Part 8

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The man who takes up Brann's work will only succeed, not replace him. He was a star of the first magnitude, and such bodies are not created in an hour--not always in an age. He who attempts an imitation, however clever his work, would stand before the world, self-confessed, a failure from the first. Booth, in his favorite character inspired us--Joe Jefferson could only prompt us to laughter. Yet, is not Jefferson without genius in his way? There is no reason, however, why he who follows may not be as loyal to the faith, as courageous in the fight, as Brann was known and acknowledged to be. The Chief is dead, but did not die until he had blazoned the way for those who dare follow where he so bravely led.

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In life Brann often said he wanted no mourning worn for him, save that which enshrouded the hearts of his family and friends--that the mere trappings of woe were but its "limbs and outward flourishes," which, too often, failed to reach the heart.

* * * SPEAKING OF BRANN.

Died Fighting April 2, 1898.

Where now is all his thundering? He has "fall'n on stillness" in the Spring, And even echo answers not, "In that dim land where all things are forgot," His surging sentences, his cadenced chimes Of speech that through the seven climes Wooed the many to rapt listening.

Soothed by the wind of the dead men's feet, He lies in slumber senseless-sweet. His fame, his wife's and children's tears, The issue that made up his manly years, His hates and loves the burgeoning Earth receives, And list, "a little noiseless noise among the leaves" Of southern springtime pity does entreat.

A fighter's faults were his, but strong The blows he struck at throned Wrong; Beauty he loved as ever love the brave; The April air breathes beauty o'er his grave. Truth he pursued. Lo, he has found her now: She kissed the kiss of peace upon his brow. His ears are filled with Silence's sweet song.

Fighting he died, marched into the Night, His banner blazing with his bravery's light. "Shot from behind," the story goes, To glorify him and to damn his foes. The foes he fought were Cowardice and Fraud; They have prevailed again, but, O Lord God, Thou wilt raise up still others for Thy fight.

Rejoicing loud is in the House of Sham, Bigots to themselves make deep salaam, Shoddydom rubs its ringed hands in glee, The Ogre's scandal-scourged at each pink tea, Pecksniff's pray that he has gone to swell The galaxy of bravery and brains in Hell-- Great joy in small souls all not worth a damn!

But where men think, feel, as men can, "Bon voyage through the dark, good man!" They call and take up his pen-lance And brandish it again 'gainst Ignorance In power fortified with a myriad lies And every great-heart, fine-soul cries As pledge of fealty, "Here's to you, Brann!"

What tho' he hear no rumor of our hail! What tho' we follow searching for that Grail A bettered world with less of woe and pain, And better gods than Privilege and Gain, Out in the darkness, by assassins sped, 'Tis better far to join defeated dead Than share success with him whose soul's for sale.

--WILLIAM MARION REEDY, in St. Louis Mirror.

* * * DEATH OF W. C. BRANN.

What a sable pall was flung over the spirits of countless thousands who heard last week that Editor W. C. Brann, of the ICONOCLAST, was no more. "The heavens seem hung in black and the clouds are wrung of their stars," wrote a St. Paul friend who idolized the apostolic seer.

The world is dark with excess of grief for the immortal soul of an illimitable genius has been sent to its maker and scattered with the star dust of the eidouranion William C. Brann was an apostle. Like Christ, like Lincoln and others whom we deify, he was misunderstood and reviled, and a cowardly bullet pierced him in the back, a martyrdom of which he had a premonition.

The head and front of his offending was strict adherence to the truth, though the heavens fall. He knew no fear, but was never the aggressor.

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.

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.