Chapter 9

Discreet and cautious little men are known by the company they keep. The fool was not particular about his associates; children, sick people, insane folks, rich or poor --it made no difference to him. He sometimes even sat at meat with publicans and sinners.

He was a mystic and lived in the ideal. This deeply religious quality in his nature led him into theology, and he became a clergyman--a Baptist clergyman.

But no church is large enough to hold such a man as this; the fool quality in his nature outcrops, and the jingle of bells makes sleep to the chief pew-holder impossible.

So the fool had to go.

Then he founded that unique periodical, which, in three years, attained a circulation of 90,000 copies. This paper was not used for pantry shelves, lamp lighters, or other base utilitarian purposes. It cost ten times as much as a common newspaper, and the people who bought it read it until it was worn out. All the things in this paper were not truth; mixed up amid a world of wit were often extravagance and much bad taste. It was only a fool's newspaper!

In this periodical the fool railed and jeered and stated facts about smirking complacency, facts so terrible that folks said they were indecent. He flung his jibes at stupidity, and stupidity sought to answer criticism by assassination.

Texas has a libel law patterned after the libel law of the State of New York. If a man takes from you your good name you can put him behind prison bars and place shutters over the windows of his place of business.

The people who thought Brann had injured them did not invoke the law. They invoked Judge Lynch----

A mob seized the fool, and, placing a rope about his neck, led him naked through the October night, out to the theological seminary, which they declared he had traduced.

There they smote him with the flat of their hands, and spat upon him. It was their intention to hang the fool, but better counsel prevailed, and on his signing, in terrorem, a document they placed before him, they gave him warning to depart to another state. And on his promising to do so, they let him go.

But the next day he refused to leave; and his flashing wit still filled the air, now embittered through the outrage visited upon him.

His enemies held prayer-meetings, invoking divine aid for the fool's conversion--or extinction. One man quoted David's prayer concerning Shimmei: "bring thou down his hoar head to the grave in blood!" And others still, prayed, "let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow."

But still the fool flourished his bauble.

Then they shot him.

That hand which wrote the most Carlylean phrase of any in America is cold and stiff. That teeming brain which held a larger vocabulary than that of any man in America is only clay that might stop a hole to keep the wind away. That soul through which surged thoughts too great for speech has gone a-journeying.

Brann is dead.

No more shall we see that lean, clean, homely face, with its melancholy smile. No more shall we hear the fool eloquently, and oh! so foolishly, plead the cause of the weak, the unfortunate, the vicious. No more shall we behold the tears of pity glisten in those sad eyes as his heart was wrung by the tale of suffering and woe.

His children are fatherless, his wife a widow.

Brann the Fool is dead.--The Mirror. April 14th, 1898.

* * * WILLIAM COWPER BRANN.

BY J. D. SHAW.

William Cowper Brann was born in Humboldt 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 Hawkins, 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 possessed, and leaving behind him the friends of his childhood in the only place he had ever known as his home, thus entering upon the active struggle of life at thirteen years of age, without friends, destitute of means, and almost entirely uneducated.

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 undertook to do, therefore always employed. Early in his struggle he realized the need of an education, in the acquirement of which he applied himself with eager diligence. Nature had endowed him with keen perceptive powers, a retentive 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 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 contents of his writings.

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 successfully launched "Brann's ICONOCLAST," he suffered the harassing annoyances of extreme poverty, in the endurance of which he was cheerful, hopeful and diligent in the equipment of his mind preparatory to the work he always believed 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 of tiresome circumlocution in his composition. He possessed an inexhaustible vocabulary, from which he could always find the words best fitted to convey his meaning at the moment they were most needed, and every sentence 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 ICONOCLAST that he delivered a few lectures that were well received. 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, 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, sustained 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 livery 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 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, he was shot in the back by one T. E. Davis, a partisan on the Baylor side of the Brann-Baylor trouble.

After receiving, without warning, his death wound, Mr. Brann turned upon his assailant, drew a revolver and vindicated his courage by delivering his fire with such deadly aim as to leave Davis in the throes of death, which came to his relief about twenty hours after the fray.

Mr. Brann received three wounds, from the first of which he died at 1:55 a.m., April 2nd, surrounded by his family and many sympathizing friends.

The impression has gone abroad that Mr. Brann was without friends and admirers in Waco. The falsity of this impression was made manifest, by the funeral attendance, said, and generally believed, to have been the largest ever seen here.

He was a believer in religion, therefore, it was not improper that a religious service was held, conducted by Rev. Frank Page, D.D., of the Episcopal church, though the writer, acting in according with the wishes of the family, spoke a few words at the grave.

In Oakwood Cemetery the body of Brann was laid to rest in the embrace of our common mother earth, and under a mound of floral offerings, 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.

. . .

My position as to Mr. Brann's style of journalism has been freely expressed, and while he was still alive. I do not approve of all he saw fit to write, nor of the spirit in which he wrote, but that he was a real genius and a benefactor of his race cannot be denied. It was with him, as it is with all men of his type, he made strong and bitter enemies, still his friends and admirers were numbered by thousands, I may safely say hundreds of thousands.

The purposes, direction and character of the ICONOCLAST were in many respects different from those of this Pulpit, nevertheless there was between Mr. Brann and myself a strong tie of friendship that, so far as I know, never suffered the breach of a single moment, and I sincerely mourn his loss as a personal friend whose kindly greetings were to me as glimpses of the sun on a winter's day.

Of humble birth, beset by poverty and environed by many difficulties, he applied himself to the study of literature with such diligence as to acquire abilities possessed by few, and when once equipped for the field he occupied with such consummate skill, no power of prejudice could keep him from rising like a star of the first magnitude. Alas! how soon that star has been obscured and by what ignoble means! But, against great odds, its brief existence was characterized by a brilliancy that no prejudice or hatred can ever obliterate.

Having dealt candidly with Mr. Brann while living, I will not now ignore the fact that he had faults, and his inability to overcome these marred, here and there, the splendor of his intellectual achievements. His faults, though, were of a kind that may be permitted to pass into the grave with his body. His virtues were many, and for these he was loved, despite the imperfections he could not always control. His services to mankind were numerous and they were rendered with a devotion as ardent as that of a lover; for these he will be remembered, nor can any power rob him of his fame as a literary genius--a poet, a humorist and a satirist.

Lectures and Addresses of Brann.

SPEAKING OF GALL.

Gall is a bitter subject, and I shall waste no time selecting sweet words in which to handle it. There's no surplus 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 impudence, immaculate nerve, triple-plated cheek, brass in solid slugs. It is what enables a man to borrow five dollars of you, forget to repay it, then touch you for twenty more. It is what makes it possible for a woman to borrow 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 for himself bread--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 instead of the laundry--to become poets of passion instead of authors of pie.

Gall is a very common ailment. In fact, a man without 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 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 measures men is the purse; that by which it gauges greatness the volume of foolish sound which the aspirant for immortal 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 without teeth or toenails.

We make manifest our immeasureable Gall by proclaiming from the housetops that, of all the ages which have passed o'er the hoary head of Mother Earth, the present stands preeminent; 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. Perhaps that which induced the Deity to repent him that he had made 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 campaign lie, the locomotive and the scandal in high life; that because we 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 cheek, red as the fires of Troy: They twitter of lovies and dovies, of posies and goose-liver pie, while pretty men applaud 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 saloon. 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 Parkhurst. Rome had her Cicero and her Caesar, but was never equal to a Culberson or a Corbett. The princes of old conquered the earth, but the modern plutocrats put a mortgage 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 important 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 chrysanthemum? 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 smolders the sulphurous caloric of the nether world--when its metes and bounds are irrevocably fixed for it--when it can only grow in certain prescribed directions, painfully mapped out for it by bumptious pismires who imagine that their little heads constitute the intellectual 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 bidder 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 dicker with a titled young duke, instead of using the forecastle of a No. 9 foot to drive his spinal column up through his plug-hat like a presidential lightning-rod; will actually purchase for his daughter some disgusting little title upon which rests the fateful bar-sinister of a woman's shame, and is encumbered by a dizzy young dude, too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal--too everlastingly "ornery" to raise a respectable crop of wild oats-proves that the young lollipop lordlings 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 encouraging 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 matrimonial 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, sometimes pay big prices to get their portraits in the public prints--accompanied by puffs that would give a buzzard a bilious attack.