The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
his groschens in such Manhattan dirt as he could
conveniently transport upon his person. Thus he enabled
his aristocratic descendants to wax so fat on "unearned
increment" that some of them must forswear their
fealty to Uncle Sam and seek in Yewrup a society whose
rough edges will not scratch the varnish off their culchah.
Mrs. Bradley-Martin does not exactly "look every inch a
queen," her horizontal having developed at the expense of
her perpendicular, suggesting the rather robust physique of
her father's beer barrels. Still, she is an attractive woman,
having the ruddy complexion of an unlicked postage stamp
and the go-as-you-please features of a Turkish carpet. Her
eyes are a trifle too ferrety, but the osculatory power of her
mouth in auld lang syne must have been such as to give
Cupid spinal curvature. Her nose retreats somewhat
precipitately from the chasm; but whether that be its original
pattern, or it has been gradually forced upwards by eager
pilgrims to her shrine of adjustable pearls, is a secret
hidden in her own heart. Like Willy Wally Astor, she finds
the customs of this country too crass to harmonize with her
supersensitive soul, and spends much time dangling about
the titled slobs "on the other side." Some time ago she
purchased the epicene young Earl of Craven as husband
for her daughter, in the humble hope of mixing cooperage
and coronets, and may yet be gran'ma to some little Lord
Bunghole or fair Lady Firkin. As a "pusher" in society she
can give points to Mrs. Potter Palmer or the wife of a
millionaire pork-packer . Although she has "seen" the bluff
of the notorious Smith-Vanderbilt-Belmont female and
"raised" her out of her bunion repositories, she has
probably not yet reached the summit of her social ambition.
Bred to shabby gentility , Miss Alva Smith proceeded to
"splurge" when she captured a Vanderbilt. She had
probably never seen a hundred dollar bill until permitted to
finger the fortune of the profane old ferryman who founded
her husband's aristocratic family. She was a parvenu, a
nouveau riche, and could not rest until she had
proclaimed that fact by squandering half a million of the
man's money whom she subsequently dishonored, on the
ball which Mrs. Bradley-Martin set herself to beat. Having
been divorced "for cause," she proceeded to crown her
gaucheries by purchasing for her ligneous-faced daughter a
disreputable duke who owes his title to a grand-aunt's
infamy--is the descendant of a plebeian who rose to power
by robbing dead soldiers and prostituting his sister to a
prince. Mrs. Bradley-Martin has trumped two of her rival's
cards--and a social game, like seven-up, "is never out till
it's played out."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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