Chapter 11

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 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 inherit genius than you can inherit a fall out of a balloon. It is the direct gift of that God who is no respecter of persons, 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 aristocracy of intellect, founded by the Almighty; the aristocracy 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 generations--if everybody did his duty--and that in 20 generations 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 of 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 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 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 superlative 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 shoreless sea of shame. I am no apologist for crime-- I would not cover its naked hideousness with the Arachne-- robe of sentiment; but I do believe that many a social outcast, many a branded criminal, will get as sweet a harp in the great hereafter as those who have kept themselves unspotted 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 captain 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 pomp 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 disappointment 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 penitentiary 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 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 within forty miles.

The girl who flirts with a featherless young gosling till he doesn't know whether he's floating in a sea of champagne 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 fractures--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 10-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 whosoever cares to buy; who would rob the orphan of his patrimony 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 over his own signature, then brings suit for breach of promise--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 every 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 antagonistic as the doctrines of infinite love and infant damnation. 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 also the most dignified--since the extinction of the dodo. No pope or president, rich in the world's respect; no prince or potentate 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 of and he feels like asking 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 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 archangel, I don't wonder that the Lord once decided to drown the whole layout like a litter of blind puppies.

. . .

A lecture on Gall were woefully incomplete without some reference to the press, that "archimedean lever" and "molder of public opinion." The average newspaper posing as a "public educator" is a specimen of Gall that cannot be properly analyzed in one evening. Men do not establish newspapers 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 divorce 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 criticize 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 through 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 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 until they got a good opportunity to make a grandstand 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 country. 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 religious 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 illustration 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 falsehood. 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 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 eternity? "Poor and content is rich," and rich enough. With a roof to shelter those his heart holds dear, and table furnished 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 hypocrisy. I would rather be a peddler of hot peanuts than a President who gives to bond-grabbers and boodlers privilege 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 through blue immensity, and the cool mists creeping round the purple 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.

* * * BLUE AND GRAY.

AN ADDRESS TO THE OLD VETERANS.

[The following is a summary of Mr. Brann's address to the United American Veterans, San Antonio, Feb. 22, 1894.]

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 professional 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 partisan 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 Republican, 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 common country, has contributed new power to the car of human progress. They are my countrymen, friends and brethren. Are you of the North? Then I claim with you a joint interest 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 with its cumulative greatness of forty centuries.

I have watched the progress of the United American Veterans' Association with uncommon interest, because it is distinctively a national organization, in which shriveled sectionalism and party prejudice find no place. Its corner- stone 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 furnish 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 Carthage, 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?