A great many people imagine that "your Uncle Sam" will frazzle hell's bells out of Spain in one word and two motions, that all of this preparation for threatened conflict with Spain is much ado about little; that the United States will get up early some morning and administer the paternal slipper to the Spanish pantaloon, simply by way of diversion or to get up an appetite for breakfast. The result of the scrap may show that the job had best be undertaken after a square meal. . . . As the war is not yet on I rise to remark that it is my sincere wish that those who have lost a scrap may find it --that those who have clamored so hard and so long for hostilities to begin, may find standing room only in the theater of war, and be given positions in the full glare of the footlight, with a corporal's guard behind them, to see that they do not strike a retrograde motion when the curtain rises on the first act. [This completes the last issue of the ICONOCLAST. The publication of the paper was not continued, though evidently this was intended when the May issue was printed. The following articles were written shortly after the death of Brann but did not appear in the ICONOCLAST.] THE DEATH OF BRANN. BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY. Mr. Brann, who was killed in Waco last Friday, was a much greater man than even his admirers knew. He had many virtues which, in a way, his peculiar tactics in journalism belied. For instance, his paper was read, for the most part, by people who took a delight in his calling a spade a spade, and, in fact, in his seeking out spades to write about. This was not the true Brann at all. The man was clean-minded in his conversation. He thought cleanly. He lived cleanly as a gentleman should, though he did not leave off sack. He was not a brawling, boisterous ruffian, reveling in the slums. He was essentially a family man and a student who "scorned delights and lived laborious days." His regard for the purity of women amounted almost to a monomania, and he lived up to his own preachment on all the various forms of integrity with much more strictness than people who affected to believe he was leper. Furthermore the man was an ascetic in his essential spirit. He had the true taste for the finely done thing in letters and if he did not devote himself to what might be called the more refined literary artistry, it was because he felt that there was danger of drawing too fine the lessons he thought it his duty to impart. There was no use, he said, in writing to the few. One should write so that all might read, running. He maintained that the way to instill principles in the people was to secure their attention first, and he did not hesitate to secure their attention by any device that seemed available. Therefore he felt himself justified in appealing to the lower instincts in men in order that, while they were all unsuspecting, he might inculcate something better. And so there ran through his publication the strangest