are as badly at sea anent their
criminal statistics as in the mortuary report. Compara-
tively few of the great criminals of this country ever
drank liquor to excess. But a small per cent, of those in
our penitentiaries were confirmed drunkards when accord-
ed the hospitality of the state. When a man is convicted
of crime he naturally seeks a scapegoat. Adam threw all
the blame of that apple episode on Eve, simply because
liquor had not then been invented and he could not plead
an Edenic jag in extenuation. I was once interviewing a
man who had just been sentenced to the penitentiary for
horse-theft. I thought that perhaps a cocktail would cause
him to talk freer, and had one smuggled to his cell. He
declined it, saying that he had never taken but one drink
of liquor in his life, and that made him sick.
"But," said I, "you told the court that you were crazy
drunk when you committed the crime."
"Yes," he replied, "I'd rather, be thought a drunkard
than a natural born d d thief."
That led me to investigate. I interviewed the recorder
396 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of Galveston, the chief of police, the sheriff of the county,
the district attorney and several other officials. We went
over the records, and the habits of each offender were
carefully inquired into. As a matter of course the
"drunks and disorderlies" made an imposing list; but we
were unable to trace the influence of liquor in more than
3 per cent of the serious crimes committed in Galveston
city and county during five years.
The great cry of the Prohibs is, "Savei the boys ; re-
move temptation from their path." Well, that's all right,
if youVe got a putty boy ; but if I had a boy who wanted
to go on a whizz and wasn't smart enough to find the
means despite all the Prohibs in Christendom, I'd send
him to the insane asylum. I was reading the other day of
some college youths who were watched so closely that
they couldn't obtain liquor, and proceeded to fill up on il-
luminating gas. If the supply of gas holds out those
youngsters are likely to develop into great Prohibition
orators. If you want to keep your boy from filling a
drunkard's grave, begin by getting a sure-enough boy
one whose brain-pan lies above instead of below his ears.
Then raise him right. Don't tell him that every man who
sells liquor is an emissary of hell, and that every man who
drinks it is a worthless sot. If you do, he'll soon find out
that you are a liar without sufficient intelligence to build
a dangerous falsehood, and he'll take off the muzzle. Tell
him the truth and thereby retain his confidence. Tell him
that liquor is a pretty good thing to let alone, but that
millions of better men than his daddy have drank it and
lived and died sober and useful citizens.
Prohibtion was first tried in the Garden of Eden. It
proved a failure there, and it has proven a failure ever
since. It is not in accord with the Christian Bible, the
fundamental law of the land or the lessons of history.
Wine has been used in almost every religious rite except
Mohammedanism and devil worship. St. Paul recom-
mends it, Christ made and used it. and God saved Noah
while letting all the good Prohibitionists drown. The
Saviour came eating and drinking. Abraham Lincoln de-
clared Prohibition "a species of intemperance within it-
self" and "a blow at the very principles on which our
government was founded." General Grant, Thomas Jeff-
erson, Horatio Seymour and John Ouincy Adams de-
nounced it in unmeasured terms. Who's taking issue with
these giants of the intellect? Redlicker Benson of In-
geanny, who has come all the Way to Texas to tell us bar-
barians what to do to be saved and incidentally pick up
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 397
enough money to pay for another "jag;" Whoopee Ka-
lamity Homan, the pretty man of Dallas, whose chief ar-
gument is that I abuse the churches which is an infer-
nal falsehood ; and Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, an ex-
bum who aspires to the presidency of the United States,
but couldn't be elected pound-master in his own precinct.
I have been asked why, if as much liquor is sold under
Prohibition as under high license, the saloonists insist up-
on contributing to the public revenues. The answer's
dead easy. The men who engineer blind tigers vote the
Prohibition ticket. They contribute to the campaign fund.
They help pay the fees of the cold water spouters and
sputers. More liquor is sold under local option than under
high license, because of man's natural hankering for for-
bidden fruits; but it is sold by a different class of men
and is a different kind of booze. It is sold by chronic law-
breakers, by men who have little to lose, by toughs for
whom the bat-cage hath no terrors. The man who is cap-
able of straddling an unlicensed keg of bug-juice in a back
room and ladling out liquid hell to little boys, is quite na-
turally in favor of Prohibition. A man of respectability,
and who is financially responsible for offenses, desires to
keep within the limits of the law. That's the reason that
respectable saloon men are the enemies of Prohibition.
Legalize the sale of liquor and you will have some
crime, no doubt. You will have paupers and criminals tc
provide for, but you'll have a revenue to help bear the
burdens. Prohibit it and you'll have the burdens without
the revenue. Permit its sale and you will have law-abid-
ing citizens engaged in the traffic, men who will try to
make it decent, who will take a pride in the purity of their
wares and the orderliness of their places ; prohibit it, and
you will have a lot of law-breakers on the one hand selling
slumgullion made of cheap chemicals and general cussed-
ness, and a gang of spies and informers on the other stir-
ring up strife and entailing costly litigation.
When driven to the wall ; when it is clearly demon-
strated that their doctrine does not accord with the genius
of this government ; when it is amply proven that wheve-
ever tried it has proven an expensive failure, an arrant
fraud, the Prohibs fall back upon the Bible. You rm\y
prove five hundred different religious dogmas by the
Bible, but Prohibition is not one of them. Bro. Homan
declares that the Old Testament prohibits the drinking of
wine. It does not ; but it does not make circumcision ob-
ligatory, and a sin of omission is as bad as a sin of com-
mission. If Bro. Homan proposes to be guided by the Old
W BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Testament I beg to suggest that he is overlooking a very
important bit. The Old Testament commands no class of
people to abstain from wine, except the Jewish priest-
hood, and they only i^iilc performing their sacred offices.
An angel of the Lord did command the barren Manoah to
stay sober awhile and she should conceive and bear a son ;
and I imagine that something equally as miraculous
might happen to Luther Benson under similar circum-
stances. David recounts as one of God's mercies that he
giveth water to the wild ass and wine to make glad the
heart of man. Solomon sings to the wine cup with all the
ardor of Anacreon, while the prophets kept the morals of
Israel toned up by threats that a lapse from virtue would
prove disastrous to the vineyards. St. Paul advised
bishops and old women to take but little wine. He also
suggested to the first that they should not fly into a pas-
sion, and to the latter that spreading false reports about
their neighbors was not considered good form. The Pro-
hibs, as a last resort, insist that the wine of Biblical days
was very different from our own a kind of circus lemon-
ade ; but it seems to have gotten in its graft on old Noah
in most elegant shape. If the wine of Biblical times was
so harmless why did the sacred writers consider it neces-
sary to caution people against drunkenness, bid them be
temperate in all things while avoiding teetotalism ? The
only beverage I can find mentioned in the Bible that af-
fected a man like a Prohibition drink, was that given Col.
Lot in the cave by his two daughters. It accomplished
what medical men assure me was a miracle and the Pro-
hibs run largely to the miraculous.
OLD GLORY.
(San Antonio, July 4, 1893.)
Fellow Americans I have done pretty much everything
that a man may do and dodge the penitentiary, except run
for office and make Fourth of July speeches. Eulogizing
the Goddess of Liberty were much like adding splendor to
the sunrise or fragrance to the breath of morn. She needs
no encomiast, star-crowned she stands, the glory of Amer-
ica, the admiration of the world.
I shall make a bid for your gratitude by being brief. In
July weather the song of an electric fan and the small voice
of the soda-fount were more grateful to the soul than the
I il< ANN, TIIK ICONOCLAST 399
grandest eloquence that ever burned on a Grady's lips of
gold. It is customary 1 believe on July 4 to "make the
eagle scream," to light o'er again all the gory battles of
the Republic, from Lexington's defeat to the glorious vic-
tory of the last election ; but I am no Gov. Waite, and
blood to horses' bridles delights me not. I would rather
at any time talk of love's encounters than of war's alarums
rather bask in the smiles of beauty than mount barbed
steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries. I have ever
had a sneaking respect for Grover Cleveland for sending a
substitute to remonstrate with the Southern Confederacy
while he played progressive euchre with the pretty girls.
His patriotism may not have soared above par, but there
were no picnic ants on his judgment. Much as I love my
country, I would rather be a living president than a dead
hero.
I address you as "fellow Americans," for in this land no
man of Celtic or of Saxon blood can be an alien. Whether
he were born on the banks of the blue Danube or by Kil-
larney's lovely lakes, 'mid Scotia's rugged hills or on the
surny vales of France, he is bound to us with ties of blood ;
he hath a claim upon our country, countersigned by those
brave souls who, in the western wilds, gave to Liberty a
habitation and a name who declared that Columbia should
ever be the refuge of the world's oppressed, that all men,
in whatever country born, should be equal before the law
wherever falls the shadow of our flag. There has of late
arisen a strange new doctrine that we should close our ports
against the peoples of other lands, however worthy they
anay be; but I say unto you that such a policy were to
betray a sacred trust confided to us by our fathers, that
every honest man beneath high heaven, every worshipper
at Liberty's dear shrine hath an inheritance here, and when,
with uplifted hand he pledges his life, his fortune and his
sacred honor to the defense of freedom's flag he becomes
as much an American as tho' to the manner born.
On occasions such as this we of America are apt to glor-
ify ourselves too much, to overlook the origin of those
elements that made us great. When exulting over our
victories in war and our still more glorious triumphs in
peace, our progress and our prosperity, we should not for-
get that had there been no Europe there would be no great
American nation ; that all the courage that beats in the
blood of Columbia's imperial sons, and all the wondrous
beauty with which her daughters are dowered; that all
the tireless energy of which she proudly boasts, and all the
400 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
genius that gilds her name with glory were nurtured for a
thousand years at white bosoms beyond the ocean's brine.
The American nation is the fair flower of European civ-
ilization, the petted child of the world's old age. Princes
may be jealous of her progress and tyrants read in her rise
their own downfall; but the great heart of the people of
every land and clime is hers; to her they turn their faces
as the helianthus to the rising sun, she is their beacon
light, their star of hope, guiding them to the glories of a
grander day.
It is natural, it is right that on the nation's natal day we
should felicitate ourselves on the sacred privileges we en-
joy should pay the tribute of our respect to those whose
courage crowned us with sovereignty and made us masters
of our fate ; but we should not, as too often happens, make
it the occasion for senseless bravado and foolish bluster.
We should rather employ it to promote good will among
the nations of the earth, to link together in a kindlier broth-
erhood the various families of the great Caucasian race,
to beat the barbarous sword into peaceful plowshares and
forever banish strife.
I sometimes dream that God has, in his mercy, raised this
nation up unto the world's salvation, the immediate in-
strument of His grace to usher in that age of gold,
"When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are
furled,
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."
I delight to trace in the rise and fall of nations the finger
of God, and strive to read the Almighty's plan in the his-
toric page. In the farthest east appeared the first faint light
of civilization's dawn, and westward ever since the star
of empire hath ta'en its way, while each succeeding nation
that rose in its luminous paths like flowers in the footsteps
of our dear Lord, has reached a higher plane and wrought
out a grander destiny. The cycle is complete the star
now blazes in the world's extreme west, and by the law of
progress which has preserved for forty centuries, here if
anywhere, must we look for that millennial dawn of which
poets have fondly dreamed and for which philanthropists
have prayed.
The awful responsibility of leadership rests upon us. We
have shattered the scepter of the tyrant and broken the
shackles of the slave; we have torn the diadem from the
prince's brow and placed the fasces of authority in the
hands of the people ; we have undertaken to lead the human
race from the Slough of Despond to the Delectable Moun-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 401
tains, where Justice reigns supreme and every son of Adam
may find life worth living. Can we make good our glorious
promises ? Are we equal to the task to which we have given
our hand? Ten thousand times the world has asked this
question, but there is neither Dodona Oak nor Delphic
Oracle to make reply the future alone can answer. All
eyes are upon us, in hope or fear, in prayer or protest. The
fierce light that beats upon a throne were as the firefly's dull
flame to the lightning's flash compared with that which
illumes the every act of this champion of human progress,
this knight par excellence, this Moses of the nations.
It is an important role which God hath assigned to us
in the great drama of life, yet into a part so pregnant with
fate we too often inject the levity of the farce. While
preaching equal rights to all and special privileges to none,
we pass laws that divide the people of this land into princes
and paupers, into masters and slaves. On July 4 we shout
for the old flag, and all the rest of the year we clamor for
an appropriation. While boasting that we are sovereigns
by right divine and equal unto kings, we hasten to lay our
hair beneath the feet of every scorbutic dude who hither
drifts,
"Stuck o'er with titles and hung around with strings."
The soldier who serves the state demands a pension,
and every burning patriot wants an office. We boast that
the people rule, and office-holders are but public servants;
yet more than a moiety of us would hang our crowns on
a hickory limb and swim a river to break into official bond-
age. Here in Texas seven distinguished citizens are already
chasing the governorship like a pack of hungry wolves
after a wounded fawn, while the woods are full of brunette
equines who have taken for their motto,
"They also serve who only stand and wait."
Yes, our office-holders are indeed our public servants
and my experience with servants has been that they usually
run the whole shebang.
Theoretically we have the best government on the globe,
but it is so brutally mismanaged by our blessed public ser-
vants that it produces the same evil conditions that have
damned the worst. Even Americans whose forefathers
dined on faith at yalley Forge, or fought at Lundy's Lane,
have become so discouraged by political bossism, so heart-
402 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
sick with hope deferred that they quote approvingly those
lines of Pope,
"For forms of government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administered is best."
While boasting of popular government, we suffer our-
selves to be led about by self-seeking politicians like a
blind man by a scurvy poodle; we have made partisanship
paramount to patriotism have reserved the poet's line, and
now
"All are for a party and none are for the state."
It were well for us to make July 4 less an occasion
for self-glorification than for prayerful consideration of the
dangers upon which we are drifting in these piping times
of peace dangers that, arise, not in foreign courts and
camps, but are conceived in sin by the American plu-
tocracy and brought forth in iniquity by our own political
bosses. We have no longer aught to fear from the out-
side world. Uncle Sam can, if need be, marshal forth to
battle eight million as intrepid sons as those who crowned
old Bunker Hill with flame or bathed the crests of Get-
tysburg with blood. Upon such a wall of oak and iron
the powers of the majestic world would beat in vain. Our
altars and our fanes are far beyond the reach of a foreign
foe ; but the rock that recks not the thunderbolt nor bows
to the fierce simoon, is swept from its base by the uncon-
sidered brook.
No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach ; no
country can be secure, I care not if Moses make its con-
stitution and Solon frame its laws, when half its people
are homeless and brawny giants must beg their bread. As
far back as history's dawn the rise of the plutocracy and the
impoverishment of the common people have heralded the
downfall of the state. Thus fell imperial Rome, that once
did rule the world, and Need and Greed are the ballistae
and battering-rams that are pounding to-day with tremen-
dous power upon every throne of Europe and rocking the
very civilization of the world from turret to foundation
stone.
We have achieved liberty, but have yet to learn in this
strange new land the true significance of life. We have
made the dollar the god of our idolatry, the Alpha and
Omega of our existence, and bow the knee to it with a
servility as abject as that of courtiers kissing the hand of
Kings. As trie old pagans sometimes incorporated their
lesser in their greater deities that they might worship all
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 403
at once, so have we put the Goddess of Liberty and Saving
Grace on the silver dollar that we may not forget them.
But before God, I do believe that this selfish, this Mam-
mon-serving and unpatriotic age will pass, as passed the age
of brutish ignorance, as passed the age of tyranny. I be-
lieve the day will come oh blessed dawn ! when we'll no
longer place the badge of party servitude above the crown
of American sovereignty, the ridiculous oriflamme of fool-
ish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of
everlasting unity ; when Americans will be in spirit and in
truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the concern of
all; when brains and patriotism will take precedence of
boodle and partisanship in our national politics ; when labor
will no longer fear the cormorant nor capital the commune ;
when every worthy and industrious citizen may spend his
declining days, not in some charity ward, but in the grateful
shadow of his own vine and fig-tree, the loving lord of a
little world hemmed in by the sacred circle of a home.
There was a time, we're told, when to be a Roman was
greater than to be a King ; yet there came a time when to
be a Roman was to be the vassal of a slave. Change is the
order of the universe and nothing stands. We must go
forward or we must go backward we must press on to
grander heights, to greater glories, or see the laurels al-
ready won turn to ashes on our brow. We may sometimes
slip ; shadows may obscure our path ; the boulders may
bruise our feet ; there may be months of mourning and days
of agony ; but however dark the night, Hope, a poising
eagle, will ever burn above the unrisen morrow. Trials we
may have and tribulations sore; but I say unto you, oh
brothers mine, that while God reigns and the human race
endures, this nation, born of our father's blood and sancti-
fied by our mother's tears, shall never pass away.
OUR AMERICAN CZARS.
INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY vs. POLITICAL DEGRADATION.
It cost forty million dollars to indulge in the ridiculous
mummery of crowning a man, who, for nearly two years
had been universally recognized as Czar of all the Russias.
That enormous amount of wealth was wasted in two weeks
to gratify the pitiful vanity of a miserable mortal whom
accident of birth had made sovereign of a poverty-stricken
and semi-savage people. An attempt to feed the famished
404 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
wretches who had gathered to witness the barbaric pageant,
paid for with money wrung from their own thin purses
by an iron hand, causing a stampede in which thousands
were killed and other thousands crippled. Imagine a
slaughtered ox cast among half a million hungry wolves,
and you get an idea of what occurred beneath the
glistening windows of Petrovsky Palace. It was a bread-
riot, a fight for food participated in by hundreds of thou-
sands of starving people of every age and sex, while wealth
was being poured out like water by one who, ablaze with
thousands of costly baubles, was solemnly proclaimed their
divinely ordained guide, philosopher and friend the father
of a nation and defender of the faith ! All the so-called
Christian countries participated in this foolish farce, this
essence of criminal idiocy, this crime against man and
offense to God; yet if a man who gives half his honest
earnings to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, lets slip
an honest oath or dares to doubt that plunging a moral
leper into a frog-pond with thaumaturgic incantations will
purify his soul will cause legions of white-robed angels
to go chortling up and down the sapphire hills of heaven
to the music of golden harps, while the Creator of the Cos-
mos makes holiday these same Christian nations rear up
on their hind legs, wildly wave their ears and bray forth
their hysterical horror! When news of the terrible catas-
trophe was carried to the Czar "he wept." Whether he
used his million dollar crown as a tear- jug I do not know ;
but the dispatches state that as soon as he could stop the
lachrymose leaks "he danced!" Happy transition from
boisterous grief to ribald joy! A woman seven times wed-
ded could scarce have done so well ! The fete went gaily
on within the gorgeous palace, while the gaunt spectre of
famine and the grisly gorgon of Death kept watch and
ward without. Thus do extremes meet in merry Russia,
and variety adds spice to life in the court circles of the
Czar. Fortune's favorites tripped o'er cloth of gold and
gorged themselves with honey of Hymettus and apples of
Hesperides, while the gaunt peasants, who had fought like
beasts of prey for a morsel to allay Hunger's mad'ning
pangs, were piled high upon the plain. Within, all light
and life and joy ; without, all woe and wail. In the palace
the red wine gushed, precious beyond price; on the plain
a warmer tide was as freely poured as libations to the
demons of Darkness and Death. And above the maudlin
laughter of the bacchants and the pulsing sensuous music
that makes the blood to leap like flame, drowning the
groans of the wounded and the wailings for the dead,
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 405
rises the eternal cackle of the optimists that all is well-
that those who dare to doubt are either anarchists or pes-
simists with atribilarious livers.
The gorgeous palace and the blood soaked plain ah,
that is Russia, where some will waste while others want ;
where one is born to wield a sceptre and an hundred mil-
lions to be his beasts of burthen. How different in Amer-
ica where every man's a sovereign, and Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity triune transcendent ! sits enthroned. Is
it even so? Have we here no Palaces of Petrovsky and
plains of Khodijnskoje? No costly Kremlins and cheerless
cots? Have \ve no Czars to waste in foolish fetes and
bacchic orgies the wealth wrung from field and forest and
mine by toiling millions? none who drain into their groan-
ing coffers the people's earnings, then display their provi-
dence and gratify their pride by flinging an occasional
bone to those whose substance they have consumed. Have
there been no bread riots here ? no grasping by strong men 1
for charity doled out by idlers who earn not, yet whose
Avhite hands are bedecked with diamonds? And do not,
our Czars weep for very pity of the people's woes, then
dance prating meanwhile of the true faith, as tho' they
were crowned and sceptred? And do they not hold over
the toiling millions the power of life and death sending
them to the Ice Hell of Siberia at their good pleasure, there
to endure all the tortures of the damned? Five thousand
torn and trampled before Petrovsky Palace ! Why, 'tis not
the first time a crown has been baptized in blood not the
first hecatomb slain by the demon Hunger that Pride
might vaunt herself. Why should we stand aghast "when
the tragedy of a day is concentrated beneath the windows
of a palace instead of spread throughout an empire? Bar-|
barous indeed must Russia be to give her all to feed an
empty-headed emperor and his parasites, then fight for
food doled out by him as a keeper might feed a wolfish
pack of dogs! Why do not her people assert their man-
hood and say to the Romanoffs : "Thus far hast thou gone
in our despoilment, but here your hand is stayed; else will
we make a hen's nest of thy crown and cage thee up, even
as great Ivan did the conquered princes." Thus do we
vaunt our "American sovereignty" and talk turgid for-
getful of the fact that 10,000 children die every year in the
single city. of New York for want of food and medicine
that we have Czars of our own, against whom we have
406 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
not yet revolted ! The nearest we have come to it was
the march of Coxey's army and it kept off the grass.
Herod slew perhaps a hundred babes, and his crime be-
came one of the horrors of history. How easily people were
shocked in those old days of ignorance! Were he alive
to-day he might add a few thousand innocents a year to
his private graveyard without attracting the attention of
cither the police, the pulpit or the daily press. Old Dives
leaned back in his comfortable arm-chair, full of wine and
walnuts, neglected to offer Lazarus a hand-out, and was
sent to Hell; but that was before Talmage so revised the
plan of salvation that plutocrats go to heaven in Pullman
cars. Fortunes of five, ten, fifty, an hundred millions,
wealth beyond the dreams of Roman Consuls or Lydian
Kings, and a mighty multitude ever on starvation's brink
or over in this blessed land of Equality and Christ!
What think you? Are we not as much the slaves of our
Money Kings as the Russians to the Romanoffs ? Can you,
my brother artisan, exist without the gracious permission
of those who hold the purse-strings? Cannot Sir Plutus
say to thee, "Go starve in the highways and hedges," and
enforce obedience by the simple expedient of stopping your
weekly stipend depriving you of the privilege of produc-
ing? Are not our cities crowded with people as helpless
and hopeless as those who fought for food before the Pal-
ace of Petrovsky? Is not capital steadily concentrating,
becoming more powerful and pitiless ? True, "we do not here
in the South feel the blight of this plutocratic Czarship
much as yet; but it is creeping on like a social leprosy
our eleemosynary population becoming proportionately
larger as the number of our millionaires increases. Are
we not becoming Europeanized Russianized the work
already far advanced in the older states, where millions
crv, "You take my life when you take the means whereby
I live!"
Anarchist? Nay, hold thy peace. The enemy of order is
he that approves a system all whose tendencies are toward
a Reign of Terror. I am not inciting the groaning multi-
tude to "take up arms against a sea of troubles" at most,
not fire-arms. Blind indeed must be he who sees not that
the American masses are being slowly enslaved. Industrial
serfs they are already; political peons they are fast becom-
ing. Money is power, even in the realm of politics and
those possessing power will assuredly employ it. Have
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 407
we not even now our political as well as our industrial
"bosses" to whom we are expected to yield a blind obedi-
ence? Is it not notorious that Dives may secure the pas-
sage of any law by city council or United States senate
that his impudence demands? Has a single political plat-*
form been framed these five-and-twenty years, by any party
having a fighting chance to win, that was not moulded
and modified by his master hand to suit a selfish purpose?
Is it not a fact that this government is to-day an Oligarchy
rather than a Republic dominated by a coterie of pluto-
crats as surely as tho' they appointed both congress and
the cabinet? What then? Have we cause to vilipend the
miserable Russian people ? Shall the pot animadvert upon
the complexion of the kettle? Is it worse to be subjects
de jure than serfs de facto? Would our boasted American
sovereignty smell the worse by any other name? A rem-
edy? Why bless you! I am no Simon Magus, called to
renovate the world. If I do say that the Duke of Argyle
hath the itch, must I perforce, erect for him- a scratching-
post? that a city was swept by a destructive storm, am I
in duty bound to tame the tornado and make it turn a
mill ? Every man to his trade and I am a doctor of divin-
ity, not a doctor of laws.
* * *
It appears to me, however, that most of our economic
M. D/s now trying to tone up our industrial system, have
no conception of the gravity of the disease. They are at
fault in their diagnosis have mistaken a case of buck-
ague for a 'bad cold. The tariff and the currency prescrip-
tions were too much like giving a paralytic bread pills.
Commerce can adapt itself to almost any tariff conditions
and prosper if assured of their permanency. Commerce
makes 95 per cent of its exchange media, and could easily
and safely make it all if the politicians would but cease
their meretricious intermeddling. What then? Shall we
adopt the doctrine of laissez faire and let the world drift
fall back upon the physical law of the survival of the
fittest, and class as unfit and deserving extermination all
those who lack the necessary astucity to secure their own
just earnings and appropriate a portion of what rightfully
belongs to their equally industrious but less vulpine neigh-
bors ? Shall we accept the ip se dixit of Talmage that over-
grown fortunes are a blessing, because, forsooth, their
owners scmetimes build hospitals where we may go when
poisoned by the mephitic air of Trinity Church tenements;
or endow theological colleges where grown men are edu-
408 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
cated to sing- psalms, take up collections and beg the
widow's mite that they may live in luxury ? Shall we agree
with Pope that "whatever" is is right," no matter how
it hurts; or listen to the Lydian notes of Andrew Carnegie
as he warbles a riant roundelay in praise of poverty, or
laments in pathetic spondees the woes of the man with
spondulix ? Shall we take refuge in religion, admit that the
multiplication of millionaires and mendicants is a dispensa-
tion of that Providence which "ordereth all things well,"
and cease recalcitrating? That were indeed a satisfactory
solution of the problem so far as the plutocrats and polit-
ical Czars are concerned; but will the Samsons of Labor,
dimly conscious of his terrible strength, consent to accept
it and continue to grind the Philistinic corn of patience?
There's the rub? It was only the hope of obtaining relief
by this or the other catholicon that has kept himi quiet so
long. A man will suffer much when Hope whispers that
'tis not for long that on the morrow he will find surcease ;
but when his Star of Bethlehem is proven a wandering
comet, or even an ingnis fatuus born of putrid brains, and
leading him deeper into the bog what then? For years
the politico-economic doctors have been bamboozling him
with the faith-cure folly. When the tariff was low: and times
hard they told him that by raising it they would make
things right. It was raised, and Jordan's road became even
more rocky. They told him that the high tariff iniquity
was playing Old Man of the Sea to his industrial Sinbad
that when lowered the very mesquite bushes would grow
baked apples and the song of contentment be heard in the
land. It was lowered, and forthwith the country was filled
with idle men, while banks and business houses popped like
painted bladders. Now the tariff is to be shoved up once
more. Labor is again preparing to enter an industrial
Eden McKinley is a new Moses who is to lead it into a
land flowing with milk and honey, where the cry of "hard
times" will be forever hushed. The same pitiful farce has
been played with the currency gold, silver and green-
backs have been in turn the star of all our hopes and the
author of all our ills. How long will Labor submit to this
miserable hocus-pocus on the part of politicians whose
shibboleth is "pie?" And when aweary of saltatating from
,tweedledum to tweedledee and back again; when tired
of turning one wretched set of rascals out to turn one even
more rapacious in ; when hope deferred maketh the heart
sick, what will happen? \Vill the people, impoverished
and broken in spirit, sink into abject slavery, or rise in
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 409
bloody rebellion against their bosses? Until one of these
two things happens ; until we either become completely
Russianized, or rally to the standard of some immortal ass
like Coxey, and, by sheer brute force wreck the very
foundations of society, we will continue to speculate upon
the cause of our industrial ills and seek a remedy.
* * *
We have the most fruitful land upon which the sunlight
faMs, the richest in natural resources. It could support
six times its present population in comfort aye, in lux-
ury ; yet thousands of those already here cannot wring
from the soil life's bare necessities. So much is univer-
sally conceded, and we need go no further for demonstra-
tion that there's something radically wrong. What is it?
Let the cumulative wisdom of the country ansAver. Tal-
leyrand has told us that "Everybody is wiser than any-
body," a fact confirmed by the woeful failure of single-
handed industrial "reformers!" When ill it is a step to-
ward recovery to learn what ails us. When the industrial
machine is out of gear we should ascertain beyond the
peradventure of a doubt what put it so. Regarding the
"issues" now occupying the busy politicians, there are a
multitude of opinions. An ounce of observation is worth
a smoke-house full of theory. We meet few idle men who
can trace their loss of employment to high or low tariff,
or changes in the currency; but everywhere we meet
those who were "let out" by the introduction of labor-
saving devices. The invention of typesetting machines
flooded the land with idle printers, who were accustomed
to earn from $20 to $30 a week at the case. Few of them
were fit for anything else. They invaded the job and
country offices and the fierce competition for employment
reduced wages. During the past decade a majority of
trades have had a similar experience. Vast armies of
high-priced workmen have been pauperized, have suffered
a tremendous reduction in their purchasing power. The
butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, dependent
upon the trade of these men, reduced the number of their
employes, thus affecting in turn other tradesmen. This
meant decreased consumption, and a decline in the prices
of products of farm and mine and factory. Under such
conditions manufacturers conspired to keep up prices by
limiting production, and, while protecting themselves, pre-
cipitate the ruin of others ; banks curtail their credits, and
we have an era of hard times, entailing that lack of con-
fidence which so easily becomes a panic. So complex is
410 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the industrial machine, so interdependent are all its parts,
that the farmer in Kansas and the planter in Texas are
affected more or less by a decrease in the purchasing
power of the spinners of Lowell or the hodcarriers of New
York. We are continually assured by the spokesmen for
the plutocracy that all is well ; that wages have risen
somewhat in the past twenty years and the standard of
living advanced. What boots it what the average wage-
rate may be to the man who cannot obtain an opportunity
to earn his board? Wages have not risen, the standard
of living has not advanced in equal ratio with the work-
man's ability to create wealth. That will explain the
glaring inequalities which exist in a country of so-called
equality. Nor is this the worst phase of the matter: Be-
fore the introduction of costly labor-saving machines
every mechanic was practically his own master; now he
is another's man, dependent upon his good will for em-
ployment at any price. His independence, his sovereignty
is gone, and he must stand, hat in hand, before the indus-
trial czar and humbly beg permission to produce. Capital
is the child of labor, but the creature hath become lord
of its creator. It were idle to decry labor-saving appli-
ances. The sole object of toil is the production of wealth,
and whatever enhances man's productive power is, by
itself considered, a blessing. The trouble is that the
felicity falls with unequal incidence; that, for the slight
addition to the workman's wage, he must yield his free-
dom is transformed from a social entity into a mere
factor in the great industrial machine, utterly useless
when out of place. A mighty force has been evolved by
the genius of man, which he is not yet competent to
properly control. When the car of progress was pro-
pelled by mule power 'twere easy to keep pace with the
procession; but when steam and electricity were applied,
the industrial masses became demoralized. In other
words, the work-a-day world could not promptly adapt
itself to the new conditions. Skilled mechanics awoke
to find their trades obsolete, their chosen occupation
gone, themselves as helpless as a watchmaker among
savages or a plainsman in a great city. As man's power
to produce life's necessaries is enhanced, his surplus
energy expends itself in the creation of luxuries the
standard of living advances; but this power has multi-
plied beneath the magic wand of genius faster than re-
adjustment of forces were possible. Men cling desper-
ately to their old occupations, and become pauperized. If
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 411
we could pause awhile matters might adjust themselves;
but the Car of Progress rolls ever faster and faster &
veritable Juggernaut to millions. The division and sub-
division of labor goes ever on industrial conditions
change with the rapidity of the kaleidoscope. If, in Queen
Elizabeth's time, it took nine tailors to make a man, it
now requires a score of workmen to make a complete
mechanic. A man must be a specialist, else a vagabond
and to-morrow his specialty may have become a thing
of the past. It is not lack of available land, not the "tariff
atrocities" or "the crime of '73" that is reducing our erst-
while independent working people to the level of serfs
and entailing starvation in a land of plenty ; it is the evil
inherent in change, the price we are paying for our
vaunted Progress; it is the subjection of the many to the
grasping few by the inability of the former to produce
independently. The aggregate of wealth increases, but
is monopolized by those astute enough to anticipate these
industrial climaxes and financially able to take advan-
tage thereof. Yet we talk of equalizing advantages by a
change in the tariff or currency, by the elevation of this
or the other blatant ass to office? What are we going
to do about it? Why, we are going to keep right on con-
cocting idiotic political "issues" plastering corns to cure
cramp colic until something breaks. That's what we
will do ; what we should do is a very different matter. Go
ask the small-bore attorney who's running for Congress
because he cannot obtain a paying practice ; he can tell
you exactly what to do to be saved nay, will do the
business for you if you but give him an opportunity to
draw $5,000 per annum and clerk hire for distributing
pumpkin seeds and post-offices. Just touch the ballot box
button and he will do the rest.
We know full well that no man ever honestly earned a.
million dollars. The individual is unable to create such
an enormous amount of wealth. If he possesses that sum
it is plain that in some way he has managed to put his
fingers in his neighbor's pockets. What then must we
say of those who accumulate fortunes of fifty millions in
one brief lifetime? What of those who inherit a talent
from ancestors and, without producing so much as a shoe
peg, transform it into ten? We realize that the wealth
of this world should belong to those who produce it, not
to impudent idlers. We know that in a country whose
wonderful resources have been scarce touched there
should be an opportunity for every man able and willing
412 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
to work. All freely concede that, with his present wealth-
producing capacity, the laborer should be to a large de-
gree absolved from "the primal eldest curse" be able to
win a competence and at the same time have abundant
leisure for the improvement of his mind and cultivation
of the social graces. Thus far we are all agreed ; but fur-
ther will not consent to go together. Here the broad
pathway divides into a multitude of tortuous paths all
leading into the same inane limboes. When we ask a
remedy for our ills industrial a thousand Cagliostros
deafen us with their clamor; we pull in different direc-
tions fetching up finally at the free soup-house. If we
cannot as yet determine who is in the right, we may, by
a little ratiocination, decide who is in the wrong, and that
were no inconsiderable gain. Next in value to knowing
how to do a thing is knowing how not to do it. Reason
should advise us that a worse enemy to labor and society
at large than even the most grasping plutocrat is the
damphool empiric who would reconstruct our entire in-
dustrial system in a day. Experience has taught us that
revolutions do not go backward that the old-world days
of communism and public ownership of land are forever
dead ; that attempts to revive customs once generally dis-
carded can meet with no permanent success. Common-
sense proclaims that government cannot enrich us; that
it is our dependent, not our patron that it can only ad-
vance the fortune of one at the expense of all. We know
from observation that it matters little what political party
is in power that each has its complement of patriots and
place-warmers, philosophers and fools. The problem be-
fore us is the combination of the productive power of the
new industrial system with the individual independence
and just distribution of the old to secure to each the full
usufruct af his labor under conditions consistent with the
most advantageous application of physical energy. It is
not an easy problem not one that can be solved off-hand
by a congeries of noisy demagogues and ward-heelers
calling itself a national convention and prating idly of
economic principles; yet in its solution lies our salvation.
It is the riddle propounded to us by the sphinx of Time,
which not to read is to be destroyed; yet no CEdipus
makes answer. Until there is some adjustment on com-
mon-sense lines conditions will go from bad to worse,
for the simple reason that it is cheaper to produce on a
large than on a small scale. Our large manufactories are
absorbing or destroying the lesser ; the great mercantile
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 413
establishments are crushing out the small tradesmen
agriculture is tending to the colossal. This is inevitable,
is the very breath in the nostrils of Progress; but it ren-
ders Dives more powerful and Lazarus the more depend-
ent. Like Doedalus, we have soared so near the sun that
the wax has melted on our wings. How to continue our
flight and avoid a catastrophe is the problem of prob-
lems. Perchance next month I will offer, not a heaven-
inspired panacea, but simply a few suggestions if I can
persuade myself that mediocrity may make itself heard
amid the megalophanous bawling of so many who know
it all. We must remember, however, that the united ef-
forts of Solon, Lycurgus and Sam Jones were incapable
of dragging the millennium in by the ears. McKinley
may give us an "age of gold/' but scarce a Saturnian
epocha. The wisest economic coryphei are powerless to
banish poverty and want from the world. Just so long
as men are born unequal in body, mind and ambition ;
just so long as commerce and industry exist upon the
earth, the palace will proudly rear its fluted columns
while Hunger shivers in the lowly cot. The capable and
provident will succeed, while the incapable and wasteful
go to the wall and this despite all panaceas of the poli-
ticians. We must remember that any system which with-
holds from genius and industry their just reward and
bestows it upon folly and sloth, or makes the people the
wards of the State transfers them from an industrial to
a political czar were infinitely worse than the one under
which we live ; that when we have given to all equal op-
portunities and assured the full usufruct of their endeavor
we have discharged our full duty to society and our-
selves. Put all American citizens on an industrial parity,
then let them work out their own salvation. That's the
idea.
AN OLD MAIDS' AUCTION.
No more will precocious infants convulse their auditors
at school exhibitions by lisping that almost painfully hu-
morous "piece" entitled, The Bachelor's Auction. No more
will they stand before us in all their uncomfortable cleanli-
ness and astound fond parents and admiring friends by dron-
ing forth,
"Here's an old bachelor, who wants to buy?
A hundred old maids make answer, 'I/ 'I!'
And all the old maids, some younger, some older,
Each lugged an old bachelor home on her shoulder."
414 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
The times change, and we change with them. I have
before me a scorched banana hand-bill advertising an ''Auc-
tion of Old Maids," under the highly respectable auspices
of the Ladies' Aid Society of the Christian Church, Lam-
pasas, Texas. From this remarkable flyer I copy the fol-
lowing :
"No bids entertained for less than 25 cents nor more
than 50 cents. Each purchaser of an old maid is entitled
to two saucers of ice cream. Now is your chance !" I
should suggest ! A nice, kittenish old maid at two to four
bits, according to the bidding, and a brace of iron-stone
china saucers of the best home-brewed ice cream thrown
in as lagniappe! Why didn't the Ladies' Aid Society ad-
vise me before it was everlastingly too late ? I would have
taken the entire lot. Lapped in the oleiferous luxury of
country cream, and surrounded by devoted damosels whose
charm, like wine, has improved with age, I would find
life well worth the living would plead with the fleeting
moment in the words of Faust, "Stay, thou art so fair!"
Or I could have colonized my fair Florimels in female suf-
frage Kansas and re-sold 'em to Mark Hanna at a profit of
300 per cent. Ah me! there be "tides in the affairs of
men, which, taken at the flood, lead on to fortune;" but
ever does the Argos sail for the Golden Fleece ere I can gel
afloat. One does not have an opportunity every day to
serve the Lord by wallowing in the fragrance of faded
flowers, contemplating ancient paintings and absorbing
sweetened frost. If the Ladies' Aid Society has any more
old maids left, whom they can recommend as suitable com-
panions for a middle-aged but uxorious Baptist minister,
they may ship, C. O. D., a dozen or so, assorted. 'S'matter
with Lampasas as an old maids' market, that they are sold
for a song and mock-birds supplied to sing it? Has the
boom collapsed, or is the town overrun by enterprising
widows who crowd their inexperienced sisters to the wall?
Think of a woman, whose charms have grown mellow
'neath two score summer suns, standing on the auction
block "in maiden meditation fancy free" and peering from
behind her fan into the upturned faces of creation's al-
leged lords, while a stentor-lunged salesman offers her for
the price of an aitch-bone or boarding house hen ! Im-
agine the unfeeling huckster of a virgin heart dilating upon
an ice cream dower and all for a quarter-of-a-dollar. O
manhood, where is thy blush ! O chivalry, where thy shame !
A toothless picaninny of the Waco Baptist breed would
have brought more in ante-bellum times, What disposi-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 415
tion the reckless purchasers made of their property I am not
advised. Had the sale occurred in Constantinople the an-
swer were easy; but the purchases may have been made
in Lampasas solely on account of the cream. Selling ladies
at auction in the name of the Lord is not a custom peculiar
to Lampasas. Last April; the Epworth Leaguers, at Suf-
fern, N. Y., disposed of a number of females at public out-
cry to the highest bidder, and, to fire the callow heart of
youth into religious fervor, hit upon the happy expedient
of concealing their faces and allowing prospective pur-
chasers to examine their legs. Whether the Ladies' Aid
Society of Lampasas profited by this plan, I have not learned.
If they did not, they are by no means up to date it being
so much easier to round out with sawdust the "hose a
world too large for the shrunk shank," than to recall the
lilies and roses of auld lang syne. The fact, however,
that small bids were cheerfully received and large ones not
expected that the sacred game was played with a two-bit
ante and 50 cent limit argues that they entered a caveat
cmptor by recklessly exposing the faces of those brought to
the block. That is some consolation; still, the Iconoclast,
as court of last resort in matters religious the Phillipe
de Mornay of Protestantism cannot sanction the sale of
maids of whatsoever age at auction no matter what portion
of their anatomy be submitted for public inspection. It has
granted indulgences to a few churches, in sore financial dis-
tress, to sell kisses to the public at a fixed price, but it must
place sacred leg-shows under the ban, even where the pet-
ticoat reaches as low as the knee, the high-water mark of
the Epworth Leaguers. It must anathematize the sale of
old maids, as too suggestive of the devil's auctions held in
days agone in Chicago's variety dives. It feels constrained
to admonish the Epworth Leaguers and Ladies' Aid So-
cieties that infraction of this interdict will result in excom-
munication. Ministers finding their parishioners actuated
by abnormal zeal untempered with judgment, will read this
rescript from their pulpits for three consecutive Sundays.
The Iconoclast humbly hopes that no irreparable injury has
yet been wrought to morality by those whose religious ardor
has caused them to ignore social ordinances and indulge in
aesthetic heresies who have embraced the dangerous doc-
trine that the end or even both ends justifies the means ;
but it must consider the future and estimate the evils that
are likely to flow from this growing tendency on the part
of the church to compete with the devil in this particular
province. Having once resorted to money-raising expedients
416 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
which render religion ridiculous, if not disreputable ; having
begun with grab-bags, raffles, cake-rings and other cut-
throat gambling devices, and already gotten so far as the
sacred kissing bee and sanctified leg show, where would
misguided zeal lead these gnat-straining, camel-swallowers
did not the Iconoclast blast with its anathema this evil in
the bud? As man became sated with one appeal to his
animalism they would have to resort to others even more
risque to tempt his jaded appetite, until even the obscene
orgies of ancient phallic worship were revived, and Sam
Jones' open-sewer sermons and Sid Williams' guano meta-
phors considered affectedly euphemistic. Because the devil
fishes for saints with an old sun-bonnet, we are not privi-
leged to bait our hook with fancy hosiery in a frantic at-
tempt to land a few sinners. Aside from questions of pro-
priety, appeals to pruriency by the goldly seldom pay. Sell-
ing kisses in the name of Christ no longer appeals to
this aesthetic people. It has learned by experience that a
kiss snatched in public from lips defiled with the saliva of
beery bums and "terbacker chawin" deacons, does not create
the ecstatic deliration of the "lingering sweetness long drawn
out" when you have a monopoly of the business beneath
a harvest moon does not make the blood to dance and the
soul to swoon like a yum-yum snap behind the parlor door.
Even the reflection that you are doing your Christian duty
does not sweeten the disagreeable dose. Besides, the doc-
tors of medicine have decided that a young woman's buss-
ing machine should be carefully deodorized every time she
changes fellows, to discourage mumps, measles and cholera-
morbus bacteria. When I absorb my two-bits' worth of
sanctified honey-dew I examine the front elevation of the
sacrificial virgin for a spot where the drug-store bloom
retains its pristine brightness. If it has been all swiped off
by enthusiastic elders, I draw her head tenderly but firmly
down until her sunny bangs nestle on my heaving brisket,
plant my apostolic imprint on the back of her snowy neck
and make a break for the open air, thanking the Lord at
every leap that I have both saved my soul and preserved
my life. The sacred leg-show is likewise becoming stale,
flat and pecuniarily unprofitable since the advent of bikes and
bloomers. When one can get a surfeit of all kinds, classes
and conditions of legs by simply lingering on the corner,
he will not unless he be a holiness camp-meeting neophyte
cough up much cash for the privilege of gazing at a lot of
splay feet that would frighten the Salvation Army, a con-
geries of misshapen bandy-shanks that would give a staere-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 417
manager the nightmare and drive a poet to drink. An old
maids' auction even with two plates of cream added to
every chromo is not calculated to make the average man
empty his pockets into the coffers of Israel. Of course the
godly might resort to bust exhibitions and bare-back auc-
tions; but they would encounter disastrous competition in
the popular bathing resorts and fashionable ball-rooms.
What else have they to offer in their attempt to beat the
devil at his own game to make the church as attractive
to worldlings as a Five Points' variety dive?
"THE WEDDING OF THE SEASON."
It occurred in St. Louis, August 12, at exactly 5 o'clock,
p. m.; at least it was advertised several thousand dollars'
worth to take place at that time, and we may presume
that it was successfully pulled off, as there was no apparent
reason for police interference. The Republic gave it a full-
page "spread" evidently via the business office as ad-
vance notice, and said absolutely nothing about it on the
day following the nuptial date. Having put up so hand-
somely for advance advertising, "the high contracting par-
ties" doubtless supposed they would be given at least a col-
umn puff after the agony was over, but were doomed to
disappointment. But if the Republic failed to throw in any
post-nuptial lagniappe, it at least did its contract work well
made its write-up of this conspiracy against single bless-
edness as interesting as any laundry soap epic or soasyou-
dont romaunt I have yet seen. It led off with a half-tone
pine-board portrait of the loving pair holding up a rustic
fence and spooning with the unconstrained enthusiasm of
'Arry and 'is 'Arriet. The bride-elect is gazing out into the
gloom with a whither-am-I-drifting expression, while her
fiance peers into her face with the hungry look of a Weary
Waggles regarding a hot wienerwurst. Next on the page
we have a full-length portrait of the woman in the case
as she appears when about to have her photograph taken,
while to her right is a jackknife sketch of her fellow suf-
ferer, apparently wondering whether he had best do the
deed or take to the woods. Sandwiched in among fac-
similes of wedding cards, gorgeous gowns and music "con>-
posed for the memorable event," are several columns of
information concerninig the people whose agreement to
occupy the same sheets is supposed to be of international
418 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
importance. They are a Miss Marie Garesche, daughter of
William A. Garesche, a St. Louis attorney of whom I had
not hitherto heard, and a certain young man who enhances
his personal pulchritude by putting his moustache up on
curl papers, preserves his mental equipoise by parting his
hair at the equator, and is growing somewhat bowlegged
beneath the ponderous title of Count Vincent des Rioux
de Messimy. He clerks in the St. Louis branch of a New
York jobbing concern and is known to his intimes as
"Messy." The Republic describes him as "a handsome
gentleman with the most engaging manners;" but an "ad
man" with a fat contract to fill, always sidetracks his con-
science. The portrait of this prize beaut suggests a French
barber struggling with the glad surprise of a ten-cent tip.
His affianced is described as ''a dainty creature, petite in
stature, a blonde of the purest type, with large blue-gray
eyes and delicately chiseled features;" but the artist makes
a vigorous minority report. The portrait which I sin-
cerely hope does Miss Garesche rank injustice makes her
dish-faced as a new moon, with nose like a seed-wart, weak
mouth, soup-ladle chin and a smirk calculated to frighten
anything but a French count sorely in need of cash. Mis-
takes will happen, and it is possible that in the rush and
hurry incident to the occasion Papa Garesche gave the
Republic's "ad man" photos of Marie's Norwegian maid
and seme becurled bargain-counter "mash;" or, in making
up the forms, the foreman may have transposed the por-
traits of the happy pair and those intended for the freak
page.
The pedigree of the young lady is given from prehistoric
times, and from it we gather that she, too, is of blooded
stock that "from a long and noble ancestry, and success-
ive infusions of the bluest blood," has sprung this fairest
of the flowers. "The Garesche family traces its origin to
the early epochs of the primitive Celts of druidical mem-
ory!" just how it manages all this, doesn't particularly
rratter; but it is evident that its genealogical tree is a verit-
able Ygdrasyl, and probably antedates Adam by several
centuries. Carlyle has given us a pen-picture of "the early
epochs of the primitive Celts," in his Sartor Resartus
refers to Col. Garesche's distinguished ancestors as a "sav-
age, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which
with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round
him like a matted cloak ; the rest of his body sheeted in its
natural fell a flint-hurling, aboriginal anthropophagus!"
But the Garesches progressed gradually from the primitive
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 419
to the polite. In the course of some ages they acquired
the gentle art of weaving and wearing breechclouts, and
eventually became "members of the Huguenot nobility of
France."
It is important to note that "Jean Garesche, great-grand-
uncle of the bride's grandfather, died at Nieul in 1754."
Poor old man! He didn't have a title, but he may have
had a tape worm or a w r en. Anyhow, he's dead died be-
fore witnessing the crowning glory of the Garesche family,
the purchase of a whole page of slop in the St. Louis
Republic. Ah me! In the midst of life we are in death,
and no man knoweth what kind of chronic jackassi his
great grand-nephew will v beget. A grand something-or-
other of Col. Garesche is listed as "taking an active part
against the oppressive decrees of the revolutionary pow-
ers." They appear to have been very active indeed. He
fled from San Domingo to France to save his life, and when
the revolutionists there began to shoot recklessly he
skipped over to the United States. The French royalists
were at that time great skippers, and close in their foam-
ing wake was usually to be found the patriot tri-color of
France and a Tillmanic pitchfork. Vital Marie Garesche,
grand-father of William A., was given a petty job in the
government land office and assigned to St. Louis. He ap-
pears to have laid the foundation of the family fortune by
filing a homestead claim on what is now a portion of the city.
In the course of time he was elected to the city council
and the rest was dead easy. He found time, however,
despite his onerous aldermanic duties in the then insig-
nificant city, to beget sons and daughters. One of these
sons, of whom we hear little in the biographical sketch,
begat "William A. Garesche, the lovely girl's father, who
will give her in marriage to a nobleman of equally proud
lineage!" (Will somebody please 'phone to the Southern
Hotel bar to send over a Joe Rickey cocktail, with seltzer
on the side? Thanks!) How nice the marriage, I mean.
Col. Garesche is a forty-second cousin to various titled
Frenchmen who cannot at present realize on their patents of
nobility, Gallic coats-of-arms being quoted on the Bourse as
on a par with Confederate bonds. Just what the down-
trodden French noblemen are doing to earn a living while
the republic laughs at their pretended rights of robbery, the
biographer of the Garesche family does not inform us.
But we need not borrow trouble genuine French noble-
men can always find employment. They make the best of
barbers, the most obsequious of waiters, while as cooks
420 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
they defy competition. They possess a native delicacy of
touch, a refinement of feeling, and an appreciation of the
eternal verities of art that render them incomparable in
the depilation of a tender face or the manipulation of a
souffle. Take away our French counts and Italian princes
and the American sybarite would suffer.
A few commonplace Morrisons and plebeian Browns have
managed to intermingle their proletarian blood with the
divine ichor which pulses in the veins of Miss Garesche;
but as "pa" has boodle to throw at the birds, this misfor-
tune may be forgiven, if not forgotten. Not much is said
about the bridegroom's pedigree; but we are led to infer
that, tucked away in some cosy corner of la Belle France,
his "ancestral castle," rears its proud battlements. He
couldn't be expected to bring both his title and his castle
to this country it might disturb the world's equilibrium.
The "ad man" of the Republic who is something of an
artist at "slinging the soup" manages to weave a very
pretty romance around this blue-blooded Venus and
Adonis, whose union constitutes "the wedding of the sea-
son" makes even the hymenic torch that welded the Marl-
borough title to the Vanderbilt millions, and the costly
pyrotechnics of Count Castellane, pale their ineffectual
fires. It appears that about a decade ago, when Miss
Garesche was by her own arithmetic of almost mar-
riageable age, her father occupied a government position
in keeping with the dignity of a man who traces this "proud
lineage" back to an unbroken line through Huguenot nobles
to the "primitive Celts." He was United States consul to
Martinique, a West India island fully equal in area and
importance to that of which the city council of Galveston
once appointed "Sandy" Musgrove governor. It is well
nigh as large as a South Texas melon patch, and an equal
number of niggers may be found in it on any moonlight
night. His duties consisted in displaying the American
flag on July Fourth and Washington's birthday, drawing
his salary and taking his siestas. Count Vincent des Rioux
de, etc., had some relatives perched on that insignificant
knob, which, for some reason, protrudes itself out of the
waters of the neo-tropics, and while swinging around in
search of a situation, he placed them under tribute for a
few days' fodder. He couldn't very well turn around to
spit in the narrow confines of Martinique without meeting
the American consul. They were kindred spirits one the
calyx, the other the corolla of the fragrant genealogical
flower. They compared their "proud lineages" and found
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 421
them to be on a parity. The bogus count called on the
opera-bouffe consul. There "he saw a fairy child with
large blue eyes and a bewitchingly tender mouth. The chit
of a girl (about 14) said, 'How do you do?' and "Good
afternoon,' with inimitable grace." After a careful study
of what the Republic calls her portrait, I am surprised that
she didn't add that Polly wanted a cracker; but perhaps
we should not expect abnormal precocity of children han-
dicapped with noble pedigrees. Her "How do you do,"
seems, however, to have knocked the impressionable count
clear off the Christmas tree, for we are assured that "when-
ever the young man put aside the stern realities of life he
closed his eyes and dreamed of the little girl in the far-
away West Indies." In other words, when the shop was
closed for the day, the blinds drawn down, the cuspidore
cleaned, the sawdust swept up and his lingering eternity
of a title carefully polished joint by joint and stood up in
the corner, his wits would go a wool-gathering and won-
der how much "dust" old man Garesche had got. A new
president was elected, "the rascals were turned out" as
usual and William A. Garesche, with the public udder
remorselessly pulled out of him,, returned to St. Louis and
resumed the burdens of life. Six years later Count Vincent
des, etc., also drifted to the Cyclone City. He once more
heard the magic name of Garesche, and probably think-
ing he might be invited to stay to dinner put in an ap-
pearance. The girl had forgotten him in the effort to add
a few more phrases to her vocabulary. Finding the old man
to be financially well fixed, Messimy laid siege to the heart
of Miss Marie, and after three long years of importunity
the belle of many seasons surrendered. How glad we
should all be that the St. Louis breed is to be improved,
that the "blue blood" of the Garesches, traced to the primi-
tive anthropophagi, will not be further corrupted by admix-
ture with that of plebeian Browns, but brought back by
easy stages to that pristine purity when every daughter of
the distinguished house was sired by a "primitive Celt"
and dammed by dame of high degree! Happy Garesches!
Ecstatic Messimy of the vestibule train title! How pretty
it is to see William A. whose grandfather's great-uncle
departed this life in 1754 throwing bouquets at the no-
bility of both families, bouquets that cost several hundred
dollars a bunch. And what a concession to hoi polloi to
be taken into Miss Garesche's confidence and told with
what kind of lingerie she will adorn her sacred person
while filling the count's cup of felicity to overflowing!
422 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
I'm not finding fault heaven forfend! The ex-consul
to the mighty empire of Martinique has a perfect right to
''blow hisself" for page newspaper puffs to exhibit his
genealogical tree in Shaw's Garden if he likes; while it is
the prerogative of the Republic to trade nux vomica drule
and Delia Cruscan drivel for good American dollars. Still,
I cannot imagine the great American public filing a protest
had Count Vincent des, etc., and his cerulean blooded
Baby Mine slipped out to Carondolet, or over to East St.
Louis while no one was looking, got hitched by a justice
of the peace, regaled a few friends with keg beer and
pretzels, then started blithely in to take the conceit out of
the census enumerators of Chicago and perpetuate the
noble name of de Messimy, instead of halting the political
torch-light parade to vaunt their "purty" and proclaim that
they were about to accept St. Paul's sage advice to couples
similarly situated. I have no word of criticism for Miss
Garesche; she is a young thing, somewhat under thirty;
but William A. and the gentleman with the serial story
title are old enough to know better.
It is a trifle strange that no attempt was made to trace
"the proud lineage" of either bride or groom back to an
aristocracy of intellect, a nobility of brains that their pride
should center in a supposed descent from various mental
vacuums who were "stuck o'er with titles and hung round
with strings."
They exalt their horn, not because their families have
produced men who won and wore the amaranthine wreath ;
but because their ancestors were unimportant factors of that
ignoble French "nobility" whose transcendent impudence,
disgusting debaucheries and wolfish exactions drove a patient
and long-suffering people to a revolt whose attendant hor-
rors constitute the darkest page in human history. France,
like the United States, has abolished patents of nobility,
and for the self-same-reason because they are badges of
servility, and in a republic every citizen should be a sov-
ereign. Imagine Americans, who have learned senators for
servants, and who make and unmake the chief magistrates
of the greatest nation that ever sunned itself in the smile
of omnipotent God, boasting that their ancestors had to
take orders from some petty princeling ruled by a prosti-
tute! There was never but one real nobility on this earth
and its acknowledged head was born in a hovel. No pom-
pous monarch that ever wielded a sceptre was worthy to sit
in the presence of Shakespeare. The proudest nobleman
who followed the fortunes of Charlemagne, or danced and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 423
grimaced in the corrupt court of le Grande Monarque would
have been honored by a careless nod from Miguel Cervantes
or a kick from Bobby Burns. All the Orleanists of France
could not have furnished forth the brains of the boorish
Corsican. No "prince of the blood," since Trajan's pillar
first marked the center of the world, was the peer of Abra-
ham Lincoln.
Messrs. Garesche and Messimy should get "the pomp of
heraldry" out of their foolish heads. Few Americans can
trace their lineage back more than a century or so without
finding some petty lordling or ticky-tailed princeling figur-
ing as a member of the family ; but we are striving desper-
ately to live down the disgrace. We are trying to breed out
the syphilitic "blue blood" and fill the veins of this nation of
sovereigns with a healthy crimson tide, thereby insuring
beautiful and noble women, and men too manly to make
themselves ridiculous by boasting that their ancestors were
a set of impudent thieves living upon the honest earnings
of others. We aspire to membership in an aristocracy
founded, not upon the bones of a French king's upper-
servants, but on the honest worth of noble men and women.
If the Garesches and Messimys think there is, was, or can
ever be a prouder title than American sovereignty, a nobler
lineage than descent from brave and brainy men and chaste
and beautiful women, why did they drag their empty bellies
hither? Let them be sent back across the sea, as unworthy
to live one hour where falls the sacred shadow of Free-
dom's flag.
LOVE AS AN INTOXICANT.
Seymour, Texas, Nov. 4, 1897.
Mr. Brann : Will you please answer the following question and
thereby settle a dispute in Seymour: Is love intoxicating?
CHAS. E. RUPE.
My correspondent neglects to state whether Seymour is a
Prohibition town. Of course if it is and love is listed as an
intoxicant, the blind god will be expatriated for the benefit
of the makers of Peruna, Hostetter's Bitters and other pal-
ate ticklers, popular only at blind tigers. W T hy the deuce
didn't the Seymourites set to work and settle this vexatious
problem for themselves? Must I undertake a system of
scientific experiments in order to obtain this information
for the citizens of Seymour ? Suppose that I do so, find that
love makes drunk come, and am run in by the patrol wagon
424 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
while supercharged with the tender passion : don't you see
that this would militate against my usefulness as a Baptist
minister ? How the hell could I explain to my congregation
that I was full of love instead of licker? Clearly I can-
not afford to offer myself as a sacrifice upon the altar of
science. Should I proceed to fall in love just to see if it
would go to my head, and should it do so, my Dulcina del
Toboso might marry me before I recovered my mental
equipoise, and I would awaken to find my liberty a has-
been and my night-key non est. Of course I shouldn't mind
it ever so little, but it would be awfully hard on the lady.
I have been baptized just to see if it would soak out any
original sin ; I've gone up in a balloon and down in a coal
mine in the interest of science; I've ridden on the pilot of
a locomotive for the sake of the sensation; I've permitted
myself to be inoculated with the virus of Christian charity
just to see if it would "take;" I've tampered with almost
every known intoxicant, from the insiduous mescal of the
ertswhile Montezumas to the mountain nectar of Eastern
Tennessee, but I draw the line at love. Will it intoxicate?
Prithee, good sirs, I positively decline to experiment. How-
ever, if hearsay evidence be admissible I'm willing to take
the stand. To the best of my knowledge and belief love
will pick a man up quicker and throw him down harder
than even the double-distilled brand of prohibition busthead.
Like champagne at 2 g. m., it is good to look upon and
pleasant to the palate; but at last it biteth like a serpent
and stingeth like an able-bodied bumble-bee in a pair of
blue-jean pants. Like alcoholism, love lies in wait for the
young and unwary approaches the victim so insiduously
that ere he is aware of danger he's a gone sucker. The
young man goeth forth in the early evening and his patent
leathers. His coat-tail pockets bulge with caramels and his
one silk handkerchief, perfumed with attar of roses, reposeth
with studied negligence in his bosom. He saith unto him-
self, "I will sip the nectar of the blind deity but I will not
become drunken, for verily I know when to ring myself
down." He calleth upon the innocent damosel with soft
eyes and lips like unto a cleft cherry when purple with its
own sweetness, and she singeth unto him with a voice that
hath the low sweet melody of an aeolian harp, and squozeth
his hand in the gloaming, sigheth just a. wee wee sigh that
endeth in a blush. And behold it cometh to pass that when
the gay young man doth stagger down the doorsteps of her
dear father's domicile he knoweth not whether he is hoof-
ing it to Klondyke or riding an erratic mustang into Mex-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 425
ico. He is drunken with the sweetness of it all and glad
of it. And she? Oh she lets him down easy sends him
an engraved invitation to her marriage with some guy "with
oodles of the long green whom her parent on her mother's
side has corraled at the matrimonial bargain counter. Then
the young man has a case of what we Chermans call Kat-
zen jammer, and swears an almighty swore never to do so
any more. But he does. When a man once contracts the
habit of being in love there's no help for him. It is a
strange stimulant which acts upon the blood like the oen-
anthic of old wine, upon the soul like the perfume of jas-
mine buds. He has felt its mighty spell, more potent than
the poppy's juice or the distillation of yellow corn that has
waved its golden bannerets on Kentucky's sun-kissed hills
more strangely sweet than music heard at midnight across
a moonlit lake or the soul-sensuous dream of the lotus
eaters' land. For the spell of the poppy's dreamy drug and
the charm of the yellow corn whose spirit breeds dangerous
lightnings in the blood, the skill of man has provided a
panacea ; but "love is strong as death," says David's wisest
son. Will love intoxicate? Rather! I should say that
Solomon was drunk with love when he wrote the Canticles :
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is
better than wine."
When a man is drunken he sees strange varieties of ser-
pents. That's what ailed Adam and Eve. They kept intoxi-
cated with their own primordial sweetness until they got the
jimmies and saw a talking snake prancing around the ever-
green aisles of Eden with legs like unto a prima donna. At
least I suppose the Edenic serpent was built that way, for
the Lord cursed it and compelled it to go on its belly all
the days of its life. Hence the Lord must have pulled its
leg. So to speak, or words to that effect. As an intoxicant
love affects one differently from liquor. A man drunk on
bourbon wants to trail his coat-tails down the middle of the
plank turnpike and advise the natives that he is in town.
The man drunk on love yearns to hide away from the busy
haunts of men and write poetry for the magazines. The
one is sentenced to ten days in the bat-cave and the other
to pay some woman's board. Verily the way of the trans-
gressor is hard. Some people manage to worry thro' life
without ever becoming drunken on either liquor or love.
They marry for money, or to secure housekeepers, and drink
pink lemonade and iced buttermilk until there's clabber in
their blood. They "like" their mates, but do not love them,
426 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and their watery babes grow up and become Baptists. Their
affections are to the real article what dengue is to yellow
fever. Temperance is a good thing in its way; but the
man who is temperate in love is not to be trusted. The true
man or woman can no more love moderately than a powder
magazine can explode on the installment plan. When the
cup once touches their lips it is drained to the very dregs.
The chalice is not passed by human hands the gods give
and the gods withhold. Hence it is that we ever find Love's
bacchanals beating against the social bars. We laugh at
the man who flushed with wine disregards the peace and
dignity of the state; but we frown upon the woman who
drunk with love sins against our social laws. Man's brewed
enchantments may be set aside by acts of human will; but
the wine of love creeps like a subtle perfume thro' all the
senses whether we will or no, filling the brain with madness,
the heart with fire.
A NATIONAL POEM.
The Author's Publishing Company is the name of a
New York concern that is preparing to play Maecenas to
merit and endow men of genius with what John J. Ingalls
would call "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." It is
sending broadcast over the country what purports to be a
nameless "national poem/' and chained to this acephalous
literary morceau is a proposition to pay $100 in currency
of the realm to the party suggesting the most appropriate
title. This "poem" purports to be the work of one
Ardenas Foster, who promises to supply the public with
130 pages of his poetic yearnings before the robins nest
again. We do not know who Ardenas may be ; but sus-
pect he is none other than our old friend Orie Bower, the
erstwhile "Poet of the Rockies," who has disguised him-
self with a clean shave, a paper dickey and a new pseu-
donym. He writes like Orie. His muse has the same
happy-go-lucky gait a confusing compromise between
the long swinging trot of a hungry coyote and the "Lon-
don lope," now so fashionable with the New York's
Anglo-Maniacal Four Hundred. His lines have the same
sensuous lilt, his song the identical dreamy cadence that
caused the Greasers to swim the Rio Grande, the jackass
rabbits to waltz on their hind legs and Major Fuel to
climb Mount Franklin's rugged steeps and reflect on his
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 427
latter end when Orie tuned his lyre and poured out his
aesthetic soul in song as poet-laureate of El Paso's Mc-
Ginty club. Ardenas must be Orie in disguise or Amelia
Rives Chanler seeking an antidote for her early aphro-
disiacs. We have room for but one verse ; but it's a
crackerjack, the gem of the collection and illustrates how
Ardenas can soar when he spreads his pinions and takes
a header into the poetic empyrean. Those who desire to
follow Ardenas in his flight can secure telescopes at this
office without extra charge.
Columbia! recurrent pregnant maid,
And bosom throbbing Hvith ripe harvest-heat,
Till multitudes from thy fresh garners feed,
And on thy shores Creation's races meet.
We fear that the Author's Publishing Company is not
doing the proper thing. We submit that any one who
can put an appropriate head on such a priceless literary
torse deserves more than a hundred dollars. Ardenas is
nothing if not original. A "recurring pregnant maid" is
an idea with which even the immortal Bard of Avon was
unacquainted. Dante never dreamed of such a thing.
Milton knew naught of "recurring pregnant maids." And
we confess, with a feeling akin to shame, that we had not
thought of the fair sex in that light ourselves and we
have associated with Rebecca Merlindy Johnson a good
deal. Ardenas is the avatar of originality. He is meta-
phor personified. He is poetic license with the bridle off.
He explores new paths of poesy with the reckless aban-
don of a troubadour. He opens new vistas in literature
with a simple, presto, change! But he hurries us along
too fast. He doesn't allow us time to become well ac-
quainted with the ofttimes pregnant maid before asking us
to contemplate creation's races meeting on her "shores/'
But we suppose it is all right. Certainly nothing can be
impossible to a pregnant maid. She may have not only
shores, but seas and a north and south pole, for aught we
know. If Ardenas says so we'll believe it. We should
trust our men of genius and follow unquestioningly
whithersoever they lead. We shall wait for the remain-
der of Ardenas Foster's book with impatience. We are
anxious to see what may be the peculiarities of the rest
of his maids. But we trust that he will not permit crea-
tion's races to feed on them or trample their "shores"
with hob-nailed shoes. At least not while the maids are
pregnant. We trust that in sending out autograph copies
to the press Ardenas will not overlook the Iconoclast. If
428 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the book contains his portrait as a frontispiece we will
be only the better pleased. There's a goat in this town
we've got it in for.
BRANN ON HUMBUGS.
[The following excerpts are from Mr. Brann's lecture at Dallas
Opera House, October 17, 1895.]
A discourse on political humbugs were incomplete
without some reference to the young man whom Texas,
in a moment of mental aberration, raised to the chief
magistracy. I learn from a sermon recently inflicted on
the long-suffering inhabitants of this city, that Son
Charles is "our heroic young Christian governor." How
he must have changed during the last few months!
Shakespeare was probably viewing the Texas politician
with prophetic eye when he declared that in the great
Drama of Life a man plays many parts. Culberson is the
only one, however, who has yet succeeded in playing
them all at one and the same time. A man who can run
with the hare politically while holding with the hounds
personally, is almost too versatile to be virtuous. "Our
heroic young Christian governor!" That preacher evi-
dently doesn't know Charles. Or if he does his idea of
Christianity is not so altitudinous that he can stand on
its apex and keep the flies off the man in the moon.
Culberson is a politician who enjoyed excellent health
before he entered the public service. He is all things to
all men and "nothing to nobody." He's so slippery that
he couldn't stand on the partisan platform to which he
owes his political elevation. In the last gubernatorial
election pretty much every man who voted for Culberson
felt that he hand a lead-pipe cinch on a fat office, and
the remainder were certain he would work four-and-
twenty hours a day to put in effect their pet reforms.
They are wiser now. In 1890 Charlie sailed into the at-
torney-generalship on the ample coat-tails of one J. S
Hogg, and in less than thirty days he was conspiring to
retire his chief after one term and slip into his official
shoes. The trouble appears to be that the youngster was
pulled before he was ripe before his political integrity
had time to harden, or his crop of wild oats was well in
the ground.
Now I want it distinctly understood that I am not the
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 429
apologist of pugilism; I am the apostle of the white-
winged Goddess of Peace. I always carry a cruse of oil
in my hip-pocket to cast upon the troubled waters. I have
a pacific effect on all with whom I come in contact. Chil-
dren quit crying when they see me coming, women speak
well of their neighbors, men respect each other's political
opinions, preachers engage in silent prayer and the lion
and the lamb lie down together. And that's no lie. But
as between pugilism and hypocrisy I prefer the former.
I would rather see men pound each other for a fat purse
than play the canting Pharisee to promote their political
fortunes.
* * *
Let us look to the record of "our heroic young Christian
governor." During the four years he officiated as attor-
ney-general he made no determined effort to enforce the
law then in effect prohibiting pugilism. Prizefights were
pulled off at Galveston, San Antonio, El Paso and other
Texas points after having been duly advertised in the
daily press. He was elevated to the chief magistracy of
the State, and the slugging matches continued mills
between brawny but unskilled boxers, who relied u^on
brute strength, and pounded each other to a pumice to
make a hoodlum holiday. Some of these meetings were
especially brutal as matches between amateur athletes
are likely to be; but "our heroic young Christian gov-
ernor" saw no occasion to get his Ebenezer up. He sim-
ply sawed wood didn't care a continental whether there
was a law prohibiting bruising bouts or not.
And the ministerial associations were too busy taking
up collections to send Bibles and blankets, salvation and
missionary soup to the pagans of the antipodes to pay
much attention to these small-fry pugs. They let our
blessed "Texas civilization" take care of itself, while they
agonized over a job lot of lazy negroes whose souls ain't
worth a sou-markee in blocks of five; who wouldn't walk
into heaven if the gates were wide open, but once inside
would steal the eternal throne if it wasn't spiked down.
No Epworth Leaguers or Christian Endeavorers where-
ased, resoluted or perorated until their tongues were
worn to a frazzle, trying to "preserve the honor of our
ger-ate and gal-orious State by suppressing feather-
pillow pugilism." Why? I don't know; do you? Of
course some carping critics declare it was because the world
was not watching these brutal slugging matches between
youths to pugilistic fortune and fame unknown; that it
430 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
was because the professionally pious had no opportunity
to make a grandstand play and get their names in print
no chance to pose in the eye of the universe as the con-
servators of our fin de siecle civilization. But then these
Doubting Thomases are ever ready to make a mock of
the righteous and put cockleburrs in the back hair of the
godly. I dislike to criticise "the cloth." I am prone to
believe that the preachers always do the best they know
how ; still, I must confess that I am unable to muster up
much admiration for the brass band variety of "religion"
or the tutti-frutti trademark of "respectability."
Had the belief not been bred in my bones that there
is a God in Israel, these little 2x4 preachers, with their
great moral hippodrome their purblind blinking at
mountains and much-ado about molehills would drive
me to infidelity. By their egregious folly, their fiery de-
nunciation of all men who dare disagree with them, their
attempt to make the State subservient to the church, *-o
establish an imperium in imperio by their mischievous,
meddling in matters that in nowise concern them, they
are bringing the beautiful religion of Christ into con-
tempt are doing more to foster doubt than did all the
Humes and Voltaires and Paines that ever wielded pen.
Now don't get the idea that I am antagonistic to the
preachers. Far from it. I am something of a minister
myself; and we who have been called to labor in the
Lord's vineyard at so much per annum must stand
together. I admire the ministers in a general way and
"whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." I feel that it is
my duty to pull them tenderly but firmly back by the
little alpaca coat-tails whenever they have made mistakes
to reprove them in all gentleness when I find them
fanning themselves with their ears for the amusement of
the mob.
But to return to "our heroic young Christian governor."
When it was first proposed to bring the great fistic carni-
val and a million dollars to Dallas, Gov. Culberson had
nothing to say. It was popularly supposed that he under-
stood the law and would respect it. The impression got
abroad that he felt rather friendly to the enterprise because
it would put 500 scudi in the depleted coffers of the public
and turn a great deal of ready money loose within the con-
fines of Texas. He may not have been directly responsible
for this popular idea, but he certainly did nothing to dis-
courage it. Arrangements were perfected, important con-
tracts entered into, a vast amount of money invested that
BRANN, TiIE ICONOCLAST 431
would prove a complete loss if the enterprise collapsed.
Then Culberson began to complain. He suddenly discov-
ered that pugilism was a brutal sport, which should be
suppressed. His conversion was as instantaneous as that
of Saul of Tarsus. It were an insult to the intelligence of
a hopeless idiot to say he did not know the Corbett-Fitz-
simmons affair would prove far less brutal than a hundred
fis.tic encounters which he, as attorney-general and gov-
ernor, had tacitly encouraged but his jewel of consistency
had evidently gone to join his diamond stud. Col. Dan
Stuart didn't appear inclined to do anything to ease the
young man's agony, and it rapidly went from bad to worse.
The Hurt decision was rendered, and the moral volcano
of "our heroic young Christian governor" began to erupt
in earnest. He declared that he would override the court
of criminal appeals '.'if men enough can be found in Texas
to do it" gave an excellent imitation of an anarchist who
is hungering' for canned gore. After this blood-to-horses'-
bridles bluff he grew quiescent waited, Micawber-like, for
something to turn up. And still Dan Stuart didn't say a
word. Then "our heroic young Christian governor" broke
out in a new place. The legislature was convened in ex-
traordinary session to prevent a brace of pugilists smash-
ing the immortal ichor out of modern civilization. It was
a great moral aggregation almost equal to Artemus
Ward's WaxWurx! I am convinced of this, for it em-
ployed two doctors of divinity at public cost, of course
to pray over it a minute each morning, for $5 per diem
each. Everybody expected the president of the Florida
Athletic Club to go to Austin and make an earnest free
silver speech. Even the lawmakers were looking for him;
but he didn't go and the result was what might have been
expected. The law-builders with the worst private records
had the most to say about public morality. Men whose I.
O. U.'s are not good in a game of penny ante; whose faces
arc familiar to the inmates of every disreputable dive be-
tween the Sabine and the Rio Bravo; who go to their
legislative duties from the gambling-room and with six-
shooters in the busts of their breeches, grew tearful over
the prospective ''disgrace of Texas" by a manly boxing
bout. Hell hath no fury like a legislative: humbug scorned
while he's holding his hand behind him.
But the wrath of "our heroic young Christian governor"
did not abate with the enactment of a law forbidding prize-
432 BRANN, THE ICONQCLAST
fights such a law as he had flagrantly failed to enforce.
The promoters of what the court of criminal appeals de-
clared a lawful enterprise were arrested and dragged before
the grand jury of Travis county, which appears to have
taken the entire earth under its protectorate. Failing an
opportunity to prosecute them for an offense against the
laws of the land, the powers at Austin proceeded to prose-
cute them on the hypothesis that they were conspiring to
wreck the universe.
And what was their offense? They had "conspired" to
pay $500 into the public treasury and bring a million more
to Dallas. They had "'conspired" to bring several thou-
sand respectable business men to Texas from all parts of
the Union and furnished employment at good wages for
hundreds of hungry men.
While I do not much admire pugilism as a profession,
I must say that the promoters of the enterprise conducted
themselves much better than did "our heroic young Chris-
tian governor," and those alleged saints who proposed to
shoulder their little shotguns and help him override the
courts to butcher their brethren in cold blood to prevent
an encounter between .brawny athletes armed with pillows;
to sustain "modern civilization" by transforming the met-
ropolis of Texas into a charnel-house to prevent, by
brutal homicide in the name of Christ their neighbors
exercising those liberties accorded them by the laws of
the land.
* * *
Curious, this modern civilization of which we hear so
much. During the palmy days of Roman grandeur and
Grecian glory, their athletes fought with the terrible cestus
to win a crown of oak or laurel ; but then Rome never pro-
duced a Rev. Seasholes, nor Greece a Senator Bowser.
The Imperial City did manage to breed a Brutus and a
Cato, but never proved equal to a Culberson Think of a
Texas legislature, composed chiefly of illiterate jabber-
whacks who string out the sessions interminably for the
sake of the $2 a day imagine these fellows, each with a
large pendulous ear to the earth, listening for the approach
of some Pegasus to carry him to Congress teaching the
aesthetics of civilization to the divine philosophers of
Greece and the god-like senators of Rome! Think of Perry
J. Lewis pulling the Conscript Fathers over the coals of
Senator Bowser pointing out civic duties to Socrates; of
Attorney-General Crane giving Julius Caesar a piece of his
mind ; of Charley Culberson turning up his little two-f or-a-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 433
nickel nose at the Olympian games! But perhaps that is
not the game "our heroic young Christian governor" is
most addicted to.
* * *
Prizefighting even with pillows, for points is bad
enough, no doubt; but there are worse things. Making
the Texas people pay for an abortive little second-term
gubernatorial boom is one of them, and canting hypocrisy
by sensation-seeking preachers is another. Can the church
and state find no grander work than camping on the trail
of a couple of pugilists? Are Gentleman Jim and Kanga-
roo Bob the upper and nether millstones between which
humanity is being ground? Are these the only obstacles
to the inauguration of the Golden Age that era of Peace
on Earth and Good Will to Men? The world is honey-
combed with crime. Brother Seasholes says there are 800
fallen women in this city alone and I presume he knows.
But if these be half so many, what a terrible story of hu-
man degradation more appalling even than soft-glove
pugilism! Our streets swarm with able-bodied beggars
young men, most of them, whom want may drive into
wickedness. Human life is cheap. Men are slain in this
alleged Christian land for less silver than led Judas to be-
tray Christ. Young girls are sold to shame, and from
squalid attics comes the cry of starving babes. The Goths
and Visigoths are once more gathering, imperiling 1 civiliza-
tion itself, and belief in God is fading slowly but surely
from the earth. Want and wretchedness skulk in the
shadows of our temples, ignorance and crime stalk abroad
at high noon the legions of Lucifer are overrunning the
land, transforming God's beautiful world into a veritable
Gehenna. The Field of Blood is filling, the prisons and
poorhouses are overflowing crowded with wretched
creatures who dared dream of fame and fortune. The
great Sea of Life is thick-strewn with wrecks millions
more drifting helpless and hopeless upon the rocks. From 1
out the darkness there come cries for aid; men pleading
for employment, women shrieking in agony of soul, little
children wailing with hunger and cold. And the winds
wax ever stronger, the waves run higher and higher, the
wreck and wraith grow ever more pitiful, more appalling.
And church and state pause in this mad vortex of chaos
to prate of the ills of pugilism; to legislate and perorate
anent bloodless boxing bouts; to prosecute a brace of
harmless pugs. The people ask bread of the church and
it gives them a stone; they ask of the state protection ot
434 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
their lives and liberties, and it gives them a special session
of the legislature shoots doodle-bugs with a Catling gun
and sends them the bill!
* * *
But to recur for a moment to the fistic carnival: Have
any of you been able to determine how the Dallas News
stood in regard to that great enterprise? Sometimes, when
I want to go on an intellectual debauch, I read the News
or Ayer's Almanac. It appears to entertain but two opin-
ions, namely, that Uncle S-am should black the boots of
John Bull, and that Grover Cleveland carries the brains
of the world in his beebum. This brace of abortive ideas
constitute its confession of faith the only things of which
it feels absolutely certain. When it tackles anything else it
wobbles in and it wobbles out like an unhappy married man
trying* to find his way home at five o'clock in the morning.
A great diplomat once declared that language was made
to conceal thought; but the Dallas News employs it to dis-
guise an intellectual vacuum. It can use more language
to say less than any other publication on earth. In this
particular it is like Napoleon it stands wrapt in the soli-
tude of its own originality.
The eating of thirty quail in thirty days was once a popu-
lar test of human endurance; but I can propose a more cru-
cial one one that will attract more people to Dallas than
would even the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight. Let the people
of this city offer a fat purse for the man who can read the
editorial page of the Dallas News thirty days in succession
without degenerating into a driveling idiot. It is a mental
impossibility, of course; but perhaps my good friend
"Dorry" can be persuaded to attempt it to hoist himself
with his own petard. No man born of woman will ever
accomplish it. Massillon would become a mental bankrupt
within the month and Socrates have to be tapped for the
simples before reaching the half-way house.
The News is troubled with a chronic case of Anglo-
mania. Whenever Columbia has a controversy of any
kind with Brittania, the News hastens to ally itself with
the Britisher; but in matters concerning the welfare of
the city of Dallas it has little to say. It did manifest a
slight inclination to take up for the fistic enterprise
fearfully slid one foot to terra-firma ; but when the success
of the carnival became doubtful the News hastened to
resume its time-honored position astride the fence, and it
has hung there ever since like a foul dish-rag across a
wire clothes line. It's the greatest journalistic 'Fraid on
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 435
the face of the earth. It doesn't dare to risk the opinion
that water is wet. But probably it isn't sure of it. It is
just as well, however, for if it did know, it couldn't leak
the information in less than a column. The editorial page
of the Dallas News reminds me of the Desert of Sahara
after a simoon it is such an awful waste of space. If I
had a five-year-old boy who couldn't say more in fifteen
minutes than the Dallas News has said in the last dozen
years, I'd refuse to father him.
One of the greatest frauds of modern times is the pol-
icy-playing newspaper. The "Archimedean lever," as
applied to daily journalism is a fake of the first magni-
tude. There is not a morning newspaper in Texas pos-
sessing sufficient political influence to elect a pound-
master. In fact, their support will damn any politician
eternally, for the people wisely conclude that what the
alleged ''great dailies" support is a pretty good thing for
them to oppose. Hogg would not have reached the gov-
ernorship but for the blatant opposition of the morning
press. Its friendship for George Clark was the upas-
shadow in which he perished politically. There hasn't
been an important law enacted in Texas during the last
ten years that it didn't oppose. And yet men actually
imagine that they cannot succeed in politics, business or
letters without the assistance of that great "moulder of
public opinion!" Let me tell you that every success this
country has witnessed during the past three decades was
achieved despite the morning press. To paraphrase Owen
Meredith :
"Let a man once show the press that he feels
Afraid of its bark, and 'twill fly at his heels;
Let him fearlessly face, 'twill leave him alone;
But 'twill fawn at his feet if he flings it a bone."
A NEW YORK SAWCIETY SHEET.
Some few of my readers may have incidentally heard
of a little sawciety paper published in New York City
called Town Topics. Its editor, having fired a couple of
front-page malodors at me, sends me a marked copy,
thinking perhaps I may be induced to call general atten-
tion to the fact that he is on the earth. It is impossible
for me to accord a free notice to every impudent pamph-
leteer and .22-caliber editor who attacks me for adver-
tising purposes only. Believing with Tennyson that 'tis
436 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
"weakness to be wroth with weakness," I seldom waste
any shot on sawciety sheets. Nor am I in the habit of
taking up the gage thrown down by papers that exist by
pandering to pruriency, knowing that if given time they
will stink themselves into a state of "innocuous desue-
tude." Town Topics, however, seems to be regarded with
some degree of toleration by New York's "h'upper suk-
kles," and may, therefore, be worth a moment's attention
as indicating the moral and mental drift of our soi-disant
"best sawciety." Social as well as medical doctors some-
times find the handling of very dirty subjects an impera-
tive duty. Town Topics is what is known in the terse ver-
nacular of Hungry Hill and Tincan Alley as a journalistic
"nancy" a trifle too dirty for decency and too epicene for
aggressive immorality. It is one of those papers which
an imbecile may understand much better than a man of
strong mentality, because the latter seeks a raison d' etre
for everything. Its distinguished feature is a dreary
waste of inane tittle-tattle anent the doings and mis-
doings of uppertendom. It can tell you to a minute when
the charming, beautiful and accomplished Miss Isolde
DePeyster Hamfat-Crupper became engaged to the re-
doubtable Count Orlando Bombastico Furioso Marraroni
de Cagliostro, how many buttons she will wear on the
bifurcated garment of her wedding lingerie, and whether
the broken windows in the count's ancestral castle are
stuffed with old hats or baled hay. It knows how often
J. J. Van Alen changes his sox and with what material
the exuberant basement of T. Suffem Tailor's riding
britches are half-soled information in nowise to be de-
spised in this era boasting itself heir of all the ages. It
knows, and relates with many winks and nods and
sayshes and sayshes, with ostentatious concealment of
names but not of persons, how Mr. and Mrs. Stubantwist
quarreled during their honeymoon, what occasioned the
Vanderbiltian divorce, and the Drayton-Astor estrange-
ment with the subsequent duel in which "never any died."
All of which is strengthening to the mind as drinking
sweetened wind out of a toy balloon is to the body.
Town Topics has other features in a lighter vein which
make it popular with morbid young persons just verging
on pubescence, and who need a mild purgative and plenty
of exercise in the open air. To precocious kids in the
Werterian state, Town Topics is a valuable pons asinorium,
being a very charming- cross between a vermiculous
diaper and the toga virilis. Its stories are intended for
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 437
neurotics only. They have all the shudder and groan of
a nigger with the buck ague, the inexpressible longing of
a hound pup fondly eyeing a rump-bone through an im-
passable picket fence. They are dank with a helpless,
hopeless dismalness which suggests death by dope to
escape the pangs of pruriency, and have all the unctu-
osity of a hot corn-dodger slathered with sop. Its heroes
seldom do anything awfully dreadful, but this fact is
never the fault of its heroines. It is a kinetoscope exhibi-
tion of Madame Potiphar -and Joseph that makes you
want to encourage the young Hebrew with a club.
Town Topics is the chief exponent of that soulful decadence
of which Oscar Wilde was the high priest. But perhaps
I do the great English pervert an injustice. He had some
inturbidated idea of attaining the beautiful through the
brutal, of going to heaven by way of hell. He saw that
the rose springs from rottenness, that sweet perfumes
are extracted from impurities, that the foul emanations
of earth make the lightnings flash and roll the thunder
drums of heaven, and was really striving in a blind way
toward better things when mired in the serbonian bogs
of his own bestiality; but the editor of the paper in ques-
tion bedaubs himself with the slime of sewers, not be-
cause it nurtures beauty and fragrance, but because it
breeds malodors and maggots. A man may be pardoned
for handling muck if it be to build therewith a Jacob's
Ladder, or even a Tower of Babel to reach high heaven ;
but the Town Topics man has no other object than that of
the barefoot schoolboy who makes a squirt up between
his toes he simply enjoys the sensation. Not being
skilled in teratology, I am unable to assign "The Saun-
terer" to a proper place among the mental misfits and
moral abnormalities ; but his articles suggest some tooth-
less old sybarite in whom age has caused perversion in-
stead of repentance, and whose soul is ever rioting in the
nameless infamies of the Orient. There is a faint sug-
gestion in all his stuff, not of Margery, Moll and Meg,
but of a married sawciety beaut rolling home in a closed
hack in the early dawn, with a chappie holding her head
while the champagne and pate de foie gras leaves its intra-
parietal recess and drules over the front elevation of her
decollette. I can cheerfully recommend Town Topics to any
one in need of an aspositic, and suggest it to the "mind-
cure^ mountebanks as a valuable succedaneum for nux
vomica. It should be the official organ of every suicide club
in the country, being well calculated to disgust every sane
438 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
man with the whole human race and make him desire a
speedy death. Such is the journalistic favorite of New
York's Four Hundred. No wonder that Gotham sawciety
has become simply a nest of epicene Anglo-maniacs and
whining Mugwumps. Should a man attempt the publica-
tion of such a paper in Texas we'd hang him, for the same
reason that we kill glandered horses, send imbeciles to
the asylum and eliminate lice.
GODEY'S MAGAZINE FOR MOKES.
My attention has just been called to the fact that Godey's
Lady Book Godey's Magazine, as it is now called is still
upon the earth. I have before me the first copy thereof I
have seen for a quarter of a century, the second one I ever
examined. I remember well that when a kid I asked my
sister for paper of which to build a kite, and she gave me
a copy of Godey's Lady Book, advising me at the same
time to "tie a grindstone to it for a tail," it being, she said,
"the lightest thing in literature." I examined it and found
in it a thin, sloppy periodical, containing some hay-fever
fiction, a number of impossible fashion-plates and cholera-
morbid sauce recipes. I supposed, if I thought about it at
all, that Godey's had gone to the rubbish heap long ago;
but it seems that "the lightest thing in literature" has man-
aged to keep afloat, heaven knows how or why, while
scores of better magazines have been buried. Perchance
an inscrutable providence has preserved it that it might
eventually become the fashionable magazine of the negro
aristocracy of the feminine gender, a beatitude to which it
has attained after weary pilgrimage of more than half a
century. I hasten to extend to its present publishers the
glad hand and congratulate them on their enterprise, for
I imagine that it fills what the country editor calls "a long-
felt want" and fills it brimming full. Now that it has at
last reached its intellectual and social level and is content
with its lot, it should be accorded every encouragement.
The colored women of America are certainly entitled to a
magazine; and it seems that at last there has arisen a
counterpart of Eddie Bok to sling into their yearning souls
the same class of intellectual soup which makes the Ladies'
Home Journal a perennial joy. And Philadelphia is just
the place for a journal devoted to fashionable colored fe-
males. Simultaneously with the arrival of Godey's Colored
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 439
Lady Book for July the dailies announce the wedding in
that city of a so-called respectable white woman of alleged
good family with a coon, the interesting ceremony being
performed by the rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church
of the Crucified. The name of this progressive female who
has started in to solve the race problem was Constance
Mackenzie. As she loves niggers so well, let us devoutly
pray that she will give birth to a brace of brats as often
as possible, and that all her pickaninnies will be black as
the hinges of hell. As for Rev. Villers, who performed the
ceremony, I trust that his cup of joy will be filled to over-
flowing by his becoming grandfather to a bevy of woolly
half-breeds, for I think it would improve the Villers' stock
to graft it on the cornfield coon. Evidently the cullud peo-
ple are getting up in the pictures, and are entitled to the
very best Bokism the Godey Company can give them. I
suppose that all the articles in the July number of that
periodical will be written by negroes, as it has the subtle
flavor of an old pair of sox. ''The Colored Woman of To-
day," is a subject handled by Fannie Barrie Williams, a
chipper octoroon well calculated to catch a Republican's
eye. The article is illumined with the portraits of ten "up-
to-date colored ladies," evidently ranging in complexion
from a brunette banana to a blonde canary bird. Just why
these notable black women are seven-eighths white, Fannie
does not see fit to inform us. She frankly assures us, how-
ever, that "there are thousands of cultured women of the
colored race who are worth knowing, and are prepared to
co-operate with white women in all good efforts," etc.; all
of which is quite comforting, as I was beginning to fear
that these paragons of their sex were too 1 proud to "co-
operate" with the humble Caucasian. Fannie is quite cer-
tain that, contrary to the opinion of white people with
ample opportunity to study the Senegambian, many col-
ored females are virtuous as Dian, lovely as Ophelia and
among "the most interesting women in the land." It may
be so; but certain it is that these superior creatures do not
trot around much in Texas. I do not find fault with Fan-
nie for bepraising her own people to the extent of accredit-
ing them with both virtue and intelligence ; but if she would
produce a few "colored ladies" with a trifle more fuligin-
osity in their faces it would reflect greater credit on the
race with which bright quadroons and chipper octoroons
are peremptorily classed. The fact that her ten samples
of estimable woomanhood are chiefly of Caucasian blood
does not say much for the progress of the blacks. An ani-
440 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
mal one part baboon and seven parts Bostonese could prob-
ably acquire a taste for beans arid learn to relish Browning-;
but his Simian blood would be considered a curse rather
than a credit. All the women with whose portraits Fannie
favors us may be virtuous as the wife of Caesar; but no
one of them would be a full-blood negress if she could,
while the fact that she is not shows that her lineage is
marked by the bar-sinister. As marriages between Cauca-
sians and coons are not much encouraged outside the
Episcopalian circles of Philadelphia, the existence of an
octoroon the creme de la creme of "ladies of color," pre-
supposes at least three flagrant cases of bastardy and Fan-
nie can scarce complain if the white people as a rule do
not expect an evil tree to bring forth good fruit. The next
article in this interesting number is a novelette by one
Frederick W. Pangborn, evidently a coon, for he not only
makes a yaller gal his heroine, but proclaims her superior
in beauty, education and general accomplishments to the
average white woman. But Freddie, with all his admiration
for dark-eyed Dulcinas, was not born and bred in Dixie,
for he imagines that an octoroon is not necessarily part
negro. He succeeds, however, in producing one by the
aid of a white man and a mulatto wench, which in this
part of God's creation would be regarded as very much of
a miracle. Godey's contains other articles by various au-
thors; but as the thermometer registers 90 in proximity
to the ice box, I must leave further examination of Ethi-
opian essays until cooler weather, my nose already being,
like that of Trinculo, "in great indignation." I cannot say
that Godey's has improved since a sharp-tongued school-
girl contemptuously referred to it as "the lightest thing
in literature," valuable for kite-making if a grindstone
be tied to the tail; but it is a great comfort to reflect that
its present burden of banalities cannot be charged up to
white people. That its corps of contributors are coons.
Viewed as a production of the blacks or quarter-breeds
Godey's is not half bad. Whether the publishing company
be composed of coons I am not informed; nor have I been
advised regarding the color of the new editor. It would
have been more manly had the publishers notified their
white patrons of the proposed change in the color of their
"Lady;" but as they take it solely for the sauce recipes
aforesaid and to keep pace with the improvements in com-
plexion powders they will probably care little what is done
with the rest of the paper. While by no means a social
equality shrieker, nor much in favor of solving the race
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 441
problem by fading the nigger out by fornication, I like the
Ethiopian in his place, and that place is the cotton patch.
I have yet to see the nigger, male or female, full-blood or
quarter-breed, who wasn't irrevocably ruined by being re-
lieved of the necessity of manual labor. Take a buck out
of the cotton and dress him in broadcloth and he isn't half
worth killing. Relieve a wench of hard work and she
quickly acquires the brazen swing that says, "I'se bahd."
A magazine like Godey's may not help them much, but it
is too epicene to do anything serious harm. If it will
do the best it can and henceforth keep pictures of white
women out of its pages, I'll subscribe for a copy and com-
pel the negroes on my ranch to read it, even tho' it gives
them chronic malaise and unfits them for active duty in the
cotton field.
DEAN HART OF DENVER.
The dispatches state that Dean H. Martyn Hart, of St.
John's Cathedral, has been caught smuggling valuable furs
into this country from Canada. I am not surprised that he
should attempt to defraud the United States, for he has ever
been a blatant and insolent enemy of the country from
whose resources an inscrutable providence permits him to
fill his sacerdotal paunch. Whether he were an assisted
immigrant I know not; but according to popular opinion
when he arrived here from his beloved England his um-
bilicus was hobnobbing with his backbone. I am told that
he had to leave his native land to find something to eat,
and quite naturally he turned his face to "the refuge of the
world's oppressed," which has transformed so many English
paupers into intolerable prigs. A few rectangular American
meals sufficed to develop his latest insolence, and now he is
fully as offensive as the average British Leggar placed on
horseback. When I last heard of this erstwhile hungry
Uitlander, now grown so great on American grub, he was
trying to pull the leg of the Colorado people for a "Victoria
Wing" to St. Luke's Hospital was urging them to con-
tribute liberally to prove how glad they were that the Queen
is a respectable old party instead of a foul-mouthed prosti-
tute like certain of her predecessors. In his appeal, pub-
lished in the Denver Republican, he said:
"The world owes the Queen an immense debt cff grati-
tude. She has set an example of purity of life which has
been an incalculable power for good to the whole society
of the world. What might have been the condition of that
442 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
society to-day if the first lady of the world had not set such
an example as has thrust immorality, bribery and corrup-
tion into the shade of disrepute, who can tell? * * Every
miner in Colorado should not only perpetuate the memory
of the good Queen he has a right to be proud of, but for
precaution's sake, on his own account, he should send a
subscription," etc., etc.
England, as well as other European countries, has had
dissolute Queens without materially affecting the world's
morality. So far back as history sheds its light the better
class of people have not been prone to form their morals on
royal models ; which is just as well, perhaps, as a majority of
monarchs have been sexual sinners. As Semiramis and
Messalina, Catherine and Elizabeth could not by their disso-
lute lives banish from the world the blush of modesty ; as it
withstood the assaults of the founders and defenders of the
Church of England faith, it would probably have survived
had Victoria been beautiful as Anne Boleyn and passionate
as Cleopatra, instead of homely as a hedge fence in her youth
and phlegmatic as a dead catfish in her age. I have too
much confidence in womankind to believe that one Queen,
even tho' she be a Helen of Troy instead of a gin-guzzling
gain-grabber, can wreck society irrevocably. Nor can I see
why one whose kids and their progeny are so handsomely
provided for at public expense, and who receives some $2,-
000,000 per annum for doing nothing, unless it be for wri-
ting foolish books which nobody reads, should be especially
commended for not entering, like some of her poorly paid
predecessors, into schemes of "bribery and corruption." It
is dead easy to be honest on $2,000,000 per annum. As
there is a limit to the universe, there must be an ultima
thule even to a "good Queen's" greed. Of course the Col-
orado miners have a perfect "right to be proud" of a sov-
ereign who rolls in riches while millions of her subjects
are starving; who donated one-third of her income for one<
day to relieve the famine sufferers of India, who, during
her entire feign, have been ruthlessly robbed for England's
enrichment; who connived at the scheme which fastened
the single gold standard on America, filling the land with
idle men and reducing thousands of silver miners to the
verge of starvation ; but it is a "right" that few of them will
exercise so long as they can keep out of the lunatic asylum.
Having in mind the proverbial thriftiness of John Bull, his
vulpine resourcefulness when there is a shilling in sight, I
became curious to know something of the hospital scheme
engineered by Dean Hart, and whether miners who gave
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 443
up their scant earnings to build the Victoria annex would
be treated without cost in case of accident. The following
excerpt from a letter received from a prominent citizen of
Colorado throws some light on the subject, and incidentally
brings out the fine points of this fat-headed fraud who now
fares sumptuously every day, instead of lunching as in auld
lang syne on the fog banks of London :
"It is a favorite boast of Dean Hart that he never reads an
American newspaper. Although he has been pastor (or
'dean') of St. John's Cathedral for a great many years he is
still an English subject, never having been naturalized, and
boasts of it. He is opposed to the public school system
of this country, and writes articles to the different papers
of the country, condemning the system. He has all his
clothing imported from England or Canada. He invariably
sends his wife to England that his children may 'escape the
obloquy of being born American citizens/ These facts
are not mere hearsay, but are notorious. But to you they
must be superfluous. I have been told that you have lec-
tured on the subject of 'Gall/ and in order to do the sub-
ject justice you must at one time have known Dean H.
Martyn Hart. St. Luke's Hospital is not by any means the
only good hospital in Denver. 'There are others/ It is
an adjunct (for revenue only) of St. John's Cathedral. H.
Martyn Hart is grand mogul of both institutions. Their
charges range from $12 per week upwards in advance and
there is no deviation from this rule."
So the miner who, "for precaution's sake on his own ac-
count," contributes to the Victorian Wing of St. Luke's in
honor of "the first lady of the world," can, in case of ac-
cident, secure medical attention in the same concern for "$12
per week and upwards." If he isn't prepared to pay two
prices for treatment that this Good Samaritan may slip
abundant shekels into its sock, he can lie out in the street
and rot so far as Saint ( ?) Luke's is concerned. The ex-
tensive circulation of the Iconoclast in Colorado leads me
to hope that I can cave in the skull of that little scheme can
prevent the miners beings buncoed out of their money. It
seems to me that a man with sufficient audacity to spring
such a piece of disreputable dead-beatism would renounce
the ministry and go into the confidence business right with
Senator Palmer for side-partner. Had the reverend gentle-
man who parts his name on the side like a lo-cent dude and
dodges customs duties like a professional fraud, made a
practice of reading the American newspapers instead of bur-
dening his seldom brains with the dry rot of English diurn-
444 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
als, he might have learned (if capable of learning anything,
which seems unlikely) that Colorado is not an appendage
of the British crown ; also that when a gabby Uitlander at-
tacks the educational or other institutions of this country
he runs considerable risk of getting his lungs kicked out
by some self-respecting American citizen. My correspond-
ent is unnecessarily exercised because Hart takes the pre-
caution to have his brats born dutiful British subjects instead
of independent American sovereigns. For that he cannot
be too highly commended, for the sons might resemble
their soupy sire. The Republican party conferred American
sovereignty upon the coon; but a pitying providence has
prevented the proudest title known to human history being
further degraded by Dean Hart. I don't know but we
should encourage this humble instrument of heaven's
mercy to America by contributing to the Victorian Wing
of St. Luke's Hospital. By all means let Hart and all wor-
shipful cattle of his kind ever remain the subjects of rheumy
European royalty, humbly bending their rickety marrow-
bones before the foolish bogey of the "divine right of
banal descendants of certain bumbards and bawds to misrule
and rob ; for American citizenship is already weighted with
all the "obloquy" it can comfortably carry. We have got
to draw the line somewhere if we would not have the title
of American sovereign become as disreputable as that of
British duke. As to Victoria being "the first lady of the
world" I have nothing to say, further than that the Kanakas
having conferred the same high-sounding title on their
own beloved Lillikizooki, the first ladies aforesaid are wel-
come to settle the controversy as best they can. Were I
selected to umpire the game I would certainly award the
stakes to Hart's sovereign, believing as I do that even an
Anglo-Saxon descended from a brutal and crazy king must
be a shade better than a saddle-colored barbarian. Nor can
I blame the Englishman for making a mighty to do because,
after so many centuries, one of their monarchs has honestly
earned the right to be called respectable. Such unexpected
beatitude is certainly just cause for rejoicing. Here in
America we never think of congratulating ourselves that the
first lady of the land is a model of womanly virtue ; for we
have not, never can have experience of any other kind. In
England the reverse was so long the case that we can
readily appreciate John Bull's joy at finding himself under
the rule of a monarch for whose private life he need not
apologize. May Victoria live long to reign if not to rule
over the so-called Anglo-Saxons, and thereby enable John
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 445
Bull to hold up his head. As P. Henry would observe,
"we can only judge the future by the past," which argues
that she is an oasis of respectability in a boundless desert
of royal debauchery.
"UNCLE WILLIAM" CAMERON.
The Apostle takes a day off to call the world's atten-
tion to Col. William Cameron of Waco, the commercial
Collossus, the Napoleon of finance, the hub around which
all great enterprises revolve. In the lexicon of public
opinion we find the following entry : "Col. William Cam-
eron, an up-to-date daisy, but no dude." Having lifted
himself, by his own bootstraps, out of the Serbonian bogs
of poverty to the milliononic plane, it follows that Col.
William Cameron knows a thing or two is "dead onto"
all the world's ways that are dark and tricks that are
vain. At least we were wont to think so to imagine our
Bill sharper than a serpent's tooth, the very creme de la
creme of the "hot stuff." We were sure of it when he put
back the gubernatorial crown proffered by the Texas Re-
publicans, nailed upl his smokehouse, set a bear trap in
the donjon-keep of his hennery and padlocked both the
bung and the spigot of his "bar'l." But alack and alas !
Our idol is broken, our Carian marble hath proven but
common clay. We have worshipped what Old John Knox
would call a "pented bredd" those Arabian images ridi-
culed by Mahomet, as "gods a gilded stick and bowed
us to the earth before one of with flies on them."
Col. William Cameron our Bill recently strayed
from home and was spotted by a brace of gold-brick
mountebanks as "a dead easy mark." They actually
passed by Col. J. S. Hogg of the Link Line, with whom
the Wall Street financiers have been having fun, and se-
lected the representative citizen of Texas' educational
center as their huckleberry-do, sized him up as the sucker
most likely to fly at a piece o' red flannel ! It was the
old, old story; older than three-card monte and the shell
game, older than the flim-flam of the circus ticket seller or
the bank draft for 'steen thousand dollars worked off on
the railway passenger from Posey county. A guileless
youth with the flavor of the untamed West on his tongue,
and the secret of the "Lost Mine" of Cortez and his Con-
quistadores concealed about his person, discovers that
446 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Col. Cameron is his long-lost "Uncle William" with the
strawberry mark on his left arm and a forgotten goat-
walk amid Arizona's wilds. Upon the latter v/as located
the rediscovered El Dorado. Sudden joy sometimes
kills ; but, by exercising great self-control, Col. Cameron
was able to safely pass the crisis, even to wonder inj a
vague way how much his new-found relative wanted.
This appeared, like the "chill penury" of the poet, to
freeze the genial current of the young man's soul, and
he hastened to assure the man of millions that his nevvy
was no homeless hobo in search of a handout. He even
went so far as to doubt their consanguinity, while inci-
dentally displaying slugs of yellow metal which he had
clipped from Uncle William's Arizona mine. His Mexi-
can body servant inspected Col. Cameron and declared
him an interloper and an alien, possessing no right or title
to the golden treasure protruding itself thro' Arizona's
sacred soil. It looked for a moment as tho' Col. Cameron
would be arrested for an attempt to swindle himself. The
young man was much discouraged. He wept because he
could not find his real Uncle William and pour into his
lap all the gold of Ophir and all the treasures of Ind. He
was only a poor illiterate boy, brought up amid the cruel
cactus and uncertain mescal of the uncouth West. Per-
haps his companion would consent to manage the mine,
to act as treasurer for this new and greater gold reserve ;
or, if not, he might be able to recommend some good hon-
est man who would do so. It was truly touching, this
innocent young man from Arizona, wandering among
wolves like a blind orphan girl adown the midnight Bow-
ery. Blood is thicker than water, and Col. Cameron re-
lented and found a snug corner for his nephew within his
ample heart. He didn't care for any more money himself
a man with a million or two never does. Still, a few
tons of gold would be a handy thing to have in the house
in case Dick Bland forced the country to a silver basis.
The spider had towed the fly into Houston and was doing
the elegant. Among the young man's assets were two
gold bricks, about the size of Iowa barns and assaying
more than $20 to the ounce. These were but unconsidered
trifles which he had brought with him, thinking he might
need some small change. There v/as oodles of it down in
Arizonaon Uncle William's ranch. Col. Cameron retired
to the toilet room of the Hotel Lawlor and figured out that
he was worth, at the lowest calculation, $927,000,000,000,000.
The cold perspiration stood out on his forehead in half-pint
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 447
drops. It would never do to throw all this gold on the
market at once Cleveland and Wall Street would encom-
pass its demonetization on the plea that silver was the
only honest money. England could take a billion, Conti-
nental Europe two billions and America almost as much by
calling in and canceling the silver certificates and green-
backs; but this would scarce exhaust the top-crop. What
would he do with the surplus? To turn it all loose at once
would run gold down to less than a dollar a pound would
kill the goose that laid the auriferous egg would make
mining even less profitable than dealing in long-leaf pine..
Happy thought! He would make the streets of Waco the
exact counterpart of those in the New Jerusalem would
pave 'em with gold bricks! That done, he could get out
some extra large slugs with which to dam the Brazos and
rebuild the Cotton Palace. He had always wanted to do
something handsome for Waco, and here was his oppor-
tunity. He would demonstrate the truth of the adage that
fact is stranger than fiction by double-discounting the long-
range lies of Marco Polo anent the golden roofs of far
Cathay. He remembered having read in the Iconoclast that
"the surface of the earth had been merely scratched we
know not what may yet be hidden in its dark depths. Our
children may shoe their mules with yellow metal from
King Solomon's mines." He remembered how he had slaved
and saved for half a life-time to pile up a paltry million or
two, and felt sorry for himself. At this juncture his nephew
called to say that a string had suddenly been discovered tied
to the mine, the thither end of which was securely held by
his Mexican servant. It would take a cold $25,000 to turn
their El Dorado loose, and he had but $5,ooo. He would
have to sell his gold bricks at a sacrifice to raise the re-
mainder, unless Here he looked, wistfully at Uncle Will-
iam. Yes, he would fix it; what was a miserable $20,000,
when you could knock it out of the mine in a minute ! But
suddenly his Aladdin's lamp began to smoke and sputter.
He remembered having heard somewhere that all is not gold
that glitters. Uncle William actually smelt a rat smelt it
all by himself, and it was not labeled either. He was taking
dinner with his nephew in the hotel dining-room when it
suddenly occurred to him that not every ass wears four
legs. He fixed a cold, search-warrant gaze on the young man
who pretended to be bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh, and the latter wilted like a white rabbit beneath the
glance of a basilisk, or a sweet-potato vine frescoed with a
hoar frost. Uncle William rose, pointed his soup-spoon at
448 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the cowering wretch and hissed through his teeth, as he
once saw the hero do in a play: "You're a villain." The
iciness of his tone frapped the coffee in the kitchen, while
the mercury dropped thro' the bottom of the tube. The
young man fled and Uncle William joined in the chase, his
napkin streaming- on the breeze like the white plume of King
Henry of Navarre. Those who saw the race will not soon
forget it the wicked wretch hoofing it up Washington
Avenue, his face distorted with fear; Uncle William pur-
suing him with uplifted soup-spoon like an avenging Nem-
esis ! Surely the path of the transgressor is hard.
Uncle William should come home. It is not safe for him
to wander about in this wicked world. Somebody might
steal him. First thing we know he'll purchase the philos-
opher's stone or the state right to saw sunbeams up into
cypress shingles. Come home, Uncle William, before the
bities get you ! Alas ! alas ! that the leading citizen of
Waco should be humbugged and hoodooed by an antedilu-
vian fake that would not impose upon a country bumpkin
from the Free State of Van Zandt! Oh, Uncle William,
Uncle William, when the grass grows green and the cow-
slip blooms in the meadow beware of the omnivrous calf.
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT.
A correspondent wants to know what I think of "the
Single Standard of Morals, which assumes that tampering
with the Seventh Commandment is as demoralizing to men
as to women."
The single standard of morals, like the single standard of
money, would be a magnificent thing were there at least
double the present amount of raw material for it to meas-
ure. I hope to see the day when the libertine will be rele-
gated to the social level of the prostitute where he logically
belongs ; but we are not dealing now with theories, but with
actual conditions. I trust that I may speak plainly on this
delicate subject without offending the unco guid or giving
the priorient pulpiteers a pain. I believe the sexes should
be equally pure when I make a world all my women shall
be paragons of virtue, and all my men he-virgins. I'll con-
struct no Messalinas nor Cleopatras, no Lovelaces or Sir
Launcelots. I'll people the world with St. Anthonys and
Penelopes, Josephs and Rebecca Merlindy Johnsings. I'll
apply the soft pedal to the fierce scream of passion and pull
all the barbs from the arrows that whiz from the Love
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 449
God's bow. Life will not then be quite so exhilarating, but
it will be much better worth the living. Meantime a little
spraining of the Seventh Commandment is by no means so
demoralizing to man as to woman, despite the frantic pro-
tests of those who would drag the millennium in by the ears
by forcing upon society, willy nilly, the single standard of
morals. Man is the grosser animal, has not so far to fall;
the shock to his sensibilities is not so serious he is not so
an .enable to shame. A coat of black paint ruins a marble
Dian, but has little appreciable effect on an iron Hercules.
Illicit intercourse is not so demoralizing to man as to
woman, for the further reason that it is not considered so
great a crime. An act is demoralizing or degrading in pro-
portion as the perpetrator thereof considers it criminal, as
it lowers his self-respect; and men regard their crinolinic
peccancy as a venial fault, while, women consider such
lapses on the part of their sex as grievous sin; hence the
lightning of lust scarce blackens the pillar while it shatters
the vase. The moral effect of an act is determined by the
prevailing standard of ethics. Were polyandry the general
practice, a woman could have a multiplicity of husbands
and be considered pure; where polygamy is the rule, a man
may have a multitude of wives and be regarded as moral.
Ethical codes ever adapt themselves to conditions. Solo-
mon was one of the most honorable men of his age, but
were he alive to-day he would be branded as a shameless
lecher, a contumacious criminal. There have been relig-
ions, existing thro' long ages and extending over vast em-
pires, in which the organs of generation were considered
as sacred symbols and prostitution in the purlieus of the
temple regarded as pleasing to the gods. It is easy enough
for bigoted ignorance to brand those people as barbarians ;
but in many provinces of art and science they have ever
remained our masters. 'The tents of the maidens" were
sin. ply places where fair religious enthusiasts sold them-
selves to the first stranger who offered them a piece of silver,
and laid their gains upon the altar of the gods. The robber
barons of old-time Germany, the diplomatic liars of media-
eval Italy, the thieves of ancient Lacadaemon and the po-
lygamists of Biblical Palestine considered themselves as re-
spectable people, and as they were so regarded by their com-
patriots, they were not morally degraded by their deeds.
But the robber and the liar, the thief and the polygamist of
this age are cattle of quite another color there has been a
radical change in the moral code, the peccadillos of the
past have become the crimes of the present. The cross,
450 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
once an obscene pagan symbol, has been transformed from
an emblem of reproduction into one of destruction; the
"tents of the maidens" are struck; Corinth no> longer im-
plores the gods to increase the number and enhance the
beauty of its courtesans; Venus Pandemos has given place
to Our Lady of Pain, and the obscene Dionysius fled before
a crucified Christ. No more does the fair religious postu-
lant play the bacchante in flower-strewn- palaces while naked
Cupids crown the brimming cup and sandalled feet beat
time on polished cedar floors to music that is the cry of
brute passion in the blood kneeling- in the cold grej dawn
upon the stones she clasps a marble cross. The wanton
worship of the flesh has passed with the world's youth; but
tho' much of man's crassness has been purged away in
Time's great crucible, he is still of the earth earthly and
clings tenaciously to his ancient prerogative of polygamy.
When he marries, society does not really expect him to
respect his oath to ''forsake all others" regards it as a for-
mal bow to the convenances, a promise with a mental
reservation annex; but it considers a woman's vow as sacred
and the breaking thereof as rankest blasphemy. He is
allowed but one wife, but he may have a score of mistresses
and society will placidly wink the other eye until some
tearful maiden requires him to share the shame she can no
longer conceal or an "injured husband" goes a gunning.
This should not be so, but so it is. There be fools, both
male and female, who will rise up to exclaim that this is
false; but that it is Gospel truth is proven every day in the
year in every community on the American continent. Men
with reputations for licentiousness that would shame old
Silenus are cordially received in the most exclusive society.
They are found at every high-falutin' "function," bending
over the white hands of the most accomplished ladies in
the land ; on every ballroom floor, encircling the waists of
debutantes: in the parlors of our best, people, paying court
to their young daughters. The noblest women in this world
become their wives fondly undertake their "reformation"
while indignantly drawing their skirts aside lest they come
in contact with the tawdry finery of females whom these
lawless satyrs have debauched. Of course when a woman
learns that her reformatory work has proven a failure, drear
and dismal, she complains bitterly, may even demand a
divorce; yet she could count upon the fingers of one hand
the hubbies whom she would trust behind a sheet of paper
with a wayward daughter. She doesn't believe a little bit
in the virtue of the genus male, yet insists that her own hus-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 451
band be a saint assumes that her own charms should cause
him to regard all other women with indifference, and when
she learns of his polygamous practices suffers all the pangs
of wounded pride.
If a woman be homely as a bo is d'arc hedge she may sup-
pose the world supercharged with St. Anthonys, for she has
not been much sought ; but if she be beautiful and has
mingled much with men she realizes all too well that the
story of Joseph is a foolish romance or that Mrs. Potiphar
was quite passe. And tho' she be pure as a vestal virgin
of Rome's best days she secretly despises the man with
whom she does not have to stand just a little bit on the de-
fensive. Of course she demands that her male acquain-
tances shall be gentlemen and treat her with due courtesy
and respect; but it nettles her not a little to learn that her
charms are altogether ignored. She likes to feel her power,
to know that she is good in the eyes of men, something
desired that her virtue is a priceless jewel over which she
must ever keep close guard; hence she likes best the male
she is compelled to watch, while a man has absolutely no
use for wife or mistress upon whose fealty he would not lay
his life. The result is that when a woman commits one
sexual sin she puts hope behind her, her feet take hold on
hell, she sinks lower and lower until she becomes the shame-
less associate of bummers and bawds. She is made to feel
that she has murdered her womanhood, that the red cross
of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social
outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and
finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No
matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to
feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse
when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her
heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor
spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce
simoon of lust. The man with whom she enters the prim-
rose path feels that he is good as his fellows. He may watch
with a sigh her descent to the noisome regions of the
damned; but comforts himself with the reflection that she
would have found her way to hades without his help that
"Virtue as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage"
that had he played the prude she would have found another
.and perhaps a baser paramour. He knows that the stain
452 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of lechery is on his soul but draws comfort from the fact
that such is the common heritage of his sex, forgets his
victim and struggles toward the stars. He is financially
honest, generous, and guards the honor of wife and daugh-
ters as God's best gift. His amorous dalliance with others
instead of weaning him from his wife, causes him to regard
her with greater veneration, to contrast her purity with his
own pollution, her virtue with another's vice. Paradoxical
as it may appear, there are no men in this world who so rev-
erence good women as those who are notorious for their
illicit amours. I am not, of course, speaking of the consorts
of common courtesans, of human hogs ; but of the men who
people the red-light district with their cast-off mistresses.
Pitiful as it may appear, it hurts a man more to trifle
with the Eighth Commandment once than to break the
Seventh a thousand times he is worse demoralized by steal-
ing a mangy mule than by ruining a maid. The male lecher
may be in all things else a lord ; the thief is considered alto-
gether and irremediably corrupt. Society will tolerate the
one if his offense be not too flagrant, but to the other it
refuses even the shadow of forgiveness. For three cen-
turies the world has been trying to explain away Shakes-
peare's poaching, but has not thought it worth while to even
apologize for his sexual perversity. Washington caught his
death while keeping an assignation with a neighbor's wife ;
but there's little said about it he's still the "father of his
country," including 70 million people of all classes and
colors. Had the "slight exposure which brought on a fatal
sickness," been the result of prowling in his neighbor's barn
instead of his boudoir his name would be anathema forever-
more. The world forgives him for debauching another
man's wife, but would never have forgiven him had he raided
the same man's henroost. It does not mean by this that
a scrawny pullet is of more importance than family honor;
it simply means that the man who steals a pullet is a cow-
ardly thief, while the one who ignores the advances of a
pretty woman is an incorrigible idiot. Ben Franklin could
have mistresses scattered all over the City of Brotherly Love,
and Dan Webster consort with all the light women of W^ash-
ington, and still be men of genius beneath whose imperial
feet Columbia was proud to lay her shining hair; but had
either been caught sneaking from a neighbor's woodpile with
a two-cent bundle of faggots, the world would have rung
with his infamy. The complaint against Demosthenes is not
that he was a libertine a man before whose honeyed elo-
quence maiden modesty and wifely virtue were as wax ; but
that he threw away sword and shield and fled like a mule-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 453
eared rabbit before the spears of Macedon. I digress long
enough to say that I have patiently investigated the story
of the great orator's flight, and am fully convinced that it
was a foul political falsehood, just as the current story of
Col. Ingersoll's cowardice and capture is a religious lie.
Of course society has to make an occasional example, and
its moral malefience, like death, loves a shining mark. It
damned Breckenridge for getting tangled up with a desiring
maid in a closed carriage, and relegated him to the political
wilderness, yet twice elevated to the presidency the most
disreputable old Falstaff that ever vibrated between cheap
beer joints and ham-fatted old washerwomen who smelled
of stale soap-suds and undeodorized diapers. Cleveland
"told the truth" when he had to and was made a little tin
Jesus of by the moral jabberwocks; Breckenridge, an in-
finitely better and brainier man, 'fessed up and couldn't go
to Congress from the studhorse district of Kentucky.
When society goes hunting for scapegoats it usually manages
to get a gnat lodged in its esophagus while relegating a
mangy dromedary to its internal economy.
Such are the conditions which prevail to-day ; but I am far
from agreeing with the dictum of Pope that "whatever is, is
right." Had the world ever proceeded on that principle we
would still be honoring robbers and liars, thieves and polyg-
amists. The wider license accorded man harmonizes neither
with divine law, decency, nor the canons of common sense.
We place womanly virtue on a pedestal and worship it while
tacitly encouraging men to destroy it. We overlook the fact
that a man cannot fracture the Seventh Commandment with-
out considerable assistance. We should adopt a loftier
standard of morality, nobler ideals for men. Because he is
more earthy than woman it does not follow that he should
be made altogether of muck. He has made some little prog-
ress since the days of Judah and Tamar, David and Bath-
sheba. He no longer consorts with courtesans on the public
highway, nor pens up half a hundred wives in a harem, then
goes broke buying concubines. He has learned that there is
such a thing as shame, assumes a virtue tho' he has it not,
seeks to conceal his concupiscence. What in one age society
drives to a semblance of concealment in the next it brands
as criminal, hence we may hope that at no distant day the
single standard of morals will become more than an irri-
descent dream that Josephs will not be confined altogether
to gum-chewing members of the Y. M. C. A. We may
eventually reach that moral plane where the male debauchee
will be considered a moral outcast ; but the time is not yet,
454 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and until its advent illicit commerce will continue to be more
demoralizing to women than to men.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule there are
women who rise superior to the social law. George Eliot,
Queen Elizabeth, Sara Bernhardt and others have trampled
the social edict beneath their feet and refused to consider
themselves sinners have laughed an outraged world to
scorn and stood defiant, sufficient unto themselves. Those
women were intellectual amazons whom naught but the
writhen bolts of God could humble, whose genius flamed
with a white light even through the dun clouds of lechery ;
but we cannot measure the workaday woman by the few
"whose minds might, like the elements, furnish forth crea-
tion/' A Bernhardt is great, not because of her social sin,
but despite thereof. With her art in the all-in-all, sex but
an incident. She is strong enough to mount the empyrean
despite the lernean serpent-coil which drags others to per-
dition to compel the world to tolerate if not forgive the
black stain in her heart because of the divine radiance which
encircles her head. Occasionally there is a woman who can
sacrifice her purity without sinking to the slums through loss
of self-respect can still maintain the fierce battle for fame,
can be grand after she has ceased to be good. Mrs. Grundy
can rave, and every orthodox goose stretch forth its rubber-
neck to express its disapproval; but instead of bending
beneath the weight of scorn, instead of sinking into the mire
of the slough upon which she has set her feet she seems like
old Antaeus, to gather fresh strength from the earth with
which to write her name among the immortals. Queen
Elizabeth is to this good day the pride of orthodox England
she had more brains than all its other monarchs combined ;
yet by solemn act of parliament it was decreed that the first
bastard born to the "Virgin Queen" should ascend the throne
of Britain. Titus was the highest possible premium placed
upon female lechery, and it was placed there after due delib-
eration by a "God-fearing," Catholic-hating Episcopalian
parliament ! Fortunately for Mrs. Wettin, the present gov-
ernmental figure-head, jolly old Liz either availed herself
of some of the "preventatives" so extensively advertised in
"great family newspapers," or neglected to own her illegiti-
mate offspring. I cannot help but think that a love-child by
Elizabeth and the courtly Raleigh would have been a great
improvement on any of the soggy-headed things spawned by
the House of Hanover. I do not apologize for nor condone
the sexual frailties of distinguished females ; the noblest ca-
reer to which any woman can aspire is that of honest wife-
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 455
hood, and if she attains to that she is, tho' of mediocre mind,
infinitely superior to the most famous wanton.
It is worthy of remark that most distinguished women
since the days of Sappho and Semiramis have been impure,
while not a few great men have been remarkable for their
continency. Woman has been called "the weaker vessel,'"'
and certam it is that men stand the glamor of greatness,
the temptations that come with riches, the white light that
beats upon a throne, much better than do Eve's fair daugh-
ters. As a man becomes great, he respects more and more
the cumulative wisdom of the world, becomes obedient; as
a woman becomes great she grows disdainful and rebellious.
Thus it is that while in the common walks of life woman
is infinitely purer than man, as we ascend into the higher
realms, whether in art, letters or statecraft, we discover a
tendency to reverse this law until we often find great men
anchorites and great women trampling on the moral code.
There be some who explain man's larger sexual liberty
on physiological grounds, excuse it on the hypothesis of
necessity. Physicians of the ultra-progressive school have
even gone so far as to assert that continence in man is the
chief cause of impotency have pointed out that it is usu-
ally the wives of good men who go wrong, and insisted that
to the former hypothesis must be attributed the latter fact.
I am unable to find any reason in physiology why such a rule
should not work both ways. I have said somewhere that
man is naturally polygamous, and I might have added with
equal truth that woman is naturally polyandrous. The dif-
ference is that woman's sexual education began earlier and
she has progressed somewhat further from "a state of
nature" wherein free love is the law. Man early began to
defend his prerogatives, to strengthen the moral concept of
his mate with a club, to frame laws for the protection of His
female property. The infraction of established custom soon
came to be considered a social crime, an offense of which
even the gods took cognizance. Woman's polyandrous
instinct yielded somewhat to education she was com-
pelled to make this sacrifice upon the altar of society. Thus
was female continence not a thing decreed by heaven or
"natural law," but was begotten of brute force. We see a
survival of the old animalistic instinct in prostitution and
the all too frequent illicit intercourse prevailing in the higher
walks of life. Unquestionably the Seventh Commandment
is violative of natural law as applied to either sex ; but most
natural laws must be amended somewhat ere we can have
even a semblance of civilization; hence we cannot excuse
456 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
man's peccadillos on that broad plea that it's "the nature of
the brute." Joseph and St. Anthony, Gautama and Sir
Galahad are ideals toward which man must ever strive with
all his strength if he would purge the sub-soil out of his
system would mount above the gutter where wallows the
dumb beasts and take his place among the gods. The cus-
tom of thousands of years to the contrary notwithstanding,
it is damnable that a wife should be compelled to share a
husband's caresses with lewd women. Tennyson assures us
that "as the husband is the wife is." Fortunately for society
this is false; still there are thorns in the bed and rebellion
in the heart of the woman who must play wife to a Love-
lace or a Lancelot-. It is not true that it is the wives of good
men who go astray; it is the wives who are naturally cor-
rupt or morally weak. A talented lady contributor to the
Iconoclast once asserted that 'tis not for good women that
men have done great deeds. Perchance this is true, for men
who do great deeds are goaded thereto, not by the swish of
crinoline, but by the immortal gods. Such acts are bred in
the bone, are born in the blood and brain. It certainly is not
for bad women that men soar at the sun, for every man
worth the killing despises corruption in womankind. He
wor ships on bended knee and with uncovered head at the
shrines of Minerva and Dian, and but amuses himself by
stealth at that of the Pandemian Venus. When Anthony
deserted his Roman wife for Egypt's sensuous Queen, he
quickly became an inervated ass and his name thenceforth
was Ichabod. Great Caesar dallied with the same dusky
wanton, but ever in his intrepid heart ruled that "woman
above reproach." Alexander of Macedon refrained from
making the wife of Persia's conquered King his mistress.
Napoleon found time even among the thunders of war to
write daily to his wife, and when he finally turned from her
it was not to seek a fairer flame but to place a son upon the
throne of France. Grant stood forth in an era of unbridled
license unsullied as a god. Great men have been unfaithful
to their marital vows, but it has been those of mediocre
minds and india rubber morals who have cowered at the feet
of mistresses who have thrown their world away for reechy
kisses shared by others. While it is true that the world's
intellectual titans have seldom been he-virgins or feathered
saints, they did not draw god-like inspiration from their
own dishonor.
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 457
"QUO VADIS."
Yes, I've read it and when I had finished the miserable
thing my head felt as tho' full of wind and dishwater. A
critic is compelled to read every book of which a foolish
public makes a fad, and in this era of decadent literature
and depraved taste, the task is usually equivalent to wad-
ing- thro' a miasmic sewer or hoofing it over an un-
profitable Sahara. If a book is only bad enough it is sure
of popular success. And "Quo Vadis" is the worst of all
the irremediable tommyrot over which an undiscriminating
public has raved. It does not even possess the doubtful
charm of artistic immorality it sinks even below the usual
level of insufferable imbecility. Where it is not morally cor-
rupt and bestially bad, it is either puerile or blasphemous.
"Quo Vadis" is the mental moon-calf, a chaotic ollapodrida
composed of the intellectual fag-ends of the universe. To
the normal mind it is neither entertaining nor instructive. It
is a conglomeration of meaningless words, a concatenation
of absurdities, a cataclysm of nescience and nonsense. It
should have been subjected to the blue-pencil of the snake-
editor then burned. The story, which occupies more than
500 dreary pages, could have been better told in a dozen
newspaper columns. It is a lingering agony long drawn
out. It is just such a book as I would expect a Texas editor
to write while enjoying an attack of delirium-tremens.
Reading it were like seining the Atlantic ocean to find a
bull-frog, or fishing in one of Talmage's idiotic sermons for
a nascent idea. The author is a Polander with the construc-
tive ability of a candle-maker and the lawless imagination
of a pack-peddler. He calls himself Henryk Sienkiewicz.
That's the way he spells it when he wants to pronounce it
he fills his mouth with hot mush, then turns a series of som-
ersaults. The translation is by Jeremiah Curtin, who hid
from the police in the Guatemalan wilds while perpetrating
his crime against the English-reading world. Mr. Henryk
Sienkiewicz is an innocent looking party, altho' "Quo Vadis"
is not his first offense. His head resembles a long green
Georgia watermelon that had been several times "plugged,"
but being unripe had not been pulled. His characters are
all automatons you see the strings and hear the creaking
of the pulleys as they proceed to cut fantastic capers before
high heaven. You no more expect to meet one of them on
the street than to see a wooden Indian in front of a tobacco
store hit somebody in the head with his tomahawk. When
458 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
you read the last chapter you expect to see the author take
off their legs, unscrew their heads and put them away in a
box with grease paints.
"Quo Vadis" is the alleged "narrative of the time of
Nero," but the author evidently expended little time or
labor acquainting himself with the people among whom his
scenes are laid. He reminds me of that Dutch philosopher
who, having never seen a lion, attempted to evolve a correct
idea of one from his inner consciousness, and produced
a mongrel cross between a hippogriff and a nightmare. His
Nero resembles the erstwhile emperor about as much as
Cataline does Chollie Boy Culberson, while his early Chris-
tians remind me of a Populist convention in Kansas. About
all that the author has learned of ancient Rome is the names
of the streets and the rooms in bathhouse and residence
and these he repeats with the tiresome industry of a pedant,
or the exasperating persistence of a poll parrot. I had to
hire a nigger to swab me off with a wet towel while I read
the work, and all I got out of it was a joblot of misinforma-
tion and a feverish desire to plug Mr. Henryk Sienkiewhat-
sky's Georgia watermelon in a new place. His plot consists
of getting his heroine into one trouble after another, and
the futile efforts of the hero to get her out by means of the
double pull of prayer to God and perquisites to the preto-
rian guards. He does not, however, imitate that American
humorist who undertook to write a society novel, and after
getting his herone enciente and his hero in jail, gave them
up as hopeless. There are some rather pretty things in the
book, but they are spoiled by too much elaboration; some
really dramatic scenes, but they are ruined by being made
to last too long. When the author gets hold of a good thing
he cannot let go. Mr. Sienkiewhatsky has undertaken to
write a great religio-historico-romantico novel, but has only
succeeded in making himself an insufferable nuisance. He
makes Roman history just as Mark Twain's sea captain
did that of the civil war to suit himself. He supplies Sts.
Peter and Paul with sermons and sayings, and pulls them
about as unceremoniously as he does the rest of his puppets.
From first to last he caters to the religious element, and
succeeds in capturing that portion of it which cannot distin-
guish between Jesus Christ and Sam Jones. He evidently
means no offense in picturing the early Christians as an un-
happy cross between fanatics and fools, and making St.
Peter neglect his holy calling to officiate as guardian angel
of an affaire d'amour. Christians believe that the Apostle
were inspired men, that their words were those given them
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 459
by the Almighty. The author of "Quo Vadis" professes
this faith, yet puts his own words into the mouths of Sts.
Peter and Paul presumes to think and speak for Omnipo-
tence himself. He might as well have introduced into his
narrative God and the Holy Ghost. My bump of reverence
is not so large as to be abnormal; but I do insist that if
Christ and the Apostles were what the church believes them
to be it is blasphemy for any man to attribute to them one
word not duly authenticated that when a novelist makes
them parrot his own nonsense he deserves the rebuke of the
church instead of its patronage.
Petronius is the only character in the book who gives
evidence of being half-way alive, and we look on incredu-
lously while he bleeds to death, declining to believe that he
really possesses blood. He is Nero's favorite, an elegant
Epicurean, a dilettante, a poetaster, talented, lazy, auda-
cious, willing to bend the pregnant hinges of the knee where
thrift may follow fawning, yet not hopelessly corrupt. He
fattens on Nero and flatters him thro' many a long year, then
insults him when he falls from favor, and goes hence in
the arms of a beautiful concubine, dies to the sound of sen-
suous music at his own banquet board. He is the only char-
acter in the book gifted with an ounce of brains, and he de-
nies all the gods, lives and dies an Atheist, mocks both
Jehovah and Jove, laughs at Christ and the Christians.
Vinicius, his nephew, is a military tribune in love with
Lygia. He is a big, powerful fellow. He quarrels with his
effete uncle, and the latter, a slender man, enervated by wine
and women, takes both the warrior's brawny hands in one
of his and holds them until he cools off Ward McAllister
conquering Sandow! Lygia is a Christian maid, a frail,
spirituelle little thing simply "a rag and a bone and a hank
of hair" yet Vinicius, at whose feet are the most volup-
tuous women* of Rome, including the female favorite of
Nero, conceives for her an unholy passion and determines
to make her his mistress. She flies from him, and he at-
tempts to seize her and drag her to his house by force, and
because she eludes him he wants her flogged! Not very
promising material out of which to manufacture a hero!
He finds her listening to a sermon by St. Peter, the great
Apostle converts him to the true faith, and his unholy pas-
sion is transmitted into pure love by religion's great alembic.
St. Peter promises her to him, but Nero concludes to have
her ravished, even tho' he has to attend to that little formal-
ity himself, then feed her to the lions, and for about three
hundred dreary pages there's hades to pay and no pitch hot.
460 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Vinicius has access to Nero, and is aware of the terrible
doom of his lady love, yet makes no attempt to avenge her
by slipping an Arkansaw toothpick into the brisket of the
royal brute. He even goes to the circus to see her destroyed
and sits on a bench and moans ; but a barbarian saves her
life by taking a monster bull by the horns and pulling its
head off thereby proving that the age of miracles was not
yet past. The hero, who had not the courage to go to his
fiancee's defense and save her or die with her, enters the
arena when the danger is past and solemnly covers her
nakedness with his pocket handkerchief. And Lygia mar-
ries Vinicius instead of the barbarian who killed the bull.
But she wasn't much of a heroine anyhow. Lygia is a cant-
ing little Goody Two-Shoes without a pint of rich blood in
her whole body, while Vinicius is an ecstatic chump, much
better qualified to engineer a holiness campmeeting than
guard a woman's honor or promote his country's glory.
With power to slay herself, Lygia goes to Nero's banquet,
fully expecting to be debauched. She suffers the pretorians
to throw her into a foul prison, expecting that before death
she will be defiled. Eunice the pagan mistress of the god-
less Petronius, realizing that the hour has struck, that she
must choose between death and becoming the creature of a
man she does not love, stretches forth her arm to the Greek
physician's steel, the blood spurts and she sinks dying upon
the bosom of her lord "her honor rooted in dishonor
stands and faith unfaithful keeps her falsely true."
In the burning of Rome the author of "Quo Vadis" has
imitated as best he could Bulwer's destruction of Pompeii;
but his description is a mere daub, a multi-headed night-
mare. There is nothing majestic, nothing awe-inspiring
about it, albeit the artist sweats blood to make it awful. It
reads like an amateur reporter's "spread" of the Chicago
fire. His description of the martyrdom of the Christians
resembles an anatomical lecture, in a dissecting room. It is
a revolting picture upon which the artist lovingly dwells
through long pages, until the heart faints and the soul
sickens with the saturnalia of blood, the interminable best-
iality. It reads like a newspaper account of a prize fight
"by rounds." A true prtist would have completed the pic-
ture with a few bold strokes of the pencil, well knowing that
familiarity even with crime breeds contempt. The Chris-
tians of "Quo Vadis" are not men and women of mental
equipoise devoted in a sane manner to the services of the
Master, but wild-eyed fanatics who court destruction, be-
lieving that the more terrible their torture the brighter their
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 461
crown. They want to be crucified because Christ suffered
that death, and they are disappointed to learn that they are
to be eaten by dogs or torn by lions, that method of destruc-
tion not affording them sufficient opportunity for suffering.
Doubtless there were in the days of Nero crazy Christians
who courted the cross, but we may safely assume that a vast
majority of the converts of Peter and Paul were sane. The
labored depiction of wholesale insanity, commingled with
scenes of blood, lechery, profligacy and tyranny, are scarce
calculated to make people better, hence "Quo Vadis" is not
a good book. It is a dismal failure from a religious, his-
torical and artistic standpoint, but it sells because a lot of
irresponsible damphools have made it a fad. Its author
should be condemned to the treadmill for having spewed
forth such an unsavory conglomeration of ignorance and in-
eptitude to debauch the minds of the people. "Ben Hur"
is the only religious novel I know of that is really worth
the reading and it could be improved by considerable
pruning.
WILLY WALLY TO WED.
Wm. Waldorf Astor is a consistent Anglo-maniac. In-
stead of remaining in this blawsted bloomin' country, upon
which he looks with the disdain of a well groomed ass con-
templating the Iliad, he hied him to "perfidious Albion"
and took up his abode in its foggy metropolis, surrounded
by m'luds, whom he so much admires. It could scarce be
expected that a country so new and crass as America would
harmonize with the triple plated culchaw and super-aes-
theticism of a man who traces his proud patrician lineage
and abundant lucre back to Johann Jakob Astor, the wood-
en-show purveyor of green coon-skins and odoriferous pole-
cat pelts, Jamaica bug- juice and brummagem jewelry. With
a cash capital of one jug of cheap rum and a shirt-tail full
of glass beads, the thrifty Johann Jakob went among the
Indians and founded a fortune which enabled him to buy
a large slice of Manhattan Island when it was selling at
four cents per acre. By feeding himself but once a day,
and then with a piece of fat pork anchored to a cotton cord,
half-soling his own pants with sea-weed and going bare-
foot in summer to save his shoes, he was able to hang to
his land until the industry and enterprise of others made it
worth almost a dollar an acre, when he passed it on to his
462 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
posterity simply because it wasn't portable. The unearned
increment accumulated from generation to generation in a
ratio of geometrical progression, until his spawn became
as rich as grease and slung on more unadulterated agony
#han a Washington nigger with ,a brass watch. Willy
Wally was the flower and fruitage of the Astor family.
American vulgarisms grated upon his sensitive soul like a
rat-tail file drawn across a sore tooth, and he arose and
fled from us as a Della-Cruscan poetess might chase her
shrinking soul from a country hog-killing or the pervasive
odor of ebullient soft-soap. Would to heaven that all the
half-baked American slobs who worship at the shrine of
European flunkeyism, and who say "eyther" and "neyther,"
would follow in his footsteps. The brainless inanities will
breed, and we should encourage them to drop their worth-
less calves in a foreign country. Willy Wally has just had
the "distinguished honor" of entertaining Ts Royal 'Igh-
ness, the Prince of Wales. His Nibs has become so well
known as a crooked gambler that he can no longer steer
the toothsome sucker against his sure-thing games, and is
devoting his talents to the profitable industry of pulling the
legs of wealthy plebs in search of social distinction. He is
always in need of cash, and even the title-loving English
people have tired of paying debts resulting from his de-
baucheries. It is well understood in England that when he
honors a parvenu with his royal presence that a fat "loan"
is expected, which is in reality his fee for the distinguished
social favor. Willy Wally is worth $150,000,000, hence can
well afford to tip this social huckster who trades upon his
title. Think of the felicity of seeing himself proclaimed in
all the Anglo-maniacal papers of his native land as the host
of Imperial Highness ! I can only wonder that Wales
waited so long before tapping the purse of the Astorian
plutocrat; but he may have been fighting shy in order to
secure a better price. The prince is heir apparent to nothing
but an empty title and the privilege of being supported by
the toil of better people. The sovereign of Great Britain is
a veritable Toom-ta-bard, a mere figurehead, of about as
little real importance in the governmental plan as a sack of
sawdust. When the Prince succeeds his mother he will be as
powerless so far as matters of great moment are concerned,
as he is at present. He can hock the throne, give the crown
jewels to harlots and divide his time between baccarat and
bawdry without throwing one cog in the governmental
machinery out of gear. He is simply a beery old bum who
has spent his life cheating at the gaming board, debauching
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST 463
the fool wives of those who hang upon his favors and dop-
ing for the foulest of all diseases. If he pays a woman any
attention her reputation is forever ruined. His leery smile
would wither the good name of a vestal virgin. Mary An-
derson, "Our Mary," understood this and cut him cold
snubbed him as she might an impudent coon in her native
Kentucky. He is the avatar of immorality, the beau-ideal of
dead beats, a social leper who should be compelled to herd by
himself and continually cry, "Unclen ! unclean !" He has
the heart of a hyena and the instincts of an ape, proving
him a true scion of the House of Hanover. He has done
absolutely nothing for his country but disgrace it. As if to
add insult unto injury, to pile Pelion upon Ossa, he has
brought forth a brood of brainless brats to fatten on the
public and perpetuate their father's foulness. No self-
respecting English gentleman would permit him to enter
his mule pasture or associate with his sows were he not
"stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings." When
he visits even a peer of the realm he insists upon naming
the "ladies" who are to be invited to meet him, and turns
the mansion of his host into a harem. That is the feculent
cur who has honored the great grandson of the old Man-
hattan hide merchant with his imperial presence. They
were well met, if the rumor be true that Willy Wally is to
wed the widow of the late Lord Randolph Churchill, "after
the prescribed term of mourning" for the husband she
drove to his death a year ago with her debaucheries ! It will
be remembered that it was the eldest son of the Prince of
Wales who was caught in a compromising attitude with
Lady Churchill at Windsor Castle. And Mr. Astor is
proud to entertain in the house to which he will bring his
soiled bride the sire of the syphilitic little simian who de-
bauched her! Yet this man was once an American! Let
us thank the dear Lord that he is such no longer, that his
infamy is altogether English. May he ever remain abroad
to play Pandarus to this bogus Prince ; to keep a cistern
as Othello would say for foul toads to knot and gender in.
Widow Churchill has indeed improved her time. Before
her dishonored husband hath rotted in his grave; before
"the prescribed term of mourning" has ended ;
"Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,"
she was spooning and yum-yuming, actually engaged to be
married to another man, impatiently awaiting the end of
her "mourning" period a tear in one eye and a wink in
464 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST.
the other I When wedded to the concubine of Clarence,
Willy Wally can go with her to lay garlands on the grave
of Lord Randolph, and there reflect that not even a de-
scendant of old John Churchill and Sarah Jennings who
prostituted a sister to fill their purse could abide the foul-
ness of this bawd. Being something of a dilettante in litera-
ture, he might collaborate with Alfred Austin, the rhymster
for royalty, in a eulogy of the titled dude whose enterprise
made Lady Churchill a widow that the facile princeps of
Anglo-maniacs might win a wife. He owes a debt of grati-
tude to the eldest son of the Prince of Wales for thus hav-
ing paved his way to a nuptial Paradise. He should burn
incense daily at the sarcophagus of the son, and recom-
mend his lively kins-woman, Mrs. J. Coleman-Drayton, to
the attention of the sire,
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
RENEWED BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE
RECALL
Jl'D LIB :ARY
3UE MAY 1 S 1971
MAY 1 2 REC'D
LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
Book Slip-50m-8,'63(D9954s4)458
r
f
^10^73
Call Number:
PS1121
B53
1911
i
Brann, W.C.
Brann the iconoclast*
"Brann
319673
I9D
/I