The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 | ||
THE RETORT COURTEOUS.
F. L. LEWIS writes from San Antonio to an obscure
sheet called the Railway Age, that Brann is not an
Englishman as the Age editor in one of his elephantine efforts
to be humorous seems to have suggested, and that "all
Englishmen in this country repudiate his every utterance."
Thanks, awfully; that's the highest compliment ever paid
an American sovereign by a British subject. When I next
visit San Antonio I'll testify my gratitude by giving Lewis
50 cents instead of the usual two-bits for toting my grip
from the "Sap" depot to the Menger hotel. I once said,
"There are some very decent and brainy Englishmen;"
but as all Englishmen in this country repudiate the soft
impeachment, I hasten to acknowledge my error. As the
editor of the Age is quite anxious to ascertain my nationality
he probably suspects that I may be his father.
...
The Independent, which I infer from the date-line of a letter calling attention to its existence, is published at Pomeroy, Wash., proposes, bumbye, to "give a history of the robberies committed by Brann during the war." H——;! I can do that myself. Attired in a triangular strip of birds-eye linen and emitting savage yells, I repeatedly
...
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch of August 20, contains a
half-page puff of one John Morrissey, who seems to be a
peripatetic iconoclast who has started out with a Bible
in one hand, and a free lunch in the other to abolish
preachers. According to Morrissey he was a Roman
Catholic until he learned better, a drunkard until "the
Spirit of God entered his heart" and caused his reformation,
and used to write sermons for St. Louis preachers
who palmed them off as their own. I don't know about
that; but I know that of the interview he gave the Pee-Dee a column was cribbed without credit from the article
on "Charity" in "Brann's Scrap-Book." "The Spirit
of God" may have done much for Morrissey, but it hasn't
cured him of the thieving habit, and I would advise people
to keep a sharp eyes on their portable property until
this religious reformer succeeds in breaking into the
penitentiary.
...
The Texas Republican, which appears semi-occasionally at Greenville, Tex., denounces in what Dorenus was wont to term "livid language," my statement to the effect that a nation pays for its imports with its exports. He says it is all "iconoclastic foolishness," declares that a nation
...
It is seldom indeed that I give any attention to insulting letters, but I cannot refrain from paying my respects to one Byron Jassack Wales, who, with gray goose-quill for Pelian spear, charges down on the ICONOCLAST as blithely as a gay moss-trooper making an English swine-herd hard to catch. Such insults usually come unsigned—are simply crass insolence which their cowardly authors fear to father; but Byron sets down all the dreaful things he thinks of Brann, boldly signs his name and adds an ornamental flourish of defiance. The possibility of some long-legged, slouch-hatted, wire-moustached cowboy ambling into his august presence armed with a shooting iron carrying
And eye that scorcheth all it looks upon."
Byron is offended because I saw fit to criticize New York's priorient parvenues for exploiting the pregnancy of their wives in the public-prints, and he lets me know where he can be found in case his remarks offend, by daringly dating his letter "New York." True, he refrains from giving his street and number—even tears the printed headings off the letter paper he employs; but that does not matter, as in a little village like New York a Texan with a hair-trigger temper has only to inquire of the first man he meets to be directed to the one he wants. Byron insists that I print his letter to show people what a desperate dare-devil he is; but I refrain lest it scare all the cattle off the range and cause Bill Fewell and Doc Yandell of EL Paso to move over into Mexico. Among other dreadful things he promises to have my paper suppressed by the postal authorities if I speak of him disrespectfully, which proves that he has a tremendous political pull concealed about his person. I guess I'm safe so far as he is concerned for a careful inspection of his letter makes apparent the utter impossibility of speaking of Lord Byron Jassack Wales disrespectfully—indicates that it
...
T. Shelley Sutton, of Boise City, Idaho, has "writ a
pome" entitled "That Man Brann," and the proud
author sends me an A.P.A. paper containing his
production. It is an excellent composition—of its kind; and
I am gratified to learn that it has at least gravitated to
its proper level. Some six months ago a commercial
traveller sent me substantially the same thing, saying that he
had copied from the walls of a water closet in a Kentucky
hotel. It appears that it was too foul to harmonize with
the place in which it was composed, so it was stolen by a
thieving yahoo in search of carrion and puked into the
putrid columns of an A.P.A. paper. T. Shelley Sutton
can probably find more "original poetry" in the same
place.
...
"Rev." Bill Homan, who conducts a little pecasmman paper somewhere in North Texas for the long green and the misguidance of three or four hundred fork-o'-the-creek Campbellites, devotes two more columns of his raucous tommyrot and brainless balderdash to the Howell-Jones imbroglio. Although he manages to tell at least three deliberate lies in his idiotic eructation, he dares not deny that the trial committee, of which he was a member, permitted Jones to continue belching his fetid bile in the Christian pulpit after being cornered and compelled to confess to a cowardly crime which should be rewarded with a rope. Until this corticiferous little cur explains why he is defending a fourth-class preacher who confesses to having foully insulted, by a base forgery, a motherless young girl committed to his care, the ICONOCLAST must,
The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 | ||