The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
with delight; still it is a wicked waste of nervo-muscular
energy--the amateur journalist, like the poor, and the
megalophanous jackass, we have ever with us.
* * *
SPEAKING FOR MYSELF.
The ICONOCLAST receives thousands of letters to which it is
impossible for me personally to reply. Many of them refer to the
attempts made to forcibly suppress the ICONOCLAST, and to the
terrible tragedy resulting from those attacks. I take this
opportunity of thanking my friends for their kindly interest, and
to assure them that I have stood from the first solely upon the
defensive. I have made a decent attempt to set an example of
Christian forbearance for my religious brethren. To the kindly
offers of other cities to afford the ICONOCLAST an asylum and
protect its editor from outrage, I will simply say that I do not
consider either my property or person in the slightest danger. A
majority of the Texas people are both broad gauged and
law-abiding. We probably have our proportion of intolerant bigots
and splenetic-hearted little blatherskites who preach mob
violence from the pulpit; but such people are not dangerous so
long as they are well watched. My forbears helped make Texas a
republic; they helped make it a state of the American union. I
like the climate, and most of the people, and am in no hurry to
move. I may have to seek a better distributing point for my
publications, as they are already too extensive to be properly
handled from any Texas town; but I shall not pull my tent stakes
for a day or two. If I do move--sometime within the next
twelve-month--it will be bruited throughout the universe that I
was driven out of Waco,--just as my brethren in Christ say I was
driven out of San Antonio; but that won't worry my soul a cent's
worth. I've been lied about so d----n much, that I feel ill at
ease and neglected unless the target of vindictive mendacity by
tearful souls who fail to pay their debts. I've been kept so
badly frightened all month by threats to drag me out of my home
and hang me, or otherwise measure me up for a crop of angelic
pin-feathers that I've been unable to write anything worth
reading. But as soon as I can swallow my heart and quit shivering
I will grab the English language by the butt-end and make it
crack like a new bull-whip about the ears of hypocrites and
humbugs. Meanwhile I desire to state that there is nothing the
matter with the ICONOCLAST's contributors. They are a bouquet
of pansy blossoms of whom any publisher might well be proud.
Should the editor chance to swallow too much water the next time
he is baptized, they can be depended upon to keep the flag of the
ICONOCLAST afloat until the red headed heir-apparent learns to
write with one hand and shoot with the other. Let it go at that.
BRANN.
. . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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