The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
History
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
I do not believe as Mr. Charles Campbell, of Anchor,
does, that they should be gibbeted high as Haman. Nor
do I think as Mr. C. E. Stewart, of Minier, does, that they
should be lashed naked through the world and lambasted
till death ends the heart throbs. I believe that they should
be permitted to live until they have read the great genius
and learned to understand and exalt him. It would make
them better for it, religion would not suffer by it, though
Baylor sank a thousand leagues beneath the seven-hued
regions of Tartarus.
The ICONOCLAST minced no words. When it dealt body
blows they landed in the brisket and affected the solar
plexus in a very apprehensive way.
Lincoln was gentle and generous, Ingersoll was brilliant
and broad, but Brann was all this and greater. His
untimely death was a distinctive loss to the march of
civilization and a gain to the shams of hypocrisy which takes
now a new grip on the English language to batter down
the shackles Brann had welded about them with public opinion.
Brann was a reformer who meant reform. He wore
his heart upon his sleeve, but would be cruel to be just.
He endured mental anguish great as was suffered in the
garden of Gethsemane. As the sweetest perfume exhales
from a crushed, blooming rose so the sweeter and nobler
sentiments welled up from the perennial spring of his
fountains of love when most bruised and racked with pain.
I have no fear of his acceptance on the right hand up
there where men are judged by their deeds and not by
semblance of better things that a canting world may
simulate. He is in Valhalla with the other battling heroes
where the alabaster boxes of eternal love are showered
upon the halo of their brighter radiance. Brann wrote
to catch the wide world's attention that he might teach
them gentler things than feculent shocks. He was essentially
an ascetic devoted to uplifting in his own sure way.
All the classes came trippingly to his and all the dogmas,
all the purlieus of sociology and political economy were
as an open book to him. When he soared to the sun
he never dropped into the sea from Icarian wings. His
iconoclasm was the decadence of the social cesspool and
the expurgation of money power which he believed was
the ne plus ultra of anarchy and the genius of diabolic
perfidy. He preached as he felt, tender and terrible,
loving and vehement, a strange commingling of Titanic
vulgate and cooing peace. Brann was eccentric but all
genius must have a certain leeway without being dubbed
Quixotic. He was a man whose loftiest ideality was purity
in womanhood. He adored children and was in many
respects child-like. He was as
"The long light that shakes across the lake,
Where the cataract leaps in its glory."
Friend Brann, through blinding mist of sympathetic
tears, I say adieu.--Geo. L. Hutchin, in the Bloomington
Eye.
* * *
A PEN PICTURE OF BRANN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account