The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 | ||
SALMAGUNDI.
BISHOP WILYUM DOANE hath an abiding place at Albany, N. Y., a village on the Hudson where the peons of the political bosses most do congregate to leg for bribes. In his recent annual address to the clergy the Bish. lamented bitterly that the American "jingo" was provoking dear patient Christian England to put on her war-paint. "The English press," quoth he, "has been most patient." Yea, it hath—in the optic of ye animal yclept the hog. For two years past nearly every English paper, large and small, has systematically insulted Uncle Sam—has belched upon him all the feculent bile it could rake from its putrid bowels, all the moldy mucus it could snort from its beefy brain. Even the press of Canada—that Christ-forsaken land of bow-legged half-breeds which continues to lick the No. 7 goloshes of old Gilly Brown's leavings because it lacks sufficient sand to set up for itself—barks across the border like a mangy fleabitten fice yawping at a St. Bernard. But Doane would have America swallow it all —just as the Thibetans swallow pastiles made of the excrement of their Dalai Lama. The Bish. evidently has John Bull's trademark branded on the rear elevation of his architecture. So Hingland is growing blawsted tired of our Hawmewikan himpudence. Aw! Vewy likely, doncherknow. But we shoved it down the old harlot's throat twice with the business end of a bayonet, and we'll fill her pod again with the same provender whenever she passes
...
My old friend, Major-General Whistletrigger Vanderhurst, of the Amazonian Guard, minister plenipotentiary of the Gal-Dal News, has just run a superb "scoop" on all his contemporaries. He rustled out one morning all by his lone self and discovered that prosperity had arrived —that every Texan afflicted with chronic hustlehath greenbacks to burn, and blue yarn socks galore stuffed to the bursting point with "yellow boys," while ye farmer simply slings the silver dollar of our sires at marauding blackbirds. Whistletrigger turns up his patrician nose at all "pessimists" and broadly intimates that the man who hasn't a new silk cady, seventeen pair o' tailor-made "pants," a silken nightshirt and sufficient provender in his pantry to run a Methodist camp-meeting for a month, would starve to death in a Paradise whose springs run Pomery Sec, and whose trees grew pumpkin pies, hot weinerwurst and pate de foie gras. Texas, according to this Columbus of prosperity, is a veritable Klondyke bowered with roses instead of imbedded in snowbanks—a place where every financial prospect pleases and only the popocrat is vile. But I note with pained surprise that the farmers are still selling middling cotton below six cents, buying bacon and wearing pea-green patches on the bust of their blue jeans two-dollar hand-me-downs; that I can hire all the common labor I want at 75 cents a day despite the advance in flour; that scores of mechanics are idle; that there is no longer a wage rate in any trade; that the streets are full of able-bodied beggers, while merchants offer me 2 per cent a month for the use of a little money. I note that in every Texas city realty is being cast upon the bargain counter, while great newspapers are cutting
...
Now that Henry George is dead, those papers and
politicians that were wont to abuse and misrepresent him
most brutally are fairly falling over each other to do
him honor. The post-mortem gush is sickening because
of its insincerity. If Henry George was not a great man
living he is not a great man dead. If his economic views
were fatuous while he was among us they are folly
forevermore. I am not of those jackasses that delight in
kicking dead lions; I insist that simple justice be done
a man while he is in the land of the living—that we should
not hound him to the grave with gross misrepresentation
then try to make restitution by placing him among the
stars. Henry George was a good man, but he was not
great. He was an advocate, not an originator. He
created no new epoch; he added nothing of importance to
the world's knowledge; but he did stimulate most wonderfully
economic investigation. He was a thought-compeller.
He brushed the mold of prejudice and the cobwebs of
partisanship from many a brain. By so doing he rendered
the world invaluable service and is entitled to its
profoundest gratitude. So long as men can be induced to
think there is hope for the race. Although his Single
Tax theorem will perish, it has served a good purpose.
...
A Denver party wants to know if I would kneel if given an audience by the Pope of Rome. I would be pretty
...
It is said that Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, editress of the Houston Post, and winner of the ICONOCLAST'S $500 prize as the most beautiful woman in the world, will be a candidate for the office of lieutenant-governor. If this be true she can depend on the unswerving support of the ICONOCLAST. If there be constitutional objections to her holding the office with both lily-white hands we will amend that remarkable instrument. I will take it upon myself to elect Rebecca and ask no other reward than the privilege of dancing with her at the inaugural ball. She was my first, if not my only love; and although she threw me over for Pinkie Hill, by whose effulgent aurora borealis she was hypnotized, and took to wearing pantaloons in public despite my protest, she has since repented and given all her maidenly heart to me; hence it will be my duty and my pleasure to manage her campaign. Rebecca may safely consider herself elected and discount
...
Because a young man was killed while playing football,
the lower house of the Georgia legislature passed a bill
prohibiting that game under severe penalties. To be
consistent the same body should now prohibit swimming
because some boys are drowned, and possum hunting because
some nocturnal sportsmen are killed. Georgia appears to
take it for granted that nature makes no mistake—when
she finds a man who's good for nothing else in the universe
she sends him to the legislature to make laws. There's an
element of danger in foot-ball as in all other athletic
exercises; but that is no reason why we should confine the
youngsters to croquet, mumble-peg and finger-billiards,
and allow the race to degenerate into a lobeliaceous
aggregation of lollipops. That Georgia legislature is full o'
goobers and red lemonade.
...
I am rejoiced to learn that the two factions of Texas Baptists, after having for months past denounced each other in language that smelled of sulphur and would have disgraced opposing parties of Parisian gamins—after resorting to all the petty meanness of peanut politics to control the flesh-pots—have kissed and hugged, slobbered and boohooed each on the other's brisket. "How sweet it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" That's whatever. I'm glad the ruction is over, for it was becoming a rank stench in the nostrils of the Protestant religion. It was enough to drive an intelligent man to Atheism, to make him not only suspicious of religion but ashamed of his race. It seems to me that the ICONOCLAST should have had a reserved seat at the love-feast—should
...
J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, one of those "village Hampdens" whom G. Cleveland discovered when raking the country with a fine-tooth comb in a frantic search for intellectual insects even smaller than himself, says the Bryan Democracy is composed of fanatics, bigots and idiots. He must have seen that brilliant bon mot in the Chicago Inter-Ocean Poor J. Sterling Morton. Not being born great, nor having the ability to achieve greatness, it was his misfortune to have it driven into him with a maul. And he's never gotten over it. Had Cleveland done naught else evil he would have damned himself everlastingly by pulling this intumescent jay out of a Nebraska turnip-patch to make him a cabinet clerk. I say cabinet-clerk, for the so-called secretaries of the Cleveland régime were merely stool-pigeons for the Stuffed-Prophet. And now this erstwhile seneschal of the Buffalo Beast, this pitiful stool-hopper for the d—est fool that ever disgraced the presidency, turns up his beefy proboscis at the intellectuality of the Bryanites. If J. Sterling Morton would
...
The committee sent to Europe by McKinley to talk a
little twaddle about international bi-metallism has
completed its alleged labors, and the net product is nothing
—just as the people knew it would be when saddled with
the expense of this high-fly junketing trip to enable the
administration to make a pretense of redeeming the kangaroo
promise of the Republican platform. The silver problem
is not at present the burthen of my song—I simply
rise to remark that the American people have been buncoed
by this commission business. It was sent abroad at great
outlay of boodle to ascertain what is perfectly well-known
to every man outside the insane asylum, viz.: that England,
being a creditor nation, would not consent to the
remonetization of silver. Now let us send a commission
to Europe to see if the water over there is wet. O Lord!
how long will Uncle Sam consent to enact the rôle of a
long-eared, pie-bald ass?
...
I wonder, O I wonder who that "prominent lawyer and sound money Democrat" was who got drunk at Charlie Cortizio's in Austin the other day and toasted Chollie Boy Culberson as "Texas' most distinguished son, the man who has done most to distinguish his state abroad" —just a bummy little boost for Chollie Boy's anæmic senatorial boom? I cannot imagine who he may be, but I was pleased to see his toast followed in my pet daily by an "ad" for a tansy compound warranted to "give relief from painful and irregular periods regardless of cause." I hope that the "sound money Democrat" aforesaid did
...
I noticed in one of the local papers that "Dallas wants Baylor," $50,000 to $75,000 worth. Doubtless I'm a hopeless heretic, but I don't believe a d—n word of it. If anybody thinks that Dallas will put up $25,000 cash to secure the removal thither of Baylor, he can find a man about these premises who will make him a 2 to 1 game that his believer is 'way of his base. Dallas doesn't want Baylor even a little bit. There isn't a town in this world that wants it except Waco. It is simply another Frankenstein monster that has destroyed its architect. Baylor spends no money here worth mentioning. Its students are chiefly forks-of-the-creek yaps who curry horses or run errands for their board and wear the same undershirt the year round. They take but two baths during their lifetime—one when they are born, the other when they are baptized. The institution is worth less than nothing to any town. It is what Ingersoll would call a storm-center of misinformation. It is the Alma Mater of mob violence. It is a chronic breeder of bigotry and bile. As a small Waco property owner, I will give it $1,000 any time to move to Dallas, and double that amount if it will go to Honolulu or hell. There is no bitterness in this, no desire to offend; it is simply a business proposition by a business
The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 | ||