The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
The lamented Brann was an educator, and an emancipator
of human liberty and human thought. The hypocrite
stood in awe of his judgment. When he indicted him
to be arraigned before the great bar of public opinion he
dipped his pen in acid that seared the eyeballs, and wrote
their sentence diluted with worm-wood and gall. It is
not small wonder that the Judas Iscariots and the lemurs
trembled at his power.
Brann's tragic exit from this vale of tears is
inspiration now for jackals to attack his name. Like the dull,
dull ass they are not afraid to kick the dead lion, while
their ears wave to the seventh heaven of delight. In earth
life they feared his name, but like ghouls they now go
down into the grave to besmirch his memory. And this,
too, from those who profess to follow the teachings of the
meek and lowly Nazarene.
Strange as it may seem to the hypocrite, Brann was a
religious man. His creed was the religion of humanity.
His biographers, if they do him justice, will write his
name with the blood of the lamb high up on the flying scroll.
Brann's friends, and they are legion, should not repine
if he is not canonized as his bones are hearsed in death,
for "whenever was a god found agreeable to everybody?
The regular way is to lynch, as the Baylorites did, to
hang, to kill, to crucify and excoriate and trample them
under their stupid hoofs, cloven or webbed, as the case may
be, for a century or two; and then take to braying over
them when you discover their divine origin, still in a very
long-eared manner!" So speaks the sarcastic man, in
his wild way, very mournful truths.
Brann was as the "life-tree, Igdrasil, wide-waving and
many-toned, with fimbriated tendrils down deep in the
Death-Kingdoms, among the oldest dead dust of men and
with boughs reaching always beyond the stars and ever
changeless as the immutable empyrean of eternal hope."
They could better spare the whole State of Texas than
William C. Brann. While the galled jades winced beneath
the scorpion whips of his satire, and would have preferred
fireballs, they felt the potency of his dynamics and scurried
to the soldier works of the masters for a glint of mental
pabulum they had never known before.
The editor of The Sunday Eye is in receipt of many
letters from admirers of the late lamented genius. They
are rich in anathema and maranatha of Brann's heartless
and cruel detractors. With one accord they have expressed
the wish that I excoriate the revilers who desecrated
by bludgeon words the sacrosanct acre of God in
which reposes the mortal tenement of the sacred scribe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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