Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 15

When you hear a fellow railing at the ICONOCLAST, just look through its stock of caps and you'll find one that will fit the knot on the end of his neck.

Truth and only truth is eternal. It was not born and it cannot die. It may be obscured by the clouds of falsehood, or buried in the debris of brutish ignorance, but it can never be destroyed. It exists in every atom, lives in every flower and flames in every star. When the heavens and the earth shall pa.s.s away and the universe return to cosmic dust, divine truth will stand unscathed amid the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds.

Falsehood is an amorphous monster, conceived in the brain of knaves and brought forth by the breath of fools.

It's a mortal pestilence, a miasmic vapor that pa.s.ses, like a blast from h.e.l.l, over the face of the world and is gone forever. It may leave death in its wake and disaster dire; it may place on the brow of purity the brand of the courtesan and cover the hero with the stigma of the coward; it may wreck hopes and ruin homes, cause blood to flow and hearts to break; it may pollute the altar and disgrace the throne, corrupt the courts and curse the land, but the lie cannot live forever, and when it's dead and d.a.m.ned there's none so poor as to do it reverence.

[The following remarks, apropos local politics, were included in Mr. Brann's Lecture on Humbugs, as delivered at the Dallas, Texas Opera House, Oct. 17, 1895.]

A discourse on political humbugs were incomplete without some reference to the young man whom Texas, in a moment of mental aberration, raised to the chief magistracy. I learn from a sermon recently inflicted on the long-suffering inhabitants of this city, that Son Charles is "our heroic young Christian governor." How he must have changed during the last few months! Shakespeare was probably viewing the Texas politician with prophetic eye when he declared that in the great Drama of Life a man plays many parts. Culberson is the only one, however, who has yet succeeded in playing them all at one and the same time. A man who can run with the hare politically while holding with the hounds personally, is almost too versatile to be virtuous. "Our heroic young Christian governor!" That preacher evidently doesn't know Charles. Or if he does his idea of Christianity is not so alt.i.tudinous that he can stand on its apex and keep the flies off the man in the moon. Culberson is a politician who enjoyed excellent health before he entered the public service.

He is all things to all men and--"nothing to n.o.body."

He's so slippery that he couldn't stand on the partisan platform to which he owes his political elevation.

In the last gubernatorial election pretty much every man who voted for Culberson felt that he had a lead-pipe cinch on a fat office, and the remainder were certain he would work four-and-twenty hours a day to put in effect their pet reforms. They are wiser now. In 1890 Charlie sailed into the attorney-generals.h.i.+p on the ample coat- tails of one J. S. Hogg, and in less than thirty days he was conspiring to retire his chief after one term and slip into his official shoes. The trouble appears to be that the youngster was pulled before he was ripe--before his political integrity had time to harden, or his crop of wild oats was well in the ground.

Now I want it distinctly understood that I am not the apologist of pugilism; I am the apostle of the white- winged G.o.ddess of Peace. I always carry a cruse of oil in my hip-pocket to cast upon the troubled waters. I have a pacific effect on all with whom I come in contact.

Children quit crying when they see me coming, women speak well of their neighbors, men respect each other's political opinions, preachers engage in silent prayer and the lion and the lamb lie down together. And that's no lie. But as between pugilism and hypocrisy I prefer the former.

I would rather see men pound each other for a fat purse than play the canting Pharisee to promote their political fortunes.

Let us look to the record of "our heroic young Christian governor." During the four years he officiated as attorney- general he made no determined effort to enforce the law then in effect prohibiting pugilism. Prizefights were pulled off at Galveston, San Antonio, El Paso and other Texas points after having been duly advertised in the daily press. He was elevated to the chief magistracy of the state, and the slugging matches continued--mills between brawny but unskilled boxers, who relied upon brute strength, and pounded each other to a pumice to make a hoodlum holiday. Some of these meetings were especially brutal--as matches between amateur athletes are likely to be; but "our heroic young Christian governor" saw no occasion to get his Ebenezer up. He simply sawed wood--didn't care a continental whether there was a law prohibiting bruising bouts or not.

And the ministerial a.s.sociations were too busy taking up collections to send Bibles and blankets, salvation and missionary soup to the pagans of the antipodes to pay much attention to these small-fry pugs. They let our blessed "Texas civilization" take care of itself, while they agonized over a job lot of lazy negroes whose souls ain't worth a sou-markee in blocks of five; who wouldn't walk into heaven if the gates were wide open, but once inside would steal the eternal throne if it wasn't spiked down.

No Epworth Leaguers or Christian Endeavorers whereased, resoluted or perorated until their tongues were worn to a frazzle, trying to "preserve the honor of our ger-rate and gal-orious State by suppressing feather- pillow pugilism." Why? I don't know; do you? Of course some carping critics declare it was because the world was not watching these brutal slugging matches between youths to pugilistic fortune and fame unknown; that it was because the professionally pious had no opportunity to make a grandstand play and get their names in print-- no chance to POSE in the eye of the universe as the conservators of our fin de siecle civilization. But then these Doubting Thomases are ever ready to make a mock of the righteous and put c.o.c.kleburrs in the back hair of the G.o.dly. I dislike to criticize "the cloth." I am p.r.o.ne to believe that the preachers always do the best they know how; still, I must confess that I am unable to muster up much admiration for the bra.s.s band variety of "religion"

or the tutti-frutti trademark of "respectability."

Had the belief not been bred in my bones that there is a G.o.d in Israel, these little 2x4 preachers, with their great moral hippodrome--their purblind blinking at mountains and much-ado about molehills--would drive me to infidelity. By their egregious folly, their fiery denunciation of all men who dare disagree with them, their attempt to make the State subservient to the church, to establish an imperium in imperio--by their mischievous meddling in matters that in nowise concern them, they are bringing the beautiful religion of Christ into contempt-- are doing more to foster doubt than did all the Humes and Voltaires and Paines that ever wielded pen.

Now don't get the idea that I am antagonistic to the preachers. Far from it. I am something of a minister myself; and we who have been called to labor in the Lord's vineyard--at so much per annum--must stand together.

I admire the ministers in a general way--and "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." I feel that it is my duty to pull them tenderly but firmly back by the little alpaca coat-tails whenever they have made mistakes --to reprove them in all gentleness when I find them fanning themselves with their ears for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the mob.

But to return to "our heroic young Christian governor."

When it was first proposed to bring the great fistic carnival and a million dollars to Dallas, Gov. Culberson had nothing to say. It was popularly supposed that he understood the law and would respect it. The impression got abroad that he felt rather friendly to the enterprise because it would put 500 scudi in the depleted coffers of the public and turn a great deal of ready money loose within the confines of Texas. He may not have been directly responsible for this popular idea, but he certainly did nothing to discourage it. Arrangements were perfected, important contracts entered into, a vast amount of money invested that would prove a complete loss if the enterprise collapsed. Then Culberson began to complain. He suddenly discovered that pugilism was a brutal sport, which should be suppressed. His conversion was as instantaneous as that of Saul of Tarsus. It were an insult to the intelligence of a hopeless idiot to say he did not know the Corbett-Fitzsimmons affair would prove far less brutal than a hundred fistic encounters which he, as attorney- general and governor, had tacitly encouraged--but his jewel of consistency had evidently gone to join his diamond stud. Col. Dan Stuart didn't appear inclined to do anything to ease the young man's agony, and it rapidly went from bad to worse. The Hurt decision was rendered, and the moral volcano of "our heroic young Christian governor"

began to erupt in earnest. He declared that he would override the court of criminal appeals "if men enough can be found in Texas to do it"--gave an excellent imitation of an anarchist who is hungering for canned gore. After this blood-to-horses'-bridles bluff he grew quiescent--waited, Micawber-like, for something to turn up. And still Dan Stuart didn't say a word. Then "our heroic young Christian governor" broke out in a new place. The legislature was convened in extraordinary session to prevent a brace of pugilists smas.h.i.+ng the immortal ichor out of modern civilization. It was a great moral aggregation--almost equal to Artemus Ward's Wax Wurx! I am convinced of this, for it employed two doctors of Divinity--at public cost, of course--to pray over it a minute each morning, for $5 per diem each. Everybody expected the president of the Florida Athletic Club to go to Austin and make an earnest free silver speech.

Even the lawmakers were looking for him; but he didn't go--and the result was what might have been expected.

The law-builders with the worst private records had the most to say about public morality. Men whose I.O.U.'s are not good in a game of penny ante; whose faces are familiar to the inmates of every disreputable dive between the Sabine and the Rio Bravo; who go to their legislative duties from the gambling-room and with six-shooters in the busts of their breeches, grew tearful over the prospective "disgrace of Texas" by a manly boxing bout.

h.e.l.l hath no fury like a legislative humbug scorned-- while he's holding his hand behind him.

But the wrath of "our heroic young Christian governor"

did not abate with the enactment of a law forbidding prizefights--such a law as he had flagrantly failed to enforce. The promoters of what the court of criminal appeals declared a lawful enterprise were arrested and dragged before the grand jury of Travis County, which appears to have taken the entire earth under its protectorate. Failing an opportunity to prosecute them for an offense against the laws of the land, the powers at Austin proceeded to prosecute them on the hypothesis that they were conspiring to wreck the universe.

And what was their offense? They had "conspired" to pay $500 into the public treasury and bring a million more to Dallas. They had "conspired" to bring several thousand respectable business men to Texas from all parts of the Union and furnished employment at good wages for hundreds of hungry men.

While I do not much admire pugilism as a profession, I must say that the promoters of the enterprise conducted themselves much better than did "our heroic young Christian governor," and those alleged saints who proposed to shoulder their little shotguns and help him override the courts--to butcher their brethren in cold blood to prevent an encounter between brawny athletes armed with pillows; to sustain "modern civilization" by transforming the metropolis of Texas into a charnel-house--to prevent, by brutal homicide in the name of Christ, their neighbors exercising those liberties accorded them by the laws of the land.

Curious, this modern civilization of which we hear so much. During the palmy days of Roman grandeur and Grecian glory, their athletes fought with the terrible cestus to win a crown of oak or laurel; but then Rome never produced a Rev. Seasholes, nor Greece a Senator Bowser.

The Imperial City did manage to breed a Brutus and a Cato, but never proved equal to a Culberson. Think of a Texas legislature, composed chiefly of illiterate jabber- whacks who string out the sessions interminably for the sake of the $2 a day--imagine these fellows, each with a large pendulous ear to the earth, listening for the approach of some Pegasus to carry him to Congress--teaching the aesthetics of civilization to the divine philosophers of Greece and the G.o.d-like senators of Rome! Think of Perry J. Lewis pulling the Conscript Fathers over the coals--of Senator Bowser pointing out civic duties to Socrates; of Attorney-General Crane giving Julius Caesar a piece of his mind; of Charley Culberson turning up his little two-for-a-nickel nose at the Olympian games! But perhaps that is not the game "our heroic young Christian governor" is most addicted to.

Prizefighting--even with pillows, for points--is bad enough, no doubt; but there are worse things. Making the Texas people pay for an abortive little second-term gubernatorial boom is one of them, and canting hypocrisy by sensation-seeking preachers is another. Can the church and state find no grander work than camping on the trail of a couple of pugilists? Are Gentleman Jim and Kangaroo Bob the upper and nether millstones between which humanity is being ground? Are these the only obstacles to the inauguration of the Golden Age--that era of Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men? The world is honey- combed with crime. Brother Seasholes says there are 800 fallen women in this city alone--and I presume he knows.

But if there be half so many, what a terrible story of human degradation--more appalling even than soft-glove pugilism! Our streets swarm with able-bodied beggars-- young men, most of them, whom want may drive into wickedness. Human life is cheap. Men are slain in this alleged Christian land for less silver than led Judas to betray Christ. Young girls are sold to shame, and from squalid attics comes the cry of starving babes. The Goths and Visigoths are once more gathering, imperiling civilization itself, and belief in G.o.d is fading slowly but surely from the earth. Want and wretchedness skulk in the shadows of our temples, ignorance and crime stalk abroad at high noon--the legions of Lucifer are overrunning the land, transforming G.o.d's beautiful world into a veritable Gehenna. The Field of Blood is filling, the prisons and poorhouses are overflowing--crowded with wretched creatures who dared dream of fame and fortune. The great Sea of Life is thick-strewn with wrecks--millions more drifting helpless and hopeless upon the rocks. From out the darkness there come cries for aid; men pleading for employment, women shrieking in agony of soul, little children wailing with hunger and cold. And the winds wax ever stronger, the waves run higher and higher, the wreck and wraith grow ever more pitiful, more appalling.

And church and state pause in this made vortex of chaos to prate of the ills of pugilism; to legislate and perorate anent bloodless boxing bouts; to prosecute a brace of harmless pugs. The people ask bread of the church and it gives them a stone; they ask of the state protection of their lives and liberties, and it gives them a special session of the legislature--shoots doodle-bugs with a Gatling gun --and sends them the bill!

But to recur for a moment to the fistic carnival: Have any of you been able to determine how the Dallas News stood in regard to that great enterprise? Sometimes, when I want to go on an intellectual debauch, I read the News-- or Ayer's Almanac. It appears to entertain but two opinions, namely, that Uncle Sam should black the boots of John Bull, and that Grover Cleveland carries the brains of the world in his beegum. This brace of abortive ideas const.i.tute its confession of faith--the only things of which it feels absolutely certain. When it tackles anything else it wobbles in and it wobbles out like an unhappy married man trying to find his way home at five o'clock in the morning. A great diplomat once declared that language was made to conceal thought; but the Dallas News employs it to disguise an intellectual vacuum. It can use more language to say less than any other publication on earth. In this particular it is like Napoleon--it stands wrapt in the solitude of its own originality.

The eating of thirty quail in thirty days was once a popular test of human endurance; but I can propose a more crucial one--one that will attract more people to Dallas than would even the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight.

Let the people of this city offer a fat purse for the man who can read the editorial page of the Dallas News thirty days in succession without degenerating into a driveling idiot. It is a mental impossibility, of course; but perhaps my good friend "Dorry" can be persuaded to attempt it--to hoist himself with his own petard. No man born of woman will ever accomplish it. Ma.s.sillon would become a mental bankrupt within the month and Socrates have to be tapped for the simples before reaching the half- way house.

The News is troubled with a chronic case of Anglo- mania. Whenever Columbia has a controversy of any kind with Britannia, the News hastens to ally itself with the Britisher; but in matters concerning the welfare of the city of Dallas it has little to say. It did manifest a slight inclination to take up for the fistic enterprise-- fearfully slid one foot to terra-firma; but when the success of the carnival became doubtful the News hastened to resume its time-honored position astride the fence, and it has hung there ever since--like a foul dish-rag across a wire clothes line. It's the greatest journalistic 'Fraid on the face of the earth. It doesn't dare to risk the opinion that water is wet. But probably it isn't sure of it. It is just as well, however, for if it did know, it couldn't leak the information in less than a column. The editorial page of the Dallas News reminds me of the Desert of Sahara after a simoon--it is such an awful waste of s.p.a.ce. If I had a five-year-old boy who couldn't say more in fifteen minutes than the Dallas News has said in the last dozen years, I'd refuse to father him.

One of the greatest frauds of modern times is the policy- playing newspaper. The "Archimedean lever," as applied to daily journalism is a fake of the first magnitude.

There is not a morning newspaper in Texas possessing sufficient political influence to elect a pound-master. In fact, their support will d.a.m.n any politician eternally, for the people wisely conclude that what the alleged "great dailies" support is a pretty good thing for them to oppose. Hogg would not have reached the governors.h.i.+p but for the blatant opposition of the morning press. Its friends.h.i.+p for George Clark was the upas-shadow in which he perished politically. There hasn't been an important law enacted in Texas during the last ten years that it didn't oppose. And yet men actually imagine that they cannot succeed in politics, business or letters without the a.s.sistance of that great "molder of public opinion!"

Let me tell you that every success this country has witnessed during the past three decades was achieved despite the morning press. To paraphrase Owen Meredith:

"Let a man once show the press that he feels Afraid of its bark, and 'twill fly at his heels; Let him fearlessly face, 'twill leave him alone; But 'twill fawn at his feet if he flings it a bone."

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

OR THE LADIES AND THE APOSTLE.

[A synopsis of Mr. Brann's address to the Ladies'

Reading Club, San Antonio, Texas.]

I have been asked to lecture to the ladies of the Reading Club, but shall do nothing of the kind. That were to admit that you require improvement, and I would not have you better than you are. We would have to clip your wings or keep you in a cage. Besides, I never saw a woman whom I could teach anything--she already knew it.

I have been going to school to the ladies all my life. My mother carried me through the kindergarten, lady preceptors through the intermediate grade, and my wife is patiently rounding off my education. When I graduate I expect to go direct to heaven. As near as I can figure it out, the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem will consist of several million women--and just men enough to fill the munic.i.p.al offices.

"I would not live always, I ask not to stay."

No lecture then, but an informal talk, without text or subject--a vagrant ramble through such fields as tempt us. If we should find fruit, or even flowers, let us be thankful. If we encounter only briars, it will not be the first half hour we have wasted.

The fact that you are members of the Reading Club indicates that you are seeking knowledge. I trust that you are finding it,--that every stroke of the intellectual pick turns up a golden nugget; but do not make the mistake of supposing that all the wisdom of the world is bound in calf. You may know all that was ever penned in papyrus or graved on stone, written on tablets of clay or preserved in print and still be ignorant--not even know how to manage a husband. As a rule people read without proper discrimination, and those who are most careful often go furthest astray. I once knew a woman with no more music in her soul than a rat-tail file, who spent three laborious years learning to play the piano, then closed the instrument and never touched it again. One day I said to her:

"Mary, what good did all the patient practice do you?"

"Lot's o' good," she replied; "I used to be dreadfully ashamed to have people know that I COULDN'T play." And a great deal of laborious reading is undertaken on the same principle that Mary learned to play the piano--and is of just as little benefit. Many people are with books as with medicine--imagine that whatever is hardest to get down will do them the most good. No mortal man--and, as the preacher correctly stated, the men embrace the women-- ever yet got any permanent good out of a book unless he enjoyed its perusal. Jno. J. Ingalls says that everybody praises Milton's Paradise Lost, but n.o.body reads it.

Ingalls is mistaken. Everybody making any pretension to culture has read the book--as a disagreeable duty; but that man don't live--at least outside of the lunatic asylum --who can quote a dozen lines of it. Same with Dante's Divine Comedia and a host of other books with which people are expected to inflict their brains. Read few books and those of the very best,--books that you enjoy.

Read them thoroughly; make them your very own--then forget them as soon as possible. Having submitted to the mental or moral discipline of another, decline to lean on him, but stand up in your own independent individuality.

Don't be a copy. There is on earth no more pitiable person than

"The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head."