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 girl who flirts with a featherless young gosling till
he doesn't know whether he's floating in a sea of champagne
to the sound of celestial music, sliding down a
greased rainbow or riding on the ridge-pole of the aurora
borealis, then tells him that she can only be a kind of
Christmas-present, opera-ticket sister to him; who steals
his unripe affections and allows 'em to get frost-bitten--
carries him into the empyrean of puppy-love, only to drop
him with a dull plunk that fills his callow heart with
compound fractures--well, she cannot be prosecuted for petit
larceny nor indicted for malicious mischief; but the
unfortunate fellow who finally gets her will be glad to go to
heaven, where there's neither marrying nor giving in
marriage.
The man who preaches Prohibition in public and pays
court to a gallon jug of corn-juice in private; who damns
the saloon at home and sits up with it all night abroad,
may not transcend the law of the land, but if his Gall
should burst the very buzzards would break their necks
trying to get out of the country.
The druggist who charges a poor dunderhead a dollar
for filling a prescription that calls in Latin for a spoonful
of salt and an ounce of water, may do no violence to the
criminal code, but he plays ducks and drakes with the
moral law.
The little tin-horn attorney, whose specialties are
divorce cases and libel suits; who stirs up good-for-naughts
to sue publishers for $10,000 damages to 10-cent reputations;
who's as ready to shield Vice from the sword of
Justice as to defend Virtue from stupid violence; who's
ever for sale to the highest bidder and keeps eloquence on
tap for whosoever cares to buy; who would rob the orphan
of his patrimony on a technicality or brand the Virgin
Mary as a bawd to shield a black-mailer--well, he cannot
be put into the penitentiary, more's the pity! but it's some
satisfaction to believe that, if in all the great universe of
God there is a hell where fiends lie howling, the most
sulphurous section is reserved for the infamous shyster--that
if he cannot be debarred from the courts of earth he'll get
the bounce from those of heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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