The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 | ||
SALMAGUNDI.
THIS year's crop of Christmas accidents appears to be up to the average. As an angel-maker Christmas outclasses St. Patrick's day and is almost equal to the Fourth of July. The North celebrates the birth of our dear Lord by stuffing itself to the bursting point with plum budding, while the South manifests its appreciation of God's mercy by blowing itself to pieces with gunpowder. Dozens of people were killed, hundreds lost more or less important portions of their anatomy while a great army of new-made dyspeptics goes marching onward to the grave. I cannot understand what either plumpudding or gunpowder has to do with saving grace. The man must be very gross who can celebrate with gluttony and drunkenness the birth of the Redeemer. Why should anyone desire to transform the world into a murderous pandemonium because of the arrival of the Prince of Peace? Truth to tell, Christmas has become a secular holiday rather than a day for religious rejoicing, and Deists, Atheists and Agnostics take as much interest in its observation as do those who believe in the divinity of the Babe of Bethlehem. More people get drunk on Christmas than on any other day in
...
The American custom of "treating" is receiving some severe criticism from the European press. It deserves it. It is one of the most ridiculous and hurtful that ever cursed mankind. It is responsible for the bulk of the crime and pauperism usually accredited to John Barleycorn. Where there is no treating there's usually little intemperance. When a man steps into a "resort" for a glass of beer he's pretty apt to find a party lined up at the bar. He wants to pay for his beer, drink it and take his departure. But this is not permitted. He may have no more than a passing acquaintance with any of those present, but he must drink with the crowd, and having done so feels obligated to ask the crowd to drink with him. It does so, and he's "out" from one to three dollars. Having drunk with Tom he must drink with Dick and with Harry, and when he departs he's more than half drunk. The chances are that he could ill afford the expense incurred—that if left to himself he would have taken one drink instead of a dozen. "Treating" is a foolish custom that should be abolished in the interest of sobriety. It is good neither for the saloon nor for society. It is not good for the saloon because it occasions drunkenness and disorder and causes it to be avoided by thousands of otherwise good paying patrons. It is not good for society because weak men waste their substance, and a drunken man
...
The "Rev." Sam Jones of Jawgy has broken loose
again. This time he sets his cornstalk spear in rest and
charges full tilt at the public school system and pretty
much everything else in sight. His pathway is strewn
with a gruesome wreck of the English grammar. Sam
discussing the merits of education suggest a brindle mule
criticising the Venus de Milo or a scavenger expatiating
on the odors of Araby. His reverence (?) has become
imbued with the idea that it spoils a boy to educate him,
which goes to prove that the less a man knows the more
he despises knowledge. But we can scarce blame Sam
for railing at education. He is but obeying the law of
self-preservation. When the people learn to distinguish
between a hawk and a heron-saw they will drive this putrid-mouth little blatherskite from the pulpit.
...
The New York Press wants all niggers holding federal
offices in the South "armed to the teeth" for their own
protection. It has an idea that the South is peopled only
by "white savages" whose favorite sport is the shooting
of nigger officer-holders from ambush. Like the erstwhile
Artemus Ward's monkey, the editor of the Press is
"a most amusin kuss." The South never gets angry at
that kind of an animal. Occasionally a corrupt Republican
administration appoints some ignorant Ethiopian
to office who becomes insufferably insolent to his white
neighbors and is called down with a six-shooter; but for
every negro office-holder "assassinated by Southern
savages" at least five white women are dragged from their
homes by Northern white-caps and brutally abused. Who
says so? I do; and I stand ready to prove it by the
files of the leading Republican paper of this nation for
ten years past. I refer, of course, to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the best all-around newspaper in the world.
The South has very little affection for nigger office-holders, but they are full as safe as any other class of
citizens so long as they behave themselves. The black man
is not to blame for accepting an office, it is the Republican
administration that deserves censure in thus making
him the political superior of his white brethern. It is
not the nigger who deserves killing, but the meddlesome
Yankee editors who encourage him to be insolent.
...
According to press report a fashionable New York society female has dismissed her maid and engaged a valet. Well, if the dear creature enjoys having a man dress and undress her, comb her hair and lace her corsets why should an envious world stand on its hinder legs and carp? New York fashionables must have some antidote for ennui. If it be proper for ladies to have valets I presume that it
...
In the morning Mr. Logan wore a doeskin box coat with pearl buttons nearly as large as alarm clocks in two rows on it. His spats were old-gold color to match. In the afternoon he wore a dark plaid coat and trousers and a saffron-colored vest. The vest was garnished with maroon-colored inch-and-a-quarter checks. He wore an Ascot scarf, dark blue, with lavender polka dots. His scarfpin was a gold whip four inches long and set with a half-inch turqoise in the middle. He wore ox-blood shoes in the morning and ox-blood gloves and in the afternoon his shoes and gloves were buff colored. In the evening he wore full dress.—Chicago Times-Herald.
And still we wonder at the increase of crime! Could
any self-respecting Texan with a six-shooter concealed
about his person be expected to meet such a gorgeous bird
o' paradise and suffer it to escape? I wonder if Mr.
Logan scrapes his tongue, manicures his toes and puts
his moustache on curl papers? And I wonder what the
devil old "Black Jack" would say could he wake up long
enough to take survey of his clothes-horn of a son? And
I wonder what the deuce the woman who married it will
do with it? And I wonder why the hades his ma doesn't
lead the little man out into the woodshed, remove his
panties, lay him across the maternal knee and hit him 'steen
times across the rear elevation with a green cypress
shingle? Think of a featherless he animal playing peacock
—no mission in God's world but to dress and undress itself
three times a day.
...
The New York Medical Record says that "a custom prevails in this country that ministers should be considered as free from pecuniary obligation to the doctor for service rendered." The Record then proceeds to file a very vigorous kick because of the aforesaid custom, broadly intimating that sky-pilots in general are long on gall and short on gratitude. There is certainly no reason why the preacher, who usually receives a good salary, should not pay for his poultices and pills. When he relieves cases of soul-sickness he does so "for the glory of God" and the long green. He expects to be paid twice for his services —once here and again in heaven. The doctor of medicine is not infrequently poorer in this world's goods than the preacher, and he looks forward to but one fee. He should not be deprived of that by men who sweetly sing:
I ask not to stay."
If the doctors treat the dominies gratis it follows as a
matter of course that they must recoup themselves by
adding to the bills of their lay brethren, just as railway
companies which carry preachers at half-rate must saddle
the loss upon their other patrons.
...
Mintonville, Ky., not only sticks to its gods, but insists on clinging with a death grip to its good old orthodox devil, horns, hoofs and tail. The Rev. Gilham of the Christian church of that city, who has doubtless discovered recently that that unimportant portion of the world which moves and has its being outside of Mintonville had several centuries back diplomatically dropped the devil question, undertook to inform his flock that he, too had arrived at the conclusion that his Satanic Majesty was a
The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 | ||