The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12

by William Cowper Brann

A MEMORIAL TO W. C. BRANN.

It has been suggested that the friends and admirers of Mr. Brann join in a contribution to mark the spot where he sleeps. It is proposed, if this meets the approval of friends, that it be a granite vase, some four or five feet high, surmounted either by a life size statue in bronze or marble of the dead, holding in his hand a copy of the ICONOCLAST, as if offering it to the passer-by, and the word ICONOCLAST upon it in letters sufficiently large to be read at a distance of twenty feet. It is said by those who claim to know that such a memorial can be erected at a cost of some $3,000 or $4,000.

Many of his friends would not approve, and neither would he if he could express himself, of anything that would require any large expenditure of money while so many thousands of worthy men and women are struggling in vain to secure the bare necessities of life, these holding that costly monuments can do the dead no good, and are in bad taste in the living. There can be no doubt that thousands in the years to come will seek his grave to lay their offerings upon the shrine of genius, and while his will be marked I wish to say in this connection to those asking in what condition Mrs. Brann is left financially that while she will have sufficient to keep the wolf from hers and her children's door if properly managed, that she will not have over a tithe of what it has been published that she would.

Submitting these few words for the consideration of his friends, I can say if a response sufficiently favorable come, then the proper steps will be taken to carry it out; if not, nothing more will be said, at least not from me; and as his friend I would not approve of keeping standing in the ICONOCLAST a list of subscribers to the fund; if the suggestion is carried out it will be time enough to publish it when the work is finished and the statue unveiled. G. B. GERALD.

. . .

The man who takes up Brann's work will only succeed, not replace him. He was a star of the first magnitude, and such bodies are not created in an hour—not always in an age. He who attempts an imitation, however clever his work, would stand before the world, self-confessed, a failure from the first. Booth, in his favorite character inspired us—Joe Jefferson could only prompt us to laughter. Yet, is not Jefferson without genius in his way? There is no reason, however, why he who follows may not be as loyal to the faith, as courageous in the fight, as Brann was known and acknowledged to be. The Chief is dead, but did not die until he had blazoned the way for those who dare follow where he so bravely led.

. . .

In life Brann often said he wanted no mourning worn for him, save that which enshrouded the hearts of his family and friends—that the mere trappings of woe were but its "limbs and outward flourishes," which, too often, failed to reach the heart.

* * * SPEAKING OF BRANN.

Died Fighting April 2, 1898.

Where now is all his thundering?
He has "fall'n on stillness" in the Spring,
And even echo answers not,
"In that dim land where all things are forgot,"
His surging sentences, his cadenced chimes
Of speech that through the seven climes
Wooed the many to rapt listening.

Soothed by the wind of the dead men's feet,
He lies in slumber senseless-sweet.
His fame, his wife's and children's tears,
The issue that made up his manly years,
His hates and loves the burgeoning Earth receives,
And list, "a little noiseless noise among the leaves"
Of southern springtime pity does entreat.

A fighter's faults were his, but strong
The blows he struck at throned Wrong;
Beauty he loved as ever love the brave;
The April air breathes beauty o'er his grave.
Truth he pursued. Lo, he has found her now:
She kissed the kiss of peace upon his brow.
His ears are filled with Silence's sweet song.

Fighting he died, marched into the Night,
His banner blazing with his bravery's light.
"Shot from behind," the story goes,
To glorify him and to damn his foes.
The foes he fought were Cowardice and Fraud;
They have prevailed again, but, O Lord God,
Thou wilt raise up still others for Thy fight.

Rejoicing loud is in the House of Sham,
Bigots to themselves make deep salaam,
Shoddydom rubs its ringed hands in glee,
The Ogre's scandal-scourged at each pink tea,
Pecksniff's pray that he has gone to swell
The galaxy of bravery and brains in Hell—
Great joy in small souls all not worth a damn!

But where men think, feel, as men can,
"Bon voyage through the dark, good man!"
They call and take up his pen-lance
And brandish it again 'gainst Ignorance
In power fortified with a myriad lies
And every great-heart, fine-soul cries
As pledge of fealty, "Here's to you, Brann!"

What tho' he hear no rumor of our hail!
What tho' we follow searching for that Grail
A bettered world with less of woe and pain,
And better gods than Privilege and Gain,
Out in the darkness, by assassins sped,
'Tis better far to join defeated dead
Than share success with him whose soul's for sale.

—WILLIAM MARION REEDY, in St. Louis Mirror.

* * * DEATH OF W. C. BRANN.

What a sable pall was flung over the spirits of countless thousands who heard last week that Editor W. C. Brann, of the ICONOCLAST, was no more. "The heavens seem hung in black and the clouds are wrung of their stars," wrote a St. Paul friend who idolized the apostolic seer.

The world is dark with excess of grief for the immortal soul of an illimitable genius has been sent to its maker and scattered with the star dust of the eidouranion William C. Brann was an apostle. Like Christ, like Lincoln and others whom we deify, he was misunderstood and reviled, and a cowardly bullet pierced him in the back, a martyrdom of which he had a premonition.

The head and front of his offending was strict adherence to the truth, though the heavens fall. He knew no fear, but was never the aggressor.

The lamented Brann was an educator, and an emancipator of human liberty and human thought. The hypocrite stood in awe of his judgment. When he indicted him to be arraigned before the great bar of public opinion he dipped his pen in acid that seared the eyeballs, and wrote their sentence diluted with worm-wood and gall. It is not small wonder that the Judas Iscariots and the lemurs trembled at his power.

Brann's tragic exit from this vale of tears is inspiration now for jackals to attack his name. Like the dull, dull ass they are not afraid to kick the dead lion, while their ears wave to the seventh heaven of delight. In earth life they feared his name, but like ghouls they now go down into the grave to besmirch his memory. And this, too, from those who profess to follow the teachings of the meek and lowly Nazarene.

Strange as it may seem to the hypocrite, Brann was a religious man. His creed was the religion of humanity. His biographers, if they do him justice, will write his name with the blood of the lamb high up on the flying scroll.

Brann's friends, and they are legion, should not repine if he is not canonized as his bones are hearsed in death, for "whenever was a god found agreeable to everybody? The regular way is to lynch, as the Baylorites did, to hang, to kill, to crucify and excoriate and trample them under their stupid hoofs, cloven or webbed, as the case may be, for a century or two; and then take to braying over them when you discover their divine origin, still in a very long-eared manner!" So speaks the sarcastic man, in his wild way, very mournful truths.

Brann was as the "life-tree, Igdrasil, wide-waving and many-toned, with fimbriated tendrils down deep in the Death-Kingdoms, among the oldest dead dust of men and with boughs reaching always beyond the stars and ever changeless as the immutable empyrean of eternal hope."

They could better spare the whole State of Texas than William C. Brann. While the galled jades winced beneath the scorpion whips of his satire, and would have preferred fireballs, they felt the potency of his dynamics and scurried to the soldier works of the masters for a glint of mental pabulum they had never known before.

The editor of The Sunday Eye is in receipt of many letters from admirers of the late lamented genius. They are rich in anathema and maranatha of Brann's heartless and cruel detractors. With one accord they have expressed the wish that I excoriate the revilers who desecrated by bludgeon words the sacrosanct acre of God in which reposes the mortal tenement of the sacred scribe.

I do not believe as Mr. Charles Campbell, of Anchor, does, that they should be gibbeted high as Haman. Nor do I think as Mr. C. E. Stewart, of Minier, does, that they should be lashed naked through the world and lambasted till death ends the heart throbs. I believe that they should be permitted to live until they have read the great genius and learned to understand and exalt him. It would make them better for it, religion would not suffer by it, though Baylor sank a thousand leagues beneath the seven-hued regions of Tartarus.

The ICONOCLAST minced no words. When it dealt body blows they landed in the brisket and affected the solar plexus in a very apprehensive way.

Lincoln was gentle and generous, Ingersoll was brilliant and broad, but Brann was all this and greater. His untimely death was a distinctive loss to the march of civilization and a gain to the shams of hypocrisy which takes now a new grip on the English language to batter down the shackles Brann had welded about them with public opinion.

Brann was a reformer who meant reform. He wore his heart upon his sleeve, but would be cruel to be just. He endured mental anguish great as was suffered in the garden of Gethsemane. As the sweetest perfume exhales from a crushed, blooming rose so the sweeter and nobler sentiments welled up from the perennial spring of his fountains of love when most bruised and racked with pain.

I have no fear of his acceptance on the right hand up there where men are judged by their deeds and not by semblance of better things that a canting world may simulate. He is in Valhalla with the other battling heroes where the alabaster boxes of eternal love are showered upon the halo of their brighter radiance. Brann wrote to catch the wide world's attention that he might teach them gentler things than feculent shocks. He was essentially an ascetic devoted to uplifting in his own sure way.

All the classes came trippingly to his and all the dogmas, all the purlieus of sociology and political economy were as an open book to him. When he soared to the sun he never dropped into the sea from Icarian wings. His iconoclasm was the decadence of the social cesspool and the expurgation of money power which he believed was the ne plus ultra of anarchy and the genius of diabolic perfidy. He preached as he felt, tender and terrible, loving and vehement, a strange commingling of Titanic vulgate and cooing peace. Brann was eccentric but all genius must have a certain leeway without being dubbed Quixotic. He was a man whose loftiest ideality was purity in womanhood. He adored children and was in many respects child-like. He was as

"The long light that shakes across the lake,
Where the cataract leaps in its glory."

Friend Brann, through blinding mist of sympathetic tears, I say adieu.—Geo. L. Hutchin, in the Bloomington Eye.

* * * A PEN PICTURE OF BRANN

It is hard for me to realize that Brann is dead. It seems only yesterday night that he sat opposite me at table, and talked of his plans and projects and spoke so hopefully, so boyishly of the future that he was never to realize.

For a long time I had a curiosity to see Brann, of the ICONOCLAST. His pyrotechnic vocabulary, his strange admixture of erudition and slang, his almost womanly sympathy and the more than Apache ferocity with which he pursued his enemies, the tender and poetic metaphor that gemmed his iron prose, and the singular blending of optimism and pessimism that characterized most of his work suggested an anomaly that appealed to the imagination, and I was anxious to see what Brann looked like.

I had an opportunity when he came here to lecture. I knew his business manager, Mr. Ward, who figured in the dreadful duel in which he lost his life, and who was, at that time, arranging his lecture dates. Ward is a big Texan, over six feet high, and I suppose he weighs all of two hundred pounds. He is a lawyer who drifted into journalism years ago, and under a somewhat rough-and- ready exterior there is not much trouble in finding the gentleman and the scholar. Well, Ward introduced me to Brann, and after a while the three of us foregathered in a private room of a down-town cafe, and stayed there for several hours that I remember with unmixed delight.

Looking back at the episode, I have difficulty in framing my impressions of the famous Texan editor. I think the principal thing that struck me was his lack of pose and affection. All through his talk, and he was in high spirits and talked a great deal, there were sparks of delightful naivete.

"I want to pull out of the ICONOCLAST as much as I can," he said. "And since we have made enough money to do so, I have bought a great many outside contributions. My idea," he continued, "is this: As long as I wrote most everything in the publication myself it was strictly a one-man paper; and if anything should have happened to me it would have been worth nothing to my wife and family. What I am trying to do now is to organize a corps of contributors who can keep it up if I should be taken away."

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * SEMPER VIVAT IN MEMORIAM.

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

Brann's enemies were professed followers of this Christ. With tearful eyes and uplifted, supplicating faces they besought the God of Justice to—in the beautiful language of the prayer left us by his Son—"lead us not into temptation" and "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"; and the next day passed resolutions congratulating a mob of brutal ruffians for frightening a sick woman nearly to death, kidnaping her defenseless husband and forcing him—under threats of instant death—to retract what they knew to be the truth. A few weeks later, they were "resoluting" and "sympathizing" and formulating plans for the erection of a monument to the memory of two would-be assassins who were killed while attempting to carry out their cowardly work. Oh, Christianity!—that thy cloak—pure as polar snow—must cover such infamy!

Brann's death blots from the firmament of American journalism its brightest star. He was an intellectual titan. In him was embodied the philosophy of Carlyle— the brilliancy of Voltaire,—the withering sarcasm of Desmoulins—the poetry of Ingersoll. His genius, universal as that of Shakespeare, was ever aligned on the side of the weak and oppressed; ever, with god-like fearlessness, he stood for Right against Might—for purity against corruption. In church, in state, in society— he tore the painted mask from the face of hypocrisy and exposed it, in all its festering hideousness, to the world's ridicule.

Brann has been damned as an atheist—by people who have never read, and are incapable of reading and understanding, a single paragraph from his pen. The author of "Tiens ta Foi," "Charity," "Man's Immorality"—was not an atheist. He refused to bend the knee to superstition— to lend a patient ear to earth's self-constituted vice- gerents of Omniscience. But God spoke to him through nature. The flowers he so passionately loved were reminders of His loving tenderness; in the divine music of Wagner, Liszt and Chopin, he recognized the voice of God. His faith was broad as the universe—deep as infinity. He loved purity; he hated hypocrisy; and for this he died —a martyr.

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

Brann is dead! Still forever is the pen whose wondrous alchemy transposed the English language—with all its inherent harshness—into music sweet as song of Israfil. Stilled is the heart that stood alone, defiant, a bulwark 'gainst the wave of corruption that is engulfing our land.

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

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

* * * BRANN'S BRAVE BATTLE.

With humble soul and heavy heart we take up our pen to chronicle the death, yea the murder of one of the brightest and purest noblemen that God ever created—W. C. Brann. A few years ago he, W. H. Ward and the writer each occupied desks, side by side, in the editorial rooms of The Waco Morning News. There budded a friendship between that trio that we full believe shall blossom into ripe fraternal love on a shore as yet unknown to Mr. Ward and the writer. Mr. Brann was editor of the ICONOCLAST, and as its name indicates it is a smasher of idols from Tadmor in the Wilderness to the mountains of Hepsedam. Scorning the sensual, always against the vulgar, in much the same manner as Carlyle, Brann stuck the gaffles of truth deep into the sides of wrong in high places, and exposed rottenness wherever found. With rugged English, twisted into sentences more cutting than whips of scorpions' tails, he stood up and fought for right as opposed to might. He tore off the plaster of moral cancerous ulcers, now so prolific on the body politic of the world, and held high the treachery, the bigotry, the superstition, the damnably dirty doings of a generation that accepts hidebound dogmas for the ultima thule of reasoning and truth; precept for right and in reality worships at the shrine of exploded fables and crowns, by its own acts, the parrot as its preceptor—lives and dies, having no desire to do anything that somebody has not done before! Is it any wonder that such a man as W. C. Brann should fall a victim to such a populace? He was hounded to his death—mobbed, spat upon, shot and murdered, by several thousand pin-headed obstreperous patrons and followers of a little pee-wee college, that turns young ladies out enceinte almost yearly and hires its professors for less salaries than a railroad brakeman gets.

Brann's good work will live, his fame will survive and an intellectual race yet will rise up and bless his name when the lying epitaphs of the assassin sent to the d—— by him shall have crumbled to earth ten thousand years. We cannot close this faint tribute of respect to our dead friend without acknowledging the worth of such true men as Mr. W. H. Ward and Judge G. B. Gerald, both of whom are able, brave, high-toned gentlemen, and both of whom came near dying, and both were willing to die, or see that Mr. Brann got fair play while he lived.—S. M. Scruggs, in the Tribune.

* * * BRANN IS NO MORE.

On the first of April—All Fools' Day—W. C. Brann, of the ICONOCLAST, and T. M. Davis riddled each other with bullets in Waco, Texas. Both of them died the following day. The trouble between them grew out of the attack made by Brann in his paper on the Baylor University, a Baptist institution attended by the daughter of Davis. At the time that Brann accused the students of the college of immorality, he was assaulted by them, and barely escaped lynching at their hands. He was forced to make a retraction and was ordered to leave town. Being a courageous man Brann refused to emigrate.

The Irish Standard chronicles the untimely and awful death of Mr. Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won the admiration of the American people. He was a man of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective, often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and he despised religious intolerance. As an American he loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo- American alliance. He held hypocrites in supreme contempt and lashed the pharisees unmercifully. When Catholic priests and sisters were misrepresented by sectarian bigots, he used his tongue and pen in their defense. So ably did he vindicate the Catholic church from their aspersions that many supposed him to be a Jesuit in disguise. In the last issue of the ICONOCLAST he told a correspondent what he thought of Mrs. Shepard and ex- priest Chiniquy. Had Brann lived in a more civilized community than among the bigoted Baptists of Texas, he would have used more elegant language in his magazine than it contained for the past few months.

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

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

* * * BRAVE AND BRAINY BRANN

The killing of W. C. Brann in a duel at Waco, Texas, a few days ago, is but a repetition of the punishment that generally falls to newspaper men who persistently print the truth. Brann was an intellectual giant. The rarest accomplishments possible for a human mind to acquire were not too intricate for him to master. His versatility was as boundless as his originality was unique. Absolutely fearless and utterly indifferent regarding his personal safety, he dared to expose the charlatan and the trickster in whatever walk of life he chanced to meet him. Endowed with a mind that was only circumscribed by the Infinite itself and fortified with a thorough classical education, he held the hypocrite up to contempt and public scorn and deservedly lashed him with the lash of sarcasm. True, some of our erudite(?) members of the press have presumed to pass judgment upon him; men as incapable of rendering a just criticism of his talents as they have found it impossible to rise to his standard of excellence. One who is especially in love with himself has said that had Brann been less soulless he might have been an ornament to his trade. Trade! When men attain Brann's intellectual standing, and they are as rare as the intellectual sloven is numerous, the TRADE evolves into a profession. It is indeed disheartening to see one devote his life and his talents to truth and justice, only to be belittled after death by those whose poverty-stricken understandings render them incapable of half-appreciating the man's genius, to say nothing of his nobility of purpose in endeavoring to elevate mankind. He has been accused of blasphemy by another who has probably been as startled by Brann's truthful declarations as he himself would have been had he at some time dared to commit such a rash act. Despite these intellectual "pee-wees" Brann's writings will live long after the surf of eternity has carried the penny-a-liners out upon the sea of oblivion. In the tragic death of W. C. Brann the world has lost the most versatile pen the century has produced and it is with sincere grief that we chronicle his sudden taking away.—The Gilroy (Cal.) Telegram.

* * * BRANN, OF THE ICONOCLAST.

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

* * * A MARTYR TO FREE SPEECH.

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

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

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

EDITORIAL ETCHINGS.

TO THE PUBLIC.

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

. . .

In the Vicksburg Dispatch of Sunday, February 13, appeared an article from the pen of Ida Clyde Gallagher, of Vicksburg, a very bright and gifted writer, in which she pays a feeling tribute to the character of W. C. Brann. The article in question has been widely read and copied. It was written while Mr. Brann was on his Southern lecture tour, and is peculiarly appropriate to this issue of the ICONOCLAST. I therefore reproduce it with pleasure:

"The development of all really great forces afford an interesting study for the mind capable of grasping and measuring them. The overflow of a river, the eruption of a volcano or the devastation of a storm arouse admiration even while they inspire terror and awaken awe. But it is the purely human force, with its infinite variety, which charms while it enthralls. A man born and reared, as other men, bound by the same ties, subject to the same laws, fettered by the same conventionalities, to throw off the yoke of circumstances, break through the trammels of the conventional, grapple with and overcome every obstacle that lies in his path, until he reaches the summit of Olympus and bodily fronts the Gods, or towers among men, like Saul above his brethren. We may envy him, as we ever envy the truly great, or be disposed to close his lips in death, because he tells us unpalatable truths, yet admire him secretly and in our hearts exalt him. We may not confess as much while he lives and labors, but when his lips are dumb in death, his breast pulseless, we lay our hatred and envy in the dust at his feet, and rear in marble a gleaming shaft to commemorate the virtues of the dead. The name of "Brann" has inspired this homily; Brann, of the ICONOCLAST, the man whose praises are being sung loved by half the world, by the other half condemned, whose whole life has been a battle and a march, who wars as did the Titans and if he gropes blindly at times ever struggles toward the light. This is the man who began his education while rearing a family, and went from behind the smokestack of a locomotive to the tripod of a daily paper. Who in a few years has risen to dizzy heights of fame, whose utterances are waited for and attended by more than half a million people, many of whom he does not and can not convert, but all of whom he impresses. A man who is said to be an ideal husband and father, a tender, loyal and devoted friend, yet whose entire existence is devoted to a warfare against existing evils, bitter as death, and uncompromising as the grave. You may not always be right, Mr. Brann, indeed, we shrewdly suspect you are not, but we respect you and admire you just the same, because you attack boldly and fight fearlessly. Yes, we admire you, and shall not wait to whisper it to your tombstone either."

. . .

If the futility of brute force as an appeal to reason required an object lesson, it might easily be found in the fact that while the hand that wielded one pen lies motionless in death, hundreds of others have been raised up to fight under the same banner.

. . .

Several months ago a number of the students of the Baylor University, acting without regard for the laws of either God or man, attempted to mob the editor of the ICONOCLAST in an effort to bridle his pen. The hand which they sought to restrain has now been enjoined by a court whose order is irrevocable. In every state in the union men have come forward to take up a fight which Brann himself considered ended, and the object is accomplished. In reproducing tributes to the memory of the dead editor I have felt it my duty in several instances to blue-pencil certain passages which might have been considered as reflecting upon those who are innocent and unoffending. The moral here needs no pointing.

. . .

To his readers and admirers, who have uniformly expressed regret over the death of her husband, Mrs. W. C. Brann desires to return a woman's thanks for the kindly sympathy extended.

* * * SIMPLE STATEMENT OF FACTS.

BY W. H. WARD.

Concerning the tragedy of April 1, in which W. C. Brann lost his life and I, myself, was slightly wounded, as a sensational event, enough and more than enough, has already been said in the daily press. I should not have mentioned the matter here at all, but I know the readers of the ICONOCLAST will expect a statement of the facts. I therefore give a subjoined account of the affair from the Independent Pulpit, published in Waco by J. D. Shaw. Mr. Shaw is well known to the people of Texas. There is not a man in the state who will doubt that his account of the tragedy is in absolute accord with truth and justice. In the extract referred to Mr. Shaw says:

LET THE PLAIN TRUTH BE TOLD.

The lateness of this Pulpit affords me an opportunity to correct some false impressions with regard to the recent tragedy in which W. C. Brann lost his life.

That there should have been some errors of view among bystanders as to the various incidents in that deadly conflict is not surprising, and of these, trifling in their nature, I will not here write.

The idea that Brann was seeking a difficulty with Davis is certainly false. He had made his arrangements to go on a lecturing tour, had spent the day at his home, went to town about 4 o'clock that afternoon to get a shave, and on his return walked with his business manager, Mr. W. H. Ward, by the office in which Davis was sitting. Having passed the office a few steps, Davis stepped out and shot him in the back. This was the shot that killed him, and it was after receiving it that he turned, drew his revolver and opened fire upon his assailant.

Now as to Mr. Ward: He left Brann's house some time after Brann did, had joined the latter a few minutes before the firing, and was at the time walking by his side. When Davis fired, Ward jumped at him in an attempt to get his, Davis' pistol, caught hold of it over the muzzle and was shot through the hand. Ward was unarmed, having left his revolver in a grip at Mr. Brann's house. His hands were gloved and he had no idea of a difficulty at the time.

I state these facts not through any feeling of prejudice, having never been mixed up in the Brann-Baylor trouble, but solely in the interest of the truth. I can understand how an excited observer, seeing Mr. Ward extend his hand to get Davis' pistol and seeing immediately the fire of the same, might have thought that Ward did the shooting, and it was this mistake that caused his arrest.— Independent Pulpit.

To this I will only add, that neither Mr. Brann nor myself were in the slightest anticipation of trouble. He left home, having the boy to drive him down in his buggy, shortly before 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the tragedy. I awaited his return to drive to the train to meet my brother, whom I was expecting with a party of friends that evening. At 20 minutes to 6 o'clock he had not returned and I took the first car down, as several ladies who chanced to be at Mr. Brann's home will testify. I left the car at Fourth and Austin streets at about 6 o'clock, walked to Herz Bros., gave an order for some books, and met Mr. John Guerin, walked with him toward the depot, met Mr. Brann at the corner of Fourth street and Bankers' alley, chatted with him for a moment, when Mr. Guerin walked on, and Mr. Brann and myself crossed the street and walked towards Austin avenue. We had passed the place, where I afterwards learned Davis' office was located, about ten paces, when Davis came out and opened fire from the rear. His opening fire was the first warning of the trouble. We were walking side by side, conversing together, when the first shot was fired. That shot entered Mr. Brann's back, and caused his death. I will add, that I was unarmed, and had not removed my driving gloves, which were taken off when my wound was dressed, and had been with Mr. Brann not more than three minutes when the shooting occurred. These are the facts, as substantiated by the signed statement of over a score of eye-witnesses, the same now being in the hands of my attorneys, Messrs. Baker & Ross, and C. R. Sparks. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, therefore I shall have but little to say of Mr. Davis. My acquaintance with him was brief; I never met him but once—when he was shooting another man, IN THE BACK.

* * *

Reference has been made by Judge Gerald to the pathetic tragedy in Brann's life because of the loss of his daughter. The burden of sorrow which he bore is beautifully revealed: in the following account of that tragedy which was written by Brann.

THE LAST LESSON.

"Is there no stoning save with flint and rock?
Yes, as the dead we weep for testify—
No desolation but by sword and fire?
Yes, as your moanings witness, and myself
Am lonelier, darker, earthier for my loss."

Poor in gold and goods yet richer than fancy ever fabled in home and happiness, the young father toiled and hoarded his scant wage; the little mother denied herself a thousand things that women covet, and they said: "It is for her, our Inez, our fairy queen. Her feet shall find no thorns in life's path; a father's strength a mother's love shall fill it with sweetest flowers."

Beautiful to their eyes, and other eyes, was she, as Grecian sculptor's dream and still more beautiful when childhood's early years flashed by and the bud was bursting into womanhood's glorious bloom. No crowned empress so imperial seemed, yet pride so womanly and softened by such grace that each and all yielded sweet allegiance to her sway.

And they would sit and watch her at her books or play, drinking with greedy ear her admiring teacher's oft-told tale of triumphs won in classroom or on the green, and watched her comrades,—loving subjects they—weave crowns of flowers for her fair brow and hail her queen.

And so the days went by, toilsome yet happy days until, when scarce passed to her 'teens, the youthful swains began to sigh for her and bashful cast their tribute of flowers—such as they knew she loved—into the open door, then blushingly retreat, fearing cold comfort from her imperious eyes. And one there was of her own age, who seemed to haunt the street, until the mother noticed it and said:

"Daughter, what does he ever near the house?"

And the father fretted and spoke harshly of the boy, and sharply to his child saying: "You do encourage the little fool to haunt the place. Speak to him no more." And the daughter made reply:

"Father, I never spoke to him, nor he to me." And she arose, and taking her music roll went forth and the boy followed her.

"Our daughter deceives us!" cried the father fierce with rage; and he followed the twain.

"You have deceived me, Daughter!"

His voice was sharp, and, quailing before his wrath as though it were a blow, she gasped, "Oh, Father!" and returned with him in silence to their home.

And the little mother fretted and lectured her; but she sat silent, brooding upon the great wrong, and the queenly eyes were full of tears that seemed frozen by her pride and could not fall.

They never fell. The gust of anger from the doting father's lips, the breath of doubt of her dear word, and her little heart seemed broken quite; the world seemed desolate. The father's good-night kiss; the mother's tender solicitude were in vain,—the wound was too deep to heal. And while they slept and dreamed sweet dreams of her fair future she poured her heart out to the good God, who never doubted her, and leaving a little note that was a wailing cry of hopeless pain, passed by her own fair hand to the great beyond.

And the father kissed the dead lips of his first born and knew that he had killed her. And ever in his heart there is a cry, "I killed her!" And night and day that cold, sweet face doth haunt him; and day and night he hears that piteous cry, wrung from his child when he broke her heart, "Oh, Father!" and ever the little mother's lamentation goes up to heaven, "Our house is left unto us desolate!"