Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 4

The Times has no heart for moralizing. It will add no pang to the grief of those who mourn. It asks of the people of Waco that upon the two new mounds made in Oakland to-day the seeds of forgetfulness may spring into verdure, covering feud and hiding pa.s.sion, and that the dead past will bury its dead, leaving to the present hope, and to the future fruition.

Here follow the contents of the May, 1898, ICONOCLAST published by Brann's friends after his death.

THE Pa.s.sING OF WILLIAM COWPER BRANN.

BY G. P. GERALD.

Poetic legend says that on a moonlight night, two thousand years ago, along the sh.o.r.es of the gulf of Patras, a mighty voice was heard, crying "Great Pan is dead!"

And from the mountains and the valleys, the woods and grottoes, where stood the altars of those who wors.h.i.+ped at the shrine of Pan, was reechoed back the cry, "Great Pan is dead!" On the second of April, when the winged lightning bore over a continent, and to foreign lands beyond the sea, the news that W. C. Brann of the ICONOCLAST was dead, in every land where his writings are known, from men and women who wors.h.i.+p at the shrine of genius, went up the wailing cry, "Brann of the ICONOCLAST is dead." Oh, death! thou grim and imperious master of us all, how dreadful to the living are your silent darts, that are ever striking with impartial hand the old man in his dotage, the strong man in his prime, the brave man in his courage and the craven in his fear.

W. C. Brann was 43 years of age, and had just arrived at that period when he was beginning to realize the hopes and aspirations of years, when he was stricken down amid the rejoicings of many and the sorrows of many thousands more. He was born in Coles County, Illinois, and at the age of two and a half years, by the death of his mother, was placed with a sister some two years older than himself, in the care of Mr. Hawkins and his wife, who lived on a farm in that county. He remained with them ten years, and then, longing to be something more than a farm hand, he packed his small belongings in a little box and at night, when all was still, he took the box under his arm and went out into the lonely darkness of the moonless night, without money, friends or education, to commence the struggle which ended in his untimely death at Waco.

Mr. Brann always spoke in the most kindly terms of Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, and when he purchased his home in this city, he offered to share it with them, but having grown old and being comfortably situated they did not desire to change.

The first place he secured was that of a bell boy in a hotel, and from that pa.s.sed on to other situations, realizing all the time, what every proud spirited boy would do under the circ.u.mstances, the bitterness that friendlessness, ignorance and poverty bring to the struggle of life.

Among other things he learned the trade of painter and grainer, also that of printer, all the time storing his mind with what sc.r.a.ps of education that his life of poverty and toil permitted. After he gathered sufficient education he became a newspaper writer, and in 1877, at Roch.e.l.le, Ill., was married to Miss Carrie Martin, who, with two children, Grace and William Carlyle, "Little Billy," as we call him, survive him. After the death of Mrs. Brann's mother, he took to his home one of her sisters, now Mrs.

Marple of Fort Worth, and although often driven to the most desperate straits to make a living, he proved to her to be both a brother and a father. He continued his newspaper career in Illinois and Missouri, until some thirteen years ago, when he came to Texas, and gradually became known by his connection with various papers of the State. For a short time he had an interest in a paper called the ICONOCLAST, published in Austin, but he soon found himself back at his old trade, that of driving his pen for others. At last, worn out by long years of unremitting and generally poorly requited toil, wearied with waiting for opportunity to write as he wished but could not do as an employee of others, he determined to again strike out for himself, as he had done in his early boyhood, and in 1894 came to this city and established the ICONOCLAST, which was a success from its first issue, and continued to grow in circulation as he grew in reputation as a writer, until the copy that witnessed his death reached an issue of nearly 90,000.

The world, for several generations, has been discussing whether Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name, thousands believing that it was impossible for a man who had no more education than Shakespeare had in his youth, to have exhibited the varied knowledge and learning that characterize his works, therefore these attribute them to Sir Francis Bacon, one of the most brilliant and best educated men of his time. All the evidence goes to show that at the age of 18, when Shakespeare married, that he had acquired with a "little Latin and less Greek," the ordinary education accorded to the sons of the well-to-do middle-cla.s.s Englishmen of his time, of which his father was one. At 18 Mr. Brann had barely secured the rudiments of an English education, and had he lived to the age of Shakespeare, there is no telling to what heights, intellectually, he would have risen. From a slight knowledge of his hopes and aspirations, I can say, that while he dearly loved the ICONOCLAST, as a vehicle by which he could convey to the world his thoughts, he had aspirations that went far beyond it, and proposed that during the next ten nor twelve years, after his mind had been fully stored for the work, to leave as a legacy to the world, in a continuous work, his conception of the wrongs done to humanity, the evils that spring from them and the remedies to be applied. And all who have read him closely and noticed how, month by month, he grew greater and brighter, will surely join in saying, that the loss of such a work from such a man, at the meridian of his intellectual life, is only second, if not equal, to the loss of the unwritten volumes of Buckle's "History of Civilization."

Alas! that such a man, with such a great future before him should have died standing on the very threshold of his work.

In the private relations of life Mr. Brann was as extraordinary as in his public career; he presented that combination that is so rare that even novelists do not attempt to paint it, the combination of the lover and the husband, and as a father, a friend, a lover of humanity, with a broad mantle of charity for all, he had few equals.

While he wrote in prose, he was a poet, and of him can be truly said:

"The thoughts that stir the poet's heart Are not the thoughts that others feel, From the world's creed they are all apart, And oftener work his woe than weal.

They are born of high imaginings, Kindled to life by pa.s.sion's fire, As o'er earth's dross his fancy flings The golden dreams that wrap his lyre."

As a writer, Mr. Brann had his faults, but they were the heritage of this G.o.d-given son of genius, and with them he climbed the heights and died among the greatest, both of the living and the dead. And had he lived ten years longer, in all probability, the intellectual world would have held him as the grandest writer that this earth has ever known since the days when old Homer painted the matchless beauty of the bride of Menelaus, and told of the G.o.dlike courage of the Greek and Trojan as they fought for her, from the Scamander to the sea.

While the ignorant, the bigoted and intolerant are rejoicing in his death and garnis.h.i.+ng his grave with the slime of their slander, they may be a.s.sured that his name and writings will live until the English language dies, and when W. C. Brann is dead and forgotten, so will be Sterne, Smollet, Fielding, Swift, Pope, Steele, Addison, Goldsmith, Shakespeare, Ben and Sam Johnson, Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Carlyle, George Eliot and all that mighty host that have made the English language what it is. The language that the little tribe of the Angles brought from the forest of Germany to Britain swallowed the Britain, and survived the Norman conquest, and then absorbed both the conqueror and his language. And in the dead centuries of over a thousand years, in every generation has produced some mighty intellect to speed it on in building up the bulwarks of human rights and human liberty, until they have grown so high that despots turn from it with loathing, and slaves cannot speak it. The language of the Magna Charta and the Declaration of American Independence, the two instruments that have spread the bread of liberty before a hungry world. And as a writer of this language, with all its mighty past and greater future. W. C. Brann had few equals and no superiors.

I have been asked, both before and since his death, what were his religious opinions, and while every man's religious opinions are his own, and no one has the right to question them, I will say he was a Deist something after the manner of Thomas Paine, and for the benefit of some of our professors and preachers, who do not know the difference between an Atheist and a Deist, I will say that a Deist is one who believes in one G.o.d, and rejects all forms of so-called revealed religion. Mr. Brann loved nature and when he looked upon it, he saw nature's G.o.d, that with eternal fingers has written his message on earth and sky, so that savage and civilized, Christian and Infidel alike could read, that has by immutable and unvarying laws, regulated the bloom of the flowers, the course of the winds, and the fall of the leaf, as well as the revolutions of the countless millions of worlds that are ever speeding through the unmeasurable realms of s.p.a.ce. He believed that this mighty power, that men call G.o.d, could perpetuate man in the hereafter as easily as he had placed him here, and while he, like many others, knew that all his hopes and faith did not furnish one atom of real proof as to what lies beyond the gates of death, still he hoped for the brighter and better life, and when that beautiful smile overspread his face when he died, those who beheld it felt that he had realized his hopes, and in the shadowy realm that bounds the Stygian river had met his little girl Inez, whose untimely death at the age of barely 12 years, had worked such havoc in his heart. Mr. Brann loved nature, not only when the gorgeous G.o.d of day threw over earth and sky the flas.h.i.+ng strands of his golden hair, but in the night time when all else was wrapped in the arms of sleep, the twin sister of death; and the belated pa.s.ser-by of his home often saw the gleam of his cigar as he sat or walked upon the lawn, in the small hours of the night: and at such time I know there came through his soul the thoughts, if not the words, of that death-devoted Greek, who to the question from the woman that he loved, "O, Ion, shall we meet again," answered, "I have asked that dreadful question of the hills that look eternal. Of the clear streams that flow on forever. Of the bright stars amid whose fields of azure my raised spirit has walked in glory.

All, all are dumb."

But when I gaze upon thy face, I feel that there is something in the love that mantles through its beauty that cannot wholly perish, we shall meet again, Clemanthe.

But it was not the name of Clemanthe that pa.s.sed his lips, it was ever "Inez, darling Inez, we shall meet again."

I here reproduce in his own words an extract appropriate to this subject. It is from the ICONOCLAST of March, 1896, and an article headed "Beecher on the Bible":

"I know nothing of the future; I spend no time speculating upon it--I am overwhelmed by the Past and at death grips with the Present. At the grave G.o.d draws the line between the two eternities. Never has living man lifted the somber veil of Death and looked beyond.

"There is a Deity. I have felt his presence. I have heard his voice, I have been cradled in his imperial robe.

All that is, or was, or can ever be, is but "the visible garment of G.o.d." I seek to know nothing of his plans and purposes. I ask no written covenant with G.o.d, for he is my Father. I will trust him without requiring priests or prophets to indorse his note. As I write, my little son awake, alarmed by some unusual noise, and come groping through the darkness to my door. He sees the light s.h.i.+ning through the transom, returns to his trundle- bed and lies down to peaceful dreams. He knows that beyond that gleam his father keeps watch and ward, and he asks no more. Through a thousand celestial transoms streams the light of G.o.d. Why should I fear the sleep of Death, the unknown terrors of that starless night, the waves of the river Styx? Why should I seek a.s.surance from the lips of men that the wisdom, love and power of my heavenly Father will not fail?"

Like the lowly Judean carpenter who gave his life in a protest against the wrongs which wealth and power had done to his fellow man, he was hated by the Pharisees and hypocrites, but he never cast a stone at the poor and unfortunate, but was ever ready to support the weak battling in the cause of right against the cohorts of the wrong.

He was not only a poet, but was a prophet and a priest; not the prophet and priest of orthodoxy, that has handed down to us through the ages, written in the blood of slaughtered millions, that dark story of forked-tailed demons and flaming h.e.l.ls, that has given us a G.o.d that loves us better than an earthly father can, yet permits us in the sight of his great white throne to writhe and suffer through the endless ages of eternity in the flames of h.e.l.l. But he was a priest and prophet of a greater and grander faith, that in the evolution of the unborn centuries yet to come, will strip from the G.o.dhead all of the horrid concepts, born of the puny hate of man for his fellow man.

Mr. Brann was a man of the highest moral courage, no one doubted this, but some doubted whether he had that kind of physical courage that is necessary to contend with mobs and a.s.sa.s.sins, but when the hour came --when, without the slightest warning or antic.i.p.ation or danger, the death wound tore through his back, with a coolness that few even of the bravest of men would have possessed under the circ.u.mstances, with a courage that could have led the Irish exiles, in that desperate and deathless charge on the b.l.o.o.d.y heights of Fontenoy, he turned and fired every bullet of his pistol into the body of his a.s.sa.s.sin.

I will briefly sketch here some of the main facts that led to his death, not only justice to the dead, but to his living friends who only knew him as a writer and have been compelled to read in the newspapers the loathsome and lying slanders sent out against him from this city.

The origin is to be found in the visit to this city of ex-Priest Slattery, who, for gross immorality, had been kicked out of the fold of the Catholic church. He was accompanied by a woman fully as bad as he, and these two saints set up to lecture, and the substance of their lecture was briefly this, that convents and female schools under the charge of the sisters, were but bawdy houses to satisfy the l.u.s.t of the Catholic priesthood. Mr. Brann, who heard, in the opera house in this city, these vile slanders flung amid thunders of applause, mostly from a gang of blackguards from and around Baylor University, outraged by the wrong done the pure and stainless women whose vows bar them from the slightest hope of reward on earth, yet devote their lives in and out of the convent walls to soothing the sorrows and relieving the sufferings of humanity, attempted to reply in their defense, and for this he was hooted and nearly mobbed by this precious lot of curs and had to be escorted from the opera house by the police. After the Antonio Tiexeria scandal came out, and he saw the poor girl reduced to ruin, standing barely on the verge of womanhood, desolate and friendless in a foreign land, with his whole sympathetic nature aroused in her behalf, he certainly struck some hard blows at Baylor. In his repeated thrusts he made one at the professors which is believed by many to have cut far deeper than anything ever said about the Brazilian girl, and that was his proposition to open a night school for their benefit. In last October ICONOCLAST, in a paragraph, he expressed the hope that Baylor would not continue to manufacture ministers and Magdalens. For this he was twice mobbed, and it is claimed eventually murdered.

Since Mr. Brann's a.s.sa.s.sination I have seen it charged in some papers, notably one bearing the word Christian at its head, that he was killed because he had slandered his slayer's daughter, and then follows a lot of hypocritical rot about regretting bloodshed, but that there was an unwritten law that required the death of a man who would slander the female relatives of another. A greater falsehood was never published in even a pious Christian weekly. He never mentioned the name of any woman connected with Baylor except the Brazilian girl, and her case was in the courts, and while his friends deeply regretted his unfortunate expression it neither justified his mobbing or his murder. And in the judgment of all fair-minded men, under the circ.u.mstances could have been more readily construed to mean Antonio Tiexera than any other woman on earth, for within Baylor's sacred precincts she had been reduced to that condition to which, when a woman arrives, men call her a Magdalene. If this was the motive that prompted his slayer, I ask why he did not appeal to the unwritten law sooner; he who appeals to it must do so at the first information has been conveyed to him that the wrong has been done and he cannot wait for months and then use it as a defense, and I do not hesitate to say that hundreds besides myself in this city do not believe that this prompted his a.s.sa.s.sin, except to be used as an excuse.

Mr. Brann loved Waco as he never loved any other place; for he knew that within its borders could be found as many brave, liberal-hearted men, pure and n.o.ble women as could be found in any other spot on earth with the same population. He loved it, for he said that here was the first place he ever found a real home, and here was the place he had for the first time been recompensed for his toil by receiving over a bare subsistence. Now, did Waco love Mr. Brann, or did it hold him the foul slanderer of her purest and best, as some claimed him to be? Let us see. Every effort was made to throw cold water on any turnout to his funeral; it was told around the city that no women would attend and that no flowers would be sent, but what was the result? From his home to the cemetery the sidewalks were crowded, save at Baylor University, the place that is responsible for his death, and hundreds of men and women who had no carriages walked from his home over two miles to the cemetery, and when the long funeral cortege pa.s.sed within the gates, around his grave was a sea of human faces unequaled in numbers ever before gathered around any other grave in Waco.

Yet Waco had lately laid to rest within that cemetery a man whom she dearly loved and on whom Texas had been proud to confer her high places, a man who in bygone years had so gallantly led her sons on so many b.l.o.o.d.y fields. As to the flowers, no greater profusion was ever seen on any other grave in Waco, or, perhaps, in Texas, a tribute that the pure and stainless women of Waco paid to the martyred dead. At his funeral was noticed a greater number, both from the city and county, of the sun-kissed sons of toil than had ever been gathered here around any other grave. Why were they there in such numbers?

Why did they bow their manly heads o'er the coffin of the dead? I will answer for them. It was because they knew that the dead man loved the land that they, their sires and their grandsires loved; that he was seeking to uproot the evils, both socially and politically, that are so rapidly overrunning it; that all the gold of earth, or the plaudits of those who feel themselves the grand and great could not win him from his task of defending a people's rights against those who were seeking to strike them down, and if he had made an error in a paragraph subject to a double construction, that above all else on earth in his heart he sought

"But the ruin of the bad, the righting of the wrong and ill."

He was followed to his grave by hundreds of men who but a few years ago had given of their money liberally to build up the new Baylor, many of whose wives, daughters and sisters had been educated there. Is it reasonable to suppose that these men who clung to him in life with hooks of steel, and followed him to his grave with tears, are such cravens that, alike in life and death, they would stand by the man who had foully slandered their wives, daughters and sisters' fame? Out upon such a supposition, it can only find lodgment in a breast that holds that the Yahoo of Swift is a true picture of the human race, and that the lowest of the type is living here. If Mr.

Brann was the slanderer of women, why did so many of them, from the hundreds that crowded the lawn around his home, lead their children up to his coffin, and those that were not able to look into it they would raise up in their arms that they might look into the dead face of the Prince of the Imperial Realm of Language.

Mr. Brann was no slanderer of women, no man on earth had a greater veneration for the good and pure or more sympathy for the fallen, and he would have died before he would have wronged intentionally either cla.s.s.

In this case he had struck in behalf of a poor and unfortunate girl who had been grievously wronged at Baylor, and it used to be held, and is yet held in some communities, that the man who strikes in the defense of a defenseless woman exhibits the highest trait of chivalry, even if he had made a mistake in striking, but here in Waco, with its Christian schools and churches, and its so-called Christian civilization it was rewarded first by mobs and then by murder.

He was a man who was incapable of malice, he bore none for injuries that most men would have rewarded the cowardly perpetrators by shooting them down like they have their prototype, the sneaking wolf; this arose from the innate tenderness of the man who shrunk from the taking of life, even of an animal, unless it was necessary.

I have used no words of sympathy for his wife, for time and not words can soothe sorrow such as hers, but for the benefit of those at a distance who were her husband's friends I will say that she has the sympathy of all the men and women of this city, irrespective of church or creed, who are not the indorsers and abettors of mobs and a.s.sa.s.sins, and I am glad to say that this collection of hyena-hearted human vultures, though far too many, are in the minority.

Now, to the dead friend of humanity, the eternal foe to wrong and hypocrisy, I bid adieu forever here, and for aught I know, for hereafter. The greedy grave, whose hungry mouth is never filled, has claimed him, and in the arms of old earth, the last mother of us all, we have laid him to sleep, as peacefully as in infancy he slept upon his mother's breast, indifferent alike in death as in life to the human ghouls who pursued him. Never again will his splendid intellect drive a pen. "In thoughts that breathe and words that burn" against the serried ranks of injustice and of wrong. Others will follow in his footsteps, and battle as faithfully as he for the cause of right, but, alas, none are clad like him in the Milan mail of intellectuality, against which the cloth-yard shafts of foes could rattle but could never pierce. Now, that for him the restless dream of life has closed, I know that every admirer of his genius, no matter of what faith or of no faith at all, will join me in the wish that for him death did not bring oblivion's dreamless sleep, where Lethean waves forever wash the pallid brow of death, but Elysian fields in which he met in joy the loved ones that had gone before and will await in peace the loved ones that are left behind.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Thou that killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto thee."

REST--REST IN PEACE.

BY W. H. WARD.

There comes, I think, in the life of every man a time when feeble words come faintly up for utterance--when the human soul refuses to ease tell its agony in empty phrases--when neither tongue can tell nor pen portray the gloom which o'ershadows the spirit engulfed in woe.

This suffering may be selfish, or be merged in a general sorrow. As I write the simple sentence, Brann is dead, a pall settles over my spirit, and, groping blindly in the dark, I feel there remains on earth scarce a single ray of light. I knew this man, and to know him was to love him--knew his faults and his virtues; loved him in spite of one and for the other. His faults were human; his virtues were G.o.dlike. For years we trod together Life's unequal pathway--at times I felt that I stayed his falling steps, and my own feet have strayed oft and again has his firm hand led me back into the light.

He was to me a delightful study, for which I found never failing recompense. I have watched his majestic mind expand as the florist watches the budding beauty of a flower, ever growing in its unfolding loveliness. I have lived with him in his home, surrounded by those whom he loved--seen him joy with their gladness, while his heart contracted with every pain that approached his loved ones--have stood with him on the banks of some mighty river, and watched the evening sun throw its chain of fire across the bosom of the waters, while his poetic spirit reveled in the beauties of the sunset sky. Under the shadow of Lookout, I have gazed with him upon those beetling crags, where the fate of a nation was in part decided, while he thanked G.o.d fervently that the heart of the nation yet beat steady and strong--have strolled with him in the forests when vernal nature spread its glorious carpet for the foot of man--have felt his great heart expand to receive every subtle impression of beauty and tenderness from nature's matchless canvas--have seen this man against whom the anathema of infidelity and atheism have gone forth, humbly bow to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in his handiwork.

For him, as for us all, there were times when the earth was darkened with doubt; but there were moments, I know, when his aspiring soul mounted the clouds and caught some reflex of the great white light that breaks on the throne of G.o.d. It has been charged that he had neither faith nor religion. In justice to the memory of the dead, I deny the charge. He had a faith as n.o.ble as it was unfaltering--that truth was eternal and the love of justice could never utterly fade from the hearts of men. His religion was simple still, though confined by neither church nor creed--'twas the fatherhood of G.o.d and the brotherhood of Man. As he loved truth and justice even so did he despise falsehood--declaring that he hated all "who loveth or maketh a lie." He loved his fellows as few men have done. The great desire of his heart, and no small part of his lifework, was devoted to the alleviation of human suffering. In his nature he was frank and open as the day--generous to a fault. I do not believe that he gave his affection fondly or foolishly. If those whom he loved failed to reach his high standard, it was not his fault. His was a great heart and he gave its tenderness with a princely hand, feeling himself rich in giving--glorying in his own munificence.

No man could have been the recipient of this rich bounty without feeling himself enn.o.bled by the gift. He had the faculty of attracting to him all whom he considered worthy of his affection. He possessed in a rare degree that which, for want of a better name, we term personal magnetism.

Intellectually, he was a meteor that shot athwart the literary firmament, leaving a train of fire behind to mark his course. Within a period of four years, in an inland Texas town, he built up a magazine which was read by a large percentage of the English-speaking people.

He had at the time of his death a larger clientele of readers than any living writer. For years he did all of the work of the ICONOCLAST himself, but of late he had gathered about him a corps of contributors in whose genius he himself reveled--a "bunch of pansy blossoms," he fondly termed them, whose beauty and fragrance would, he declared, delight the literary world. The hand that held these blossoms is now folded across a pulseless breast; but the silken skein of his affection will yet serve to bind the flowers together. The bright particular star of the Iconoclastic galaxy is dimmed, but the blended light of the others may still serve to illumine the dark places of life, and, in so doing, help to achieve that betterment of man for which their chief toiled so earnestly, battled so bravely and hoped so ardently. The poor and oppressed have lost a friend and protector--true womanhood has lost one of its ablest defenders--liberty its bravest champion--his country a hero, ever ready to fight for a redress of her wrongs. He was a humanitarian in the broadest and best sense of the word. In his heart there lived ever a hope that the time might yet come, in this fair land of ours, when there would be "neither a millionaire nor a mendicant--a master nor a slave." In life he was dear to me, his memory is dearer still, nay, 'tis sacred. I would not play Boswell to any Johnson, but this was my friend, tender, loving and loyal to me, and now that he is dead I come to lay this tribute in the dust at his feet. He has been judged oftenest and most unjustly, as men usually are, by those who knew him least.

Beneath the iron corselet which confronted the eyes of the world there beat in this man's breast a heart tender as a child's, and as loving as a woman's, that throbbed in agony for every ill to which humanity is heir. I remember in the early morning once he came into my room and silently beckoned me to his study. There in the vines at the window, scarce three feet from his desk, sat one of our Southern Orioles--a feathered songster, trilling forth the gladness of his heart in song. Brann watched the bird and drank in the music of his song. I saw his face light up with exquisite tenderness, and I knew that he accepted this matin song of the bird as a message from his Maker. I trust I may be pardoned for relating this simple incident, but it served to show me the man as few things could have done. I know 'tis true that: "As snowflakes fall to the earth unperceived and are gathered together in a pile, so do the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. No single flake creates a sensible change on the pile, and no single act const.i.tutes, however much it may exhibit, a man's character." But it is from simple things that the sum of life is made up --from those acts which are most spontaneous and usually least observed that human nature may best be determined and most justly estimated. This man made no preachment of his virtues, believing that "the years are seldom unjust." He was the Navarre of modern journalism, and his white plume ever showed in the thickest of the fight.

It was his strong hand that taught the "doubtful battle where to rage"; 'twas his to enchain friends.h.i.+p and inspire followers. Had he battled for a creed as he fought for a faith, his bones would have been canonized. Had he struggled for a party as he stood for the State, no political preferment would have been held beyond his reach. Had he lived in another age, among other people, his body would have been inurned in the Valhalla of the Brave. As it is, all that is mortal of him occupies only so much of Texas soil as may serve as "paste and cover of his bones." Little does he reck of this, and his friends should not repine, for the same prairie breezes that waft incense of flowers over the graves of Travis, Bowie and Crockett, sing a sad requiem over the final resting place of Brann. The aspiring soul has found its fixed abode among the stars; his t.i.tanic intellect which, here on earthy ever struggled for the light, now bathes in the effulgence of the Sun. His heart, ever unquiet because of the woes of his kind, now knows that peace which "pa.s.seth the understanding of man." The hand of the All-Father has forever soothed the heart-hunger and unrest of life from his troubled breast. That hand which swept, at will, every cord of the harp of life, has fallen nerveless, but its music will yet linger in the hearts of men until love of truth and beauty shall utterly fade from the earth. A long good-night to thee, Brave Heart, thy better part has found the better place; to that which is mortal and remains with us, we say, Rest--Rest in Peace.

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 pa.s.ser-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.