Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 2

The funeral of W. C. Brann did not move promptly on the hour. It had been fixed for 3 P.M., but there was some delay. During the moments just preceding the funeral services Mrs. Brann went upon the lawn herself, accompanied by a friend, and she directed the cutting of certain buds and roses which had been favorites of her departed husband, and when the services were held in the parlor she placed this collection of cut flowers upon the head of the casket. The entire place was crowded with sympathetic friends, and by her side were Mr. Brann's sister and her husband, who came to Waco to attend the funeral, being summoned from their Fort Worth home.

A bra.s.s quartette, composed of L. N. Griffin, first cornet; J. C. Arratt, second cornet; H. C. Collier, trombone; Fred Podgen, baritone horn, rendered sweet sacred music, one selection being Nearer My G.o.d to Thee. Mrs. Tekla Weslow Kempner sung Mr. Brann's favorite selection, The Bridge. The service was conducted by Rev. Frank Page of the Episcopal Church.

The procession was a very long one. It extended all along Fifth Street from the house, and when Austin Avenue was reached a large number dropped out of the line, as was done in the Ross, c.o.ke and Harris funerals, and proceeded to Oakwood by other streets. A bra.s.s band preceded the procession, playing martial music.

The street was lined with pedestrians and vehicles, some of whom stood for thirty minutes waiting for the cortege.

The delay was occasioned, however, at the home. Soon after the services were concluded, Mrs. Brann requested that the casket be opened again, and her request was complied with. For a few minutes she was alone with her dead, and in that few minutes she gazed for the last time upon her companion, her loved one and her husband.

When the procession reached the cemetery it was found that a large number had preceded the cortege to the grave, many vehicles and persons on foot being in waiting. A large number went on the cars, three cars leaving the home.

The services at the grave consisted of an address by Mr. J. D. Shaw, friend of the deceased. He said:

"My friends and friends of W. C. Brann: I come this evening at the request of Mr. Brann's family to lay tribute upon his grave. I speak as a friend living for a friend dead. No ordinary man has fallen in the person of W. C. Brann. Nature fas.h.i.+oned him to be a power among his fellow men. By industry, by hard study, by careful observation, by diligent research, by interminable effort, he rose from comparative obscurity to teach and impress the civilized world. In the person of W. C.

Brann we have an ill.u.s.tration of what may be expected in a country like ours. He was a natural product of our American democracy. He was a star that rose by dint of his own effort, his own determination, surrounded by circ.u.mstances that invited merit from the common people, from the whole people. W. C. Brann was a cosmopolitan character. He could never be confined within the limits of a party or a creed. So great was his grasp, so far-reaching his thought, that he lived in the world and not in a mere party. He was found always with that party or with that sect that represented what he thought to be right and true. A peculiarity of this man was his dual personality. Few people fully understood him in this respect. As a bold genius, as an intellectual giant, as a man armed and equipped with intellectual fire, and as a man with a n.o.ble ambition to stand by the right, he was a sworn foe of hypocrisy and fraud.

And when he took into his brave hands the pen, he made fraud and hypocrisy quake and tremble. Burning words came from his tongue, scorching and branding every fraud.

Men looked upon him then as a hard man, as a heartless man because he told them the truth. But the other side of this man's individuality, I, for one, have had the opportunity to see. He could not only sow intellectually; he was not only able to entertain the civilized world with burning words, with thoughts that were winged and that went like lightning, but he was a man of heart and of honor, and a man of the warmest and most generous love. He could go towards the skies intellectually, but in his heart he lived close to nature. He loved nature.

He loved the very trees under whose shade he rested. He loved the little birds that sang in the trees, the gra.s.s upon which he walked, the flowers that bedecked the forest. And he loved his fellow man. He had a warm, generous heart and affection that went out to the poor and those who were needy. W. C. Brann was never known to attack a man who was a man. It was the strong and the defiant that he branded, and not the weak and the needy or the deserving. For these he was the friend.

I knew this man, not only as the editor of the ICONOCLAST, not only as the utterer of grand and entertaining sentences, but I knew him as a man whose palm was stretched out to the man who was in need. Few men have been more generous with their charity than my neighbor and my friend whom we lay away to-day. No man within my knowledge ever presented the world with a purer, a n.o.bler, a loftier home character than W. C. Brann. Oh! how he loved his wife and his dear little children--not only the children that were living, but the child that was dead.

How ardently he strove to support, maintain and bless them. And what a friend they have lost. No man ever approached W. C. Brann for a penny that he did not respond, and from his beautiful home no beggar was ever turned away. I am afraid many people who only knew Mr. Brann as a genius, as a man of eloquence and power with the pen, knew little of him as a man of heart and affection. But, I, as his friend, as a friend of his wife and his fatherless children, I thank the people of Waco to-day that they have testified of their affection for this man. We shall never see his like again here, perhaps.

He was a rising star. How soon that star has set! But, my dear friends, he has left a memory. He has made his impression upon the world and we will never forget him. Let me then say, for I must be brief, I am reminded by the stormy elements about us that I must not detain you longer, let me say in conclusion that Brann is not dead. His burning words still live, and his thoughts will yet remain to affect the world, and we will never forget him. And I say to his wife and children, though to-day you feel crushed by this great sorrow, I know by experience that our dead do not pa.s.s away from our minds.

They grow more beautiful the longer we live. We remember them with greater pleasure, more tenderly, they will always be just like they had been. They never change.

The little girl that you laid away in Houston is to-day in your mind just what she was then. And the dear husband that you lay away now will always be just what he is to- day. No changes can come. He is fixed in the memory.

"Now, my friends, in behalf of Mrs. Brann and her children, let me thank you for this presence, for this demonstration of your appreciation of this man who has so suddenly, so unexpectedly, fallen in our midst. Let us cherish his memory, remember his virtue, and imitate his daring courage in defiance of that which he thought was evil and wrong. He was not without his faults. None of us are. He was always ready and willing to admit that.

No man was more willing to answer for his work than W. C. Brann. Therefore I ask for him that judgment to-day we shall all crave of one another when we shall have pa.s.sed away. We will now lay his body in the grave, we will cover it with mother earth, and upon it place these flowers as a testimonial of our love and affection for him."

At the grave, the bouquet which Mrs. Brann had laid on the casket before leaving home was returned to her, and just before the casket was lowered into the grave, she stepped forward and lovingly placed the floral piece upon the casket and it was closed in the grave. There was a large number of floral offerings. Flowers were there in profusion. But as at the other funeral, two pieces were especially noticeable. One was a huge broken wheel, full three feet in diameter, all in white, composed of lilies of the valley, hyacinths and roses. It was the gift of the employees of the ICONOCLAST, and William Marion Reedy of St. Louis. The Knight Printing Company sent a large anchor about three feet long, which was composed of pink carnations and white roses. The following were the pallbearers: J. W. Shaw, G. B. Gerald, D. R. Wallace, L. Eyth, Waller S. Baker, Dr. J. W. Hale, H. B. Mistrot, John D. Mayfield and James M. Drake.

THE LATEST TRAGEDY.

(Editorial appearing in the Waco Weekly Tribune, issue April 9, 1898, and written by Hon. A. R. McCollum, editor, and State Senator of the Texas Legislature.)

What use to write, or read or talk of the tragic deaths of Brann and Davis unless those who survive are to draw from the tragedy lessons which, rightly applied, will bring peace and good to society and especially to this community? If not this, then far better silence. In the news columns of the paper we have told the story of the battle to the death, fought on the public streets, of the death scenes and burial. And all over this land, where newspapers are printed, the story has been told and millions have read. There will be no adequate estimate of the effect the reading will have upon the minds of the millions. It is certain that the most patent result will be to discredit this community in the esteem of the people whose good opinion our people would like to have, and to react in ways that will affect the material welfare of this city and very likely of the county, too. Beyond all question the deplorable events of last year, opening with October, have operated to the detriment of Waco, and beyond all question the latest chapter of blood and violence will intensify the distrust, unless it is evidenced that this is to be the end, and that hereafter peace and order are to prevail, and the sacredness of human life be more a.s.sured. This is why we say it is little use to write or discuss the pa.s.sing of Brann and Davis, beyond rendering the tributes of love and affection, unless our people are to learn from the deaths the lessons of forbearance and tolerance and subordination of pa.s.sion and prejudice to the n.o.bler and better ends and aims of life. Asperity and bitterness must be buried in the graves with the dead.

Brann and Davis have gone to a judgment higher than that of men, and both, we venture to hope and believe, have found how true it is that G.o.d is Mercy, as well as justice.

For our part, we would rather let them rest in peace and not essay an a.n.a.lysis of their attributes and actions. We will say this of Brann, that though he could write with a pen of vitriol, in his private life he could be and was as gentle as a woman, and his aspirations were those of generosity and kindness, of faithfulness to friends. His home life--with wife and children--was a poem that never ended till he died. His genius was superhuman. As Mr.

Shaw truly said in his remarks at the grave, it is not likely that we shall ever see his like again in this community. Davis was cast in a different mold mentally, a man of quite another type. He was st.u.r.dy and practical and took the world precisely as he found it. It was indeed a strange fate that brought these two men face to face in deadly conflict and made of Davis the instrument to put an end to Brann's earthly career. Both men loved and were beloved. Widows and orphans mourn them. Let the dead rest in peace, for good can be said of each.

It is the manifest duty of this community to forbear from discussion of what might have been, or who sowed the wind that brought the whirlwind. At the best, years of patience, unselfish, earnest work will be needed to restore our city to the place it might hold in the esteem of men.

The fool will say: "It makes no difference what others think." It is a fool's consolation and a fool's argument, for the cold truth is that not alone the prestige and good repute of our fair city have been marred, but material progress and prosperity have been affected. Population, capital, skill, brawn, industry, morality hold aloof--not wholly, of course, yet to a degree that is material and unfortunate. It is possible to remedy this, but not until we prove to the world that toleration and peace are to rule here, and that human life is not to be held as the cheapest thing society has to lose.

The following account of the mobbing of Brann in the fall preceding his death (see Brann's article "Ropes, Revolvers and Religion" in Vol. X.) is taken from the Waco Tribune for October 9, 1897 It is reproduced here to enable the reader to better interpret the circ.u.mstances of Brann's death.

BRANN AND BAYLOR.

As to the Brann-Baylor episode, the old adage, "two wrongs will not make a right," is certainly applicable to it.

Brann's article on Baylor University was wholly indefensible-- essentially ill-timed and could not possibly have wrought any good, either to Baylor or the cause of morality in general. It merited the protest and indignation it evoked, and we question if Brann, when he wrote it, really appreciated its full import, for, had he reflected, he would have known that he placed his friends at a disadvantage, in that men who hold the views respecting virtuous womanhood that most Southern men (and himself included) do could not defend the article. And Brann is a man who we have always found to be true to his friend; not one to place a friend in an embarra.s.sing or unpleasant position. He ill.u.s.trated how a wonderfully brilliant man may astonish the world and himself, too, by perpetrating a grave blunder or mistake. We cannot understand how he came to print the article.

And as for the course of the Baylor students who laid forcible hands on Brann and by mob power compelled him to sign humiliating admissions and apologies, their course was about as grave a blunder as was Brann's. It is not palliation to argue how indignant they were and how natural their indignation. Perhaps those in authority at Baylor who are said to have known beforehand the purpose of the student mob and quietly winked at--if they did not openly commend it--are more to blame than the boys who did the work, for the older heads were naturally expected to display the wisdom of mature years. It is the truth that the authorities who condoned and the students who perpetrated the lawlessness are equally beyond the pale of defense.

It was thus that two wrongs and not one right were done. All the parties to the wrong will have to take the consequence. Brann has impaired the prestige of the ICONOCLAST, students and university authorities have brought unnecessary reproach on Baylor, given it undesirable notoriety. Baylor is part and parcel of Waco.

All of us, regardless of creed, helped to rear it. Its good name and welfare are matters of concern to all.

Brann, if he knew of disgraceful facts or episodes connected with Baylor, should have given names, dates and specific details. And some student, professor, patron or friend of Baylor--someone with a daughter, sister or female relative there--thus vested with the G.o.d-given right of resenting slurs on the virtue of girl students, should have been found willing to deal with Brann personally, and somewhere else than on the university grounds with Brann helpless and bulldozed. Any man thus acting with defense of his womankind as his plea may, if his pretensions are valid, always risk public opinion and jury verdicts in this county.

We hope this matter will end where it is. n.o.body wants to see Brann driven away from Waco, nor do we believe such a thing can be done. Men will be found in ample numbers to maintain his right to dwell here. He is a brilliant man, who can be distinctly useful as a writer.

On his part he owes something to the community which is willing to maintain his every right--to the friends who are still his friends even if he makes a mistake, and that is to remember that Baylor University is part and parcel of Waco, and that the reputable element of society here does not share his views concerning the disrepute alleged to attach to Baylor. Most of us wish Brann well; most of us wish Baylor well.

It has been said that this is a matter of "religious"

differences and prejudices. It is not so, save where individuals want and see fit to make it so. It has been said "personal liberty" and bigotry are involved in this matter. We fail to comprehend how or wherein. G.o.d knows there is not a spot on the globe where there is more diversity of opinion, more freedom of expression and action as to religion than in this town. Once more, we hope the matter is ended and for good.

Since the above was put in type the a.s.sault made by Judge Scarborough, R. H. Hamilton and George Scarborough on Mr. Brann has occurred. Judge Scarborough has a daughter, George Scarborough a sister, who has recently been a student and is now a member of the faculty at Baylor. It will thus be understood how Brann's article could aggrieve the father and brother. If either one had taken a shotgun and killed Brann on sight, public opinion would have held such a course far more commendable than the policy adopted. If either one had challenged him, given him a show for his life, and in the duel killed him, public sentiment would have condoned such a step and no jury in this county would award any penalty for the slaying. But the overpowering attack by three men was itself a mob attack--three may const.i.tute a mob as well as ten or twenty. Of course there will be some to defend the trio of a.s.saulters, but the consensus of public opinion will be against it and by the greater part of our people it will be regarded as essentially unfair. It has not served, so far as we can see, any good purpose, but to the contrary has intensified the bitter feeling existing here.

Brann's friends never indorsed his article on Baylor, but this a.s.sault justified their indignation. As for Judge Scarborough, we must regret his act and express surprise that he got his consent to such a course. As for Hamilton, his partic.i.p.ation is altogether indefensible.

The following is the account of the shooting of Brann from the Waco "Times-Herald." See the editorial for the att.i.tude of this paper. The ante-mortem statement of Davis, and the statements of Moore, Hall and Sherman Vaughan are identical in both papers and are therefore not repeated. The "Times-Herald" gave no statements from Earp, Petterson, Chase, Insley nor Dugger. Note other statements not given in the "Tribune."

TERRIFIC, DEADLY CONFLICT

A Fearful Street Fight, in Which W. C. Brann and Tom E. Davis Were Riddled With Pistol Shots and William H. Ward Shot through the Hand.

BRANN, EDITOR OF ICONOCLAST, DEAD.

The Life of Tom E. Davis, the Well-known Real Estate Man of Waco, Hangs by a Slender Thread, With Almost Every Chance Against Him.

BRANN-BAYLOR AFFAIR THE CAUSE.

A Motorman and Musician Wounded by Flying Missiles-- Ward in Jail on a Charge of a.s.sault to Murder-- The City Thrown Into a Whirlwind of Excitement Over the Fearful Affair and Happy Homes Made Sad.

At this writing, 9 o'clock, W. C. Brann, editor of Brann's ICONOCLAST, and Tom E. Davis, a prominent real estate man of this city, lie dangerously wounded with a likelihood of their dying at any moment. William H. Ward, an employee of W. C. Brann, is shot through the right hand.

Sigh Kennedy, a motorman on the street car line, is shot in the right knee, and Kepler, a traveling musician, is shot in the right foot. The three men last named are only slightly wounded.

W. C. Brann is shot through the left groin, in the right foot and through the middle of the back about the lower part of the shoulder blade, ranged upward and outward, coming out at the front side near the point where the arm joins the body.

Tom E. Davis is shot twice in the right arm, the b.a.l.l.s going through the arm, leaving four holes, one in the upper left arm near the shoulder on the outer part of the arm.

This ball ranged to the back and came out just a little ways in the left shoulder. Another shot took effect in the right breast, near the nipple, ranged outward and backward, coming out of the back near the side. Another shot took effect in the back, near the right side, about the waistband, ranged outward and downward and lodged just over the spine, just under the skin. Another shot took effect just under the right arm, ranged backward, coming out about six inches in the back. This made a total of six shots that took effect in Davis' body.

From best information obtained, the cause of the trouble dates back to the old Brann-Baylor affair. It was during this trouble that Mr. Davis was an outspoken advocate for Baylor and had made the same statement that scores of other people in Waco are accredited with having made that "Brann is a scoundrel and ought to be run out of town." Mr. Davis was fearless and outspoken, and Mr.

Brann learned of the stand he took.

Yesterday it seems that Mr. Brann, in company with Mr. W. H. Ward, an employee of his, made it convenient to come in contact with Mr. Davis, and one of them, supposed to be Mr. Brann, cursed Mr. Davis as he pa.s.sed them. Mr. Davis had been out on the street where he had just been pa.s.sed by the men a couple of times and returned to his office on Fourth Street, between Franklin and Austin Streets. He had been in his office only a minute or so when Messrs. Brann and Ward pa.s.sed, with Brann on the inside. As the two men pa.s.sed Mr. Davis says that one of them remarked in a loud voice, "There is the d.a.m.ned cowardly son of a ----. He will take anything," to which Mr. Davis replied, "Are you scoundrels talking about me?"

The shooting followed immediately. When the shooting ended Davis was taken into French's newsstand and several physicians were called in, opiates were administered, and it looked as if Davis would die at any moment. He talked some to his friends, frequently saying, "They have got me; I am bound to go."