I have just been enjoying the first holiday I have had in fifteen
years. Owing to circumstances entirely beyond my control, I
devoted the major part of the past month to digesting a couple of
installments of Saving Grace presented by my Baptist brethren,
and carefully rubbed in with revolvers and ropes, loaded canes
and miscellaneous cudgels--with almost any old thing calculated
to make a sinner reflect upon the status of his soul. That
explains the short-comings of the present issue of the
ICONOCLAST. One cannot write philosophic essays while dallying
with the Baptist faith. It were too much like mixing Websterian
dignity with a cataleptoid convulsion, or sitting on a red ant
hill and trying to look unconcerned. Here in Waco our religious
zeal registers 600 in the shade, and when we hold a love-feast
you can hear the unctuous echoes of our hosannahs from Tadmor in
the Wilderness to the Pillars of Hercules. We believe with St.
Paul that faith without works is dead; hence we gird up our loins
with the sweet cestus of love, grab our guns and go whooping
forth to "capture the world for Christ." When we find a
contumacious sinner we waste no time in theological controversy
or moral suasion, but promptly round him up with a rope and bump
his head, and we bump it hard. Why consume our energies
"agonizing with an emissary of Satan," explaining his error and
striving by honeyed phrases to lead him into the light, when it
is so much easier to seize him by the pompadour and pantelettes
and drag him bodily from the abyss? Some may complain that our
Christian charity carries a razor edge, that we skim the cream
off our milk of human kindness then put the can under an alkali
pump before serving it to our customers as a prime article; but
bless God! they can scarce expect to
". . . be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
Whilst others fight to win the prize
And sail through bloody seas."
My Baptist brethren desired to send me as a missionary to
foreign lands, and their invitation was so urgent, their
expressions of regard so fervent that I am now wearing my head in
a sling and trying to write with my left hand. Although they
declared that I had an imperative "call" to go, and would tempt
Providence by loitering longer than one short day, I concluded to
remain in Waco and preach them a few more of my popular sermons
from that favorite text, "If ye forgive not men their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." It is quite
possible that a few heathen will go to hell whom I might enable
to find the river route to heaven, but I believe in doing the
duty that lies next my hand--in first saving the heathen right
here at home.
But enough of persiflage; now for cold facts. In all candor, I
would cheerfully ignore the recent disgraceful occurrences in
this city could I do so in justice to the South in general and to
Texas in particular. I have no revenge to gratify, no more
feeling in the matter than though the assaults had been made upon
an utter stranger. It is quite true that for a time I was eager
to call my assailants out one by one and settle the affair after
the manner of our fathers; but being creditably informed that
instead of honoring a cartel, they would make it the basis of a
legal complaint and send me to the penitentiary, and having no
desire to enact the role of the street assassin, I became once
more a law-abiding citizen. Truth to tell, there's not one of the
whole cowardly tribe who's worth a charge of buckshot, who
deserves so much honor as being sent to hell by a white man's
hand. If Socrates was poisoned and Christ was crucified for
telling unpalatable truths to the splenetic-hearted hypocrites of
their time, it would ill become me to complain of a milder
martyrdom for a like offense. It may be urged that having been
twice accused of the heinous crime of slandering young ladies,
and twice beset on that pretext by armed thugs, I owe it to
myself to make some explanation satisfactory to the public. Not
at all; from my youth up noble womanhood has been the very god of
my idolatry; and now that I have reached the noon of life, if the
reputation which I have honestly earned as a faithful defender of
the vestal fires can be blown adown the wind by the rank breath
of lying rascals, I would not put forth a hand to check its
flight. If old scars received while defending woman's name and
fame in paths of peril which my traducers dare not tread, fail to
speak for me, then to hell with the world, and let its harlot
tongue wag howsoever it will. Never but once did I stoop to
refute a cowardly falsehood circulated about myself. I was
younger then--had not learned that public opinion is a notorious
bawd, that "nailing a lie" but accentuates its circulation.
Unfortunately, the recent assaults upon me are not altogether my
private concern. They were armed protests against a fundamental
principle of this Republic--freedom of the press. They are being
citied by ill advised or malicious persons as evidence of
"Southern Savagery." They are calculated, if suffered to go
unexplained, to cast reproach upon revealed religion. They were
futile but brutal attempts in the last decade of the Nineteenth
century to suppress truth by terror, to conceal the iniquities of
a sectarian college by beating to death the only journalist who
dared to raise his voice in protest. They were appeals to Judge
Lynch to strangle exposure, hence it is imperative that the blame
be placed where it properly belongs; not upon the South, which
unqualifiedly condemns it; not upon the Baptist church, which
indignantly repudiates it; but upon a little coterie of
white-livered black-hearted hypocrites, any of whom could look
thro' a keyhole with both eyes at once, a majority of whom are
either avowed sympathizers with or active members of that
unamerican organization known to infamy as the A.P.A. The same
old God-forsaken gang of moral perverts and intellectual misfits
who more than two years ago brought a Canadian courtesan and an
unfrocked priest to Waco to lecture on A.P.A'ism, and who
threatened at one of these buzzard-feasts to mob me for calling
the latter a cowardly liar, were responsible for my being dragged
with a rope by several hundreds hoodlums up and down a Baptist
college campus in this city Oct. 2, and for the brutal assault
upon me five days later by a pack of would-be assassins who had
waited until my back was unsuspectingly turned before they had
the nerve to get out their guns. I can overlook the assault made
by the college students, although most of them were grown men,
because they were encouraged thereto by their elders. I have
positively refused to prosecute them; but the last assault was
led by a shyster lawyer of middle-age, a so-called "judge," a
member of the board of managers of Baylor. I am seeking no
trouble with any of them--they are perfectly safe in so far as I
am concerned; still if the latter gang are not satisfied with
their cowardly crime, if they regret that they were beaten off
ere they quite succeeded in sending me to Kingdom Come, they have
only to notify me where and when they can be found alone, and
I'll give the whole accursed mob a show for their money. I'm too
slight for a slugger--cannot lick a herd of steers with one pair
o' hands; but I can make a shot-gun sing Come to Christ. I am
credibly informed that "at least half a dozen" of my meek and
lowly Baptist brethren are but awaiting an opportunity to
assassinate me, and that if successful they will plead in
extenuation that I "have slandered Southern women." I walk the
streets of Waco day by day, and I walk them alone. Let these
cur-ristians shoot me in the back if they dare, then plead that
damning lie as excuse for their craven cowardice. If the decent
people of this community fail to chase them to their holes and
feed their viscera to the dogs, then 'd rather be dead and in
hades forever than alive in Waco a single day.
The claim set up by my assailants that I had slandered the female
students of Baylor University is a malicious calumny, that was
but made a lying pretext for the attacks. That my article in the
October ICONOCLAST did NOT impeach the character of the Baylor
girls is amply evidenced by the fact that my offer to leave the
matter to the decision of a committee of reputable business men,
to abjectly apologize and donate $500 to any charity these
gentlemen might name in case the decision was against me, was
flatly refused. "The honor of young ladies is not a proper
subject for arbitration," I was told. Quite true; but the proper
construction of an article which is made a pretext for mob
violence, IS a proper matter for cool-headed and disinterested
parties to pass upon. The Baylorians insisted upon being judge,
jury and executioner--proof positive that they well knew the
article would not stand the arbitrary construction they had
placed upon it. After the first outbreak the Baylor bullies of
the lost manhood stripe and their milk-sick apologists held a
windy powwow in a Baptist church, and there bipedal brutes with
beards, creatures who have thus far succeeded in dodging the
insane asylum, whom an inscrutable Providence has kept out of the
penitentiary to ornament the amen-corner--many of whom do not
pretend to pay their bills--some of whom owe me for the very meat
upon the bones of their scorbutic brats--branded me as a
falsifier while solemnly protesting that they had never read a
line of my paper. They proclaimed in stentor tones and
pigeon-English that would have broken the heart of Lindley
Murray, that I was a defamer of womanhood--while confessing that
they didn't know whether I had ever mentioned a female. They
howled that they "were willing to sign Brann's death-
warrant"--on mere hearsay. These intellectual eunuchs, who
couldn't father an idea if cast bodily into the womb of the
goddess of wisdom, declared positively that I would be permitted
to print nothing more about their beloved Baylor--and that
without knowing whether I had advertised it over two continents
as an oasis in a moral Sahara or a snakehole in the Dismal Swamp.
It was a beautiful, a refreshing sight, this practical approval
of mob violence by unfledged ministers on the campus of a Baptist
college, this raucous tommyrot about death-warrants and ropes,
this sawing of the air and chewing of the rag by people so d----d
ignorant that they couldn't find either end of themselves in the
dark, this chortling over the fact that one desk-emaciated
welter-weight had been caught unawares and trampled upon by a
sanctified mob--a refreshing sight, I say, in a temple
consecrated to that Christ who forgave even his enemies from the
cross. But every man at that meeting who said he never read the
ICONOCLAST deliberately lied. The Baptists all read it. Some
subscribe and pay for it like gentlemen, some buy it, some borrow
it, and the rest steal it from the newsstands. The greatest
trouble I have is to prevent, Baptist preachers spoiling my local
sale by telling everybody in town what the ICONOCLAST contains
before the revised proof-sheets are read. It is but fair to say,
however, that the Baptists were not alone to blame. Much of the
noise was made by a lot of tickey-tailed little politicians who
have no more religion than a rabbit, but who were trying to open
a popular jack-pot with a jimmy. Some of the brawlers were
self-seeking business men, willing to coin blood into boodle,
ready to slander Deity for a plugged dime, anxious to avert a
Baptist boycott by emitting a deal of stinking breath. These
bloated financial ducks in a provincial mud-puddle have had
entirely too much to say. When the present lecture season is
over; when I get the Baptist mob thoroughly cowed; when I can
walk the streets without expecting every moment to get shot from
a stairway or double-banked by the meek and lowly followers of
the Messiah; when I have time to amuse myself with trifles, I'll
sue this brace of Smart Alecs for $20,000 each for deliberate
defamation of character, and if I recover the money I'll use it
to make a partial payment on the grocery bills of the rest of the
gang. Intellectual pigmies who accumulate much cash by trading in
cash or tripe in a country town are quite apt to become too big
for their britches and require to be taken down a peg or two, to
be taught their place. They sometimes have the nickel-plated
nerve to play Rhadamanthus to the purveyors of brains--swell up
like unclean toads and conceive themselves to be in "select
society." Some of them actually imagine themselves of more
importance to this community than Judge Gerald and Waller Baker;
yet you could scrape enough intellect from under Gerald's
toe-nails to build the crew, while Baker forgets more every
fifteen minutes than they have learned since they were born. The
meeting held at the Baptist church to ratify the outrage was
composed of a lot of self-seekers and whining hypocrites, half of
whom would sell their souls for a copper cent and throw in their
risen Lord as lagniappe. It was a mob that writhed and wriggled
in its own putridity like so many maggots, while the local press
cowered before its impotent wrath like young skye-terriers
before a skunk. If I couldn't beget better men with the help of a
digger Indian harem I'd take to the woods and never again look
upon the face of woman. It was a glorious sight to see these
"pore mizzuble wurrums of the dust" spraining their yarn galluses
trying to hurl the writhen bolts of Olympian Jove--and now
bellyaching because hit in the umbilicus with their own
boomerang. The second assault, more brutal and cowardly than the
first, followed as the logical sequence of that powwow of
pietists, peddlers and politicians. The utterances of that
congregation of unclean adders, the resolutions adopted by that
sanctified body of dead-beats in the sanctum sanctorum of the
Baptists, was a bid for blood-injected the idea into the warty
heads of a trio of thugs that by way-laying and beating me to
death they would pass into history as heroes. Then the real
manhood of Waco rose en masse and laid down the law in no
uncertain language to the hungry hypocrites and their Baylorian
hoodlums. They declared that religious intolerance would no
longer be permitted to terrorize this town. Fearing just
retribution at the hands of the citizens, Baylor called out its
three military companies and mounted guard with rifles furnished
by the government, while the very girls in whose name they had
dragged me around the college campus with a rope, laughed them to
scorn and sent me flowers--and the password of the bold sojer
boys. One young lady writes: "The password for the night is
'Napoleon.' Our bold soldiers halted a milk wagon at daylight
this morning. Probably they thought Brann was concealed in one of
the cans with his bowie-knife." Half a dozen men armed with
cannon-crackers could have chased the brave mellish into the
Brazos and danced with the Baylor girls till daybreak--and I
suspect that the latter would have enjoyed the lark. For a third
of a century the bigotry of a lot of water moccasins had been the
supreme law of this land. To obtain an office the politician had
to crawl to it on his marrow bones and slavishly obey its
behests. To obtain trade the merchant had to sneeze whenever it
took snuff. To obtain patronage the local publisher had to make
it the absolute dictator of his policy. Like Jehushran, it "waxed
fat and kicked"--until it got its legs tide in a double bow knot
about its OWN neck. Its tyranny became insupportable, murderous,
there was a new declaration of American independence, and now
this J. Caesar that erstwhile did bestride Central Texas like a
colossus, is more humble than Uriah Heep. And what were the
A.P.Apes of Waco doing while honest men were raising the standard
of revolt and chasing the Baptist hierarchy into its hole? Were
they in the front rank shouting their war-cry of "no union of
church and state"--the "little red school-house" rampant on their
orange-colored rag? Not exactly. They had sneaked off to some bat
cave to plot against the whites, to protest against the
proceedings of their fellow citizens. Had a Baptist editor been
mobbed on the campus of a Catholic college they would have howled
a lung out about Popish tyrannys stood on their heads and fanned
themselves with their own shirt-tails.
The faculty of Baylor protest that they did all in their power to
prevent the brutal outbreak. They confess, however, that it had
been brewing all day, yet they neglected to notify either myself
or the sheriff. Before me is a Lake Charles, La. paper, in which
a letter from one of the scabs who participated in the first
attack is published. He says: "The faculty did not say do it, or
not do it." And that's about the size of it. That the students
were encouraged by one or more members of the board of trustees
can be demonstrated beyond the peradventure of a doubt. All the
stale bath water in all the Baptist tanks this side Perdition
cannot wash the conviction from the public mind that the Baylor
management was behind that howling mob. The second assault was
led by a trustee, a member of the board of managers; and this
after I had stated positively in the local press that I meant no
disparagement of the young ladies--that it was the administration
of the University I was after. In the October ICONOCLAST I
expressed the fervent hope that no more young ladies would be
debauched at Baylor. That constituted the ostensible casus
belli.. Do the trustees of Baylor dare deny that such things HAVE
occurred at that "storm center of misinformation" and ministerial
manufactory? If so, they are a precious long time putting me to
the proof in the courts of this country. Texas has an iron-clad
criminal libel law, and I suspect that I could pay a judgment for
damages in any reasonable sum without spraining my credit or
bankrupting the ICONOCLAST. If they have not the chilled-steel
hardihood to deny that girls have been debauched at Baylor--if by
their resounding silence anent this matter they mean to give
assent--what then? Do they hope that more girls WILL be ruined
there? They may take either horn of the dilemma they like, but I
beg to state that the issue here raised cannot be obscured by
dragging me around with a rope. When Jonah was caught in a scheme
of vindictive rascality he thought he "did well to be angry." The
best thing the Baylorites can do is to 'fess up and reform--it's
too late in the century to suppress truth with six-shooters. I
have heard of no "deplorable accidents" at Add-Ran, the Christian
college, consequently it has no complaints to file against the
ICONOCLAST. The Convent of the Sacred Heart gets along somehow
without "mishaps," and even Paul Quinn, the colored college, is
graduating no "missionaries" for Hungry Hill. Because some girls
go wrong at an institution for the promotion of ignorance, it by
no means follows that all, or any considerable number thereof are
deficient in morality. I doubt not that a vast number of the
female students of Baylor, past and present, are pure as the
flowers that bloom above the green glacier; but some have fallen,
and the conclusion is inevitable that they were not properly
protected from the wiles of the world. I care not how
noble-minded, how pure of heart a girl may be, if she is
committed when young and inexperienced to a college where both
sexes are received, it becomes the imperative duty of the
management to render one false step impossible. When the
president of a pretentious sectarian institute must plead with
the public that he had "wept and prayed over" a 14-year old girl,
but was powerless to prevent her rushing headlong to ruin; when
at a grand rally of the faithful to condemn a well-meant
criticism and encourage mob violence, an old he-goat who couldn't
get trusted at the corner grocery for a pound of soap, confesses
to more than the ICONOCLAST had charged, by saying that some
ACCIDENTS had occurred at the college, it were well for mothers
to look carefully to its management and note its discipline
before entrusting it with their young daughters. "Accidents,"
indeed! Criminal negligence would be a more appropriate name. A
university consecrated to the Baptist Christ, whose trustees lead
cowardly assaults upon law-abiding citizens and beat them with
bludgeons after they are insensible; whose faculty know that mob
violence is contemplated yet fail to report it to the police;
whose students enter the home of a man for the purpose of
dragging him by force and with drawn pistols from the presence of
his family (the Baylor thugs had the impudence to invade my home
in search of me before finding me in the city)--such an
institution, I say, is not a proper guardian for any youth whose
father doesn't desire to see him land in the Baptist pulpit or
the penitenitary. I have been publicly warned on pain of death,
and heaven alone knows what hereafter, not to speak
"disrespectful" of Baylor; but I feel in duty bound to caution
parents against committing their children to such a pestiferous
plague-spot, such a running sore upon the body social.
. . .
Not only has Baylor demonstrated its unworthiness to be the
custodian of young people of either sex, but such unworthiness
has been proclaimed in the public prints by Dr. Rufus C.
Burleson, who served as its president for almost half a century.
I insisted that the salaries paid the faculty at Baylor were
insufficient to command the services of first class educators,
and that those entrusted with the duty of selecting teachers were
incapable of correctly estimating the educational qualifications
of others Dr. Burleson goes far beyond that, expressly declaring
in the Dallas News that a majority of the present board of
managers are not college educated, that for them to properly
administer discipline and make wise selection of teachers "is
simply impossible." What, in God's name, can be expected of an
institution containing several hundred young people of both
sexes, if it be deficient in dissipline? Of what earthly use is a
University if it be not provided with a wisely selected faculty?
It now remains to be seen whether the Baptist brethren will mob
Dr. Burleson--or sneak up behind him with an assortment of clubs
and six-shooters! But that is not the worst that Dr. Burleson
says. In a published letter of his now before me he denounces Dr.
B. H. Carroll, chairman of the board of trustees and present high
muck-a-muck of Baylor, as an ingrate, a self-seeker, a mischief
maker and an irremediable liar! Now if Burleson is telling the
truth--and I am not prepared to dispute his statements--what can
we expect of a University managed by such a man? I am frank to
confess that I did not suspect Bro. Carroll to be quite so bad. I
knew that he was an intellectual dugout spreading the canvas of a
seventy-four, that there was precious little to him but gab and
gall; but I did not suppose that he was an habitual falsifier and
guilty of base ingratitude. I really hope that Dr. Burleson may
be mistaken--that the new boss of Baylor has not contracted such
a habit of lying that it is utterly impossible for him to tell
the truth. I should dislike to believe all that is said about
each other by the two factions of my Baptist brethren now
struggling for the control of Baylor. According to Carroll, Dr.
Burleson, president emeritus, ought to be in the penitentiary;
according to Burleson, Carroll is not a fit associate for a
brindle cow. "Speak disrespectfully of Baylor and die!" Good
Lord! were I to repeat one-half the Baylor factions are saying
about each other I'd wreck the state. Time was when the faculty
of Baylor was the pride of the South. Those were the days when
many of the noblest men and women of Texas were educated within
its walls. They love their alma mater, not for what she is, but
for what she was. The old professors are gone, have been
supplanted in great part by a lot of priorient little preachers,
selected by a board of trustees, half of whom couldn't tell a
Greek root from a rutabaga, pons asinorum from Balaam's ass. Dr.
Burleson seems to be of the opinion that a majority of the
Baylorian managers were educated in a mule-pen and dismissed
without a diploma--couldn't tell whether a man were construing
Catullus into Sanskrit or pronouncing in Piute a panegeric on a
baked pup. Were I not persona non grata I would like to witness
the classroom performances of these young professors--chosen with
owlish gravity by men who cannot write deer sur without the
expenditure of enough nervo-muscular energy to raise a cotton
crop, chewing off the tips of their tongues and blotting the
paper with their proboscides. Yet for offering to open a night
school for the benefit of the Baylorian faculty I was mobbed; for
intimating that the hoard of managers had not socked with old
Socrates and ripped with old Euripides I was assaulted by one of
their number and his brave body guard and beaten with
six-shooters and bludgeons until I was insensible.
. . .
It is not my present purpose to drag forth all the grisly
skeletons of Baylor and make them dance for the amusement of the
multitude. I have yielded to the urgent appeals of my friends to
let the institution down easy, to cast a little kerosene on the
troubled waters, to hold out the olive branch to Baylor. Besides,
I already have more holes in my head than nature intended, and am
not particularly anxious to increase the assortment. Let what is
hidden from public ken so remain until that great incubator of
Christian charity, that ganglion of brotherly love, attempts to
redeem its long-standing promise to land me in the penitentiary
for criminal libel. It could serve no good purpose at present to
trace out here the history of those "accidents" so feelingly
referred to at the ratification of the Brann round-up--would but
cause cheeks to flame and hearts to break. I would not destroy
Baylor; I would make it better. I would deprive the ignorant and
vicious of control. I would expel all the hoodlums whose
brutality and cowardice have disgraced it. I would place at its
head a thorough educator and strict disciplinarian, a man of
broad views and who sets a good example by paying his bills. I
would make its diplomas badges of honor as in the old days,
instead of certificates of illiteracy at which public school
children laugh. No, I do not want the presidency--there are
enough perspiring Christians for revenue only quarreling and
lying about each other because of that beggarly plum already. For
months past it has given every Baptist journal in the state a
hot-box, has filled every little preacher's head with all the
petty intrigues of peanut politics. If one-half that the leaders
of the factions, now warring over this $5 per diem bone, say
about each other be true--and I have no evidence to the
contrary--they would disgrace a boozing ken on Boiler avenue. I
do not mean to say that all Texas Baptists are bad; at least 50
per cent. of them are broad-gauge, tolerant, intelligent; the
remainder are small-bore bigots upon whom nature put heads, as
Dean Swift would say, "Solely for the sake of conformity."
. . .
Baylor and the Baptists complain that the ICONOCLAST has
"persecuted them until it has become unbearable." Bless God! who
began this thing? Before the ICONOCLAST was three days old it was
boycotted by the hydrocephalous sect. As it grew fat on that kind
of fodder, ex-Priest Slattery and his ex-nun wife were brought
hither to lecture on A.P.Aism, and incidentally make the town too
caloric for my comfort. The Baptists took their wives and
daughters to listen to Slattery's foul lies about the convents
and the confessional, the Pope and "his Waco Apostle," and his
most infamous utterances were applauded to the echo. They sent
their wives and daughters to hear the Slattery female defame
women who had given up the pleasures of the world and were
devoting their lives to the reclamation of such unclean creatures
as herself. Slattery's last harangue was delivered to men only
and the house was packed with Baptists and Baylorites at
half-a-dollar a head. The so-called lecture was the foulest thing
that ever fell from the lips of mortal man, yet his audience
gloated over it and rolled his putrid falsehoods as sweet morsels
under its tongue.[1] Unable to restrain my indignation, I arose
and denounced his every utterance as a malicious lie. Immediately
the audience yelled, "Throw him out! Down with him! Smash him!" I
chanced to have my back near the side-wall, and that's why I
wasn't mobbed--the cowardly crew couldn't get BEHIND me. They
suspected that I'd make an angel of the first sanctified galoot
who attempted to place his paws upon me, and none cared to draw
on his celestial bank account. That's the identical gang which
has the immaculate gall to accuse me of defaming virtuous
women--the same gang which applauded Slattery for calling
convents priestly harems wants me killed for expressing the hope
that no more young girls will be debauched at Baylor.
[1] Brann's reply to Slattery appears in Vol. XII.
. . .
Scarce had Baylor's applause of Slattery and his woman died
away, scarce had it ceased to gloat over the "iniquities" of
convent schools and priestly harems, scarce had it ceased
chuckling over the crimes of "the Scarlet Woman," ere the police
discovered that the duly ordained "ward of the Baptist church,"
who was being educated at Baylor University for missionary work
among the heathen Catholics of Brazil, was in a dreadfully
"delicate condition." She was brought from Brazil at the tender
age of 11 years by a returning missionary, she was formally
adopted by the Baptist church, she was consecrated to the
salvation of souls and placed at Baylor to be educated. She was
under the special supervision of the president and was a member
of his household--yet at 14 years of age she became enciente. Did
Baylor pity and protect her? Did it strive to secure the
punishment of her seducer? Not exactly. It fired her out and made
no complaint to the police. When the latter discovered her and
she was required by the court to account for her condition, she
stated that she had been forcibly despoiled by a young man about
town on the premises of Baylor's president. It chanced that this
young man was brother to the president's son-in-law, and the
whole influence of Baylor was brought to bear to clear the
accused! The son-in-law, who is a Baptist preacher and editor (as
well as other things not necessary to mention) strove to make her
confess that her guilty paramour was a pickaninny--wanted the
world to believe that orphan girls committed to the care of that
great Baptist college might become enciente by coons! Yet the
Baylor students didn't mob him--none of its trustees laid in wait
for him and slammed him over the head with a six-shooter. The
girl soon put a white babe in evidence--a pretty little 2-pound
Baylorian diploma. The doctors declared that she had been raped
and the case looked ugly for the accused. The child died. The
ignorant little mother wanted money to go to Memphis--and first
thing we knew she had signed a "retraction" and had a ticket to
Mike Conolly's town. Who bought it--and why! Damfino. The
defendant was acquitted of the charge of rape--the age of consent
in Texas being 12 years at that time; but whether she was raped
or seduced, the infamy occurred at Baylor University. That's ONE
of the "deplorable accidents"; but it is not the only one you
will please not forget to remember. Reads like a fairy story,
doesn't it? But the law doesn't permit Texas editors to tell
fairy tales of that type. No doubt the man who has the audacity
to breathe a hope that no more girls will be debauched at Baylor
deserves to die. Dr. Burleson, in the fullness of his Baptist
charity, branded the unfortunate girl as a natural bawd. I don't
know about that; but I do know that after she got beyond
Baylorian influences she married and began leading a respectable
life.
. . .
Defamer of womanhood? Get the sawlogs out of your own eyes,
brethren, before howling over the micrococci in the optics of
others. For three years past Baptist preachers all over the land
of Christ have been telling their congregations that the
ICONOCLAST is read only by depraved people,--chiefly criminals
and courtesans--and that despite the fact that the names of
thousands of the noblest men and women of America are on its
subscription books. During the past three years the ICONOCLAST
has had upon its books the names of more than a thousand
ministers, representing every denomination. Are these men
criminals and their wives courtesans? Has any busy little Baptist
parson been rounded up with a rope for proclaiming them as such
from the pulpit? When a deserted babe was found in the street and
carried by the Sisters into the convent, was Jehovah Boanerges
Cranfill--organ-grinder for the Baylor bosses--mobbed by the
Catholics for saying that it probably came OUT of the convent?
Now, you people keep down the narrative of your nether garment
and apply a hot mush poultice to your impudence. The ICONOCLAST
is only tickling you with snipe-shot now; but don't forget for
one moment that it has buck a-plenty in its belt.
. . .
A word to the lady students of Baylor: Young ladies, this
controversy does not in the least concern you. The ICONOCLAST has
never questioned your good character. You are young, however, and
mischievous people have led some of you to believe that it has
done so. If you so believe, I am as much in duty bound to
apologize as though I had really and intentionally wronged you. A
gentleman should ever hasten to apologize to ladies who feel
aggrieved; hence I sincerely crave your pardon for having printed
the article which gave you offense. Upon learning that you read
into it a meaning which I did not intend, I stopped the presses
and curtailed the circulation of the October number as much as
possible, proving my sincerity by a pecuniary sacrifice. I would
not for the wealth of this world either do you a wilful
injustice, or have you believe me capable of such a crime. May
you prosper in your studies, graduate with honor and bestow your
hands upon men worthy of noble women.
. . .
P.S. In looking over the foregoing since it was put in type, I
suspect that I have been a trifle too hard on some of those who
met to ratify the action of the first mob and publicly brand me
as a defamer of women. I would not do my deadliest enemy an
injustice. Two wrongs do not make a right; hence I concede that
perhaps half of those present pay their debts and make a
reasonable effort to be decent. If God neglected to bless them
with brains that is their misfortune instead of their fault. Let
it go at that. They have had their say, I've had mine, and right
here I drop the subject until another attempt is made to run me
out of town. I make this concession, not that Baylor deserves it,
but at the earnest request of the law-abiding element of this
city.
* * *
SPEAKING OF SPIRITUALISM.
A correspondent seizes his typewriter (the machine, not the maid)
with both hands, and peremptorily demands to be informed why I
"don't jump on that fake called Spiritualism." O I don't know,
unless it's because more corporeal things than spooks continue to
jump on me. It seems a waste of energy to criticize disembodied
spirits who do no worse than "revisit the pale glimpses of the
moon." I have never heard of a ghost robbing other than its own
grave. They are not addicted to despoiling widows and orphans,
then putting up long-winded prayers. They do not sing "Jesus
lover of my soul" on Sunday, then sell that same soul to the
devil for six-bits on Monday. No ghost, so far as I know, was
ever accused of lying about his neighbor, fracturing the Seventh
Commandment or beating his butcher-bills. They appear to be quite
harmless creatures, therefore not legitimate game for the
ICONOCLAST. Furthermore, I am not fully convinced that
Spiritualism is a "fake." There appears to be as good biblical
and natural reasons for belief in Spiritualism as for belief in
the Immaculate Conception or the efficacy of baptism. Doubtless
some of the professors are frauds, but as much can be said for
the professors of all other faiths. I confess that I haven't much
confidence in "mejums," who find employment for the shades of G.
Washington, J. Caesar, and others of that ilk, at table-tipping,
slate-writing and such unproductive enterprises; nor in the class
of spooks who "materialize" in dark rooms, come prancing out of
"cabinets" and other uncanny corporeal incubators for no other
apparent purpose than to enable their mundane manipulators to
realize two dollars in the coin of the realm. I opine that a
ghost who must retire to a "cabinet" to pull himself together is
no honest ghost; that those who consent to tip tables and indulge
in crude telegraphy for the entertainment of a lot of long-haired
hemales and credulous females must find time hang very heavy on
their hands in the great henceforth, and heartily wish themselves
back here wrestling with Republican prosperity, doctor bills and
other blessings. It seems to me that were I a ghost I would float
about on cloud banks and bathe in the splendors of the morning,
instead of hiding in bat-caves all day and snooping about all
night seeking an unsalaried situation at some dark-lantern
seance. When America's greatest lexicographer writes me an
ungrammatical message on a double-barreled slate, signs it "noeh
webstur," and instructs his terrestial to deliver it to me on
payment of one cart-wheel dollar, I suspect that there's
something sphacelated in the psychological Denmark. Of course
they may have the phonetic system of orthography in Elysium, but
in dealing with mortals I scarce think the old man would
discredit his own dictionary. A spook manipulator once solemnly
assured me that the spirit of Tecumseh was my guardian angel,
that the old Shawnee chief was ever at my elbow. I don't believe
it; had he been there on recent occasions he would have hit
sundry and various Baptists on the head with his tomahawk. If old
Tecum is trailing me around I want to give him a pointer right
here that as a guardian angel he's utterly no good in a clime
"Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime,"
and he had best cast his aegis over some Boston editor. It by no
means follows, however, that because many professional fakirs and
intellectual fuzziewuzzies have "gone in for Spiritualism," it is
all a fraud. If the morad floating in a sunbeam be
indestructible, existing in some shape from everlasting to
everlasting, it is inconceivable that mind, the lord of matter,
should perish utterly--should fade like an echo into the great
inane. That were a reversal of the law of the survival of the
fittest--casting away a priceless jewel while preserving its
tawdry setting. That the lesser should survive the greater; that
the case of Anaxarchus should continue and Anaxarchus' proud self
become nonexistent, were to leave matter without law and wreck
the universe, for law itself presupposes prescience. "Natural
law," so called, must either be an act of intelligence compelling
order, or a freak of nescience entailing chaos; hence if order be
eternal mind must necessarily be immortal, for it is an axiom of
science that "Nature wastes nothing." What becomes of the mighty
life-force of a Milton? If it be utterly extinguished; if it
becomes a forceless shade on Acheron's shore, or an "angel"
withdrawn from active influence in the universe, it is certainly
wasted, in so far as what we call nature is concerned. In his
lecture on "Evolution," Henry Ward Beecher said: "I believe there
is a universal and imminent constant influence flowing directly
from the bosom of God, and that is the inspiration of the human
race." Is God continually giving out this "influence," this
life-force, this vis vitalis, to the people of this planet, and
with each death withdrawing a portion thereof and either casting
it into the waste-basket of Perdition or cording it up, like
back- number newspapers, in the New Jerusalem, never to be again
employed? If it "flows directly from the bosom of God" is it not
God? And if Nature waste nothing can Nature's Prince be such a
prodigal? Is he not rather the great psychological heart of the
universe through which the same life-current, the same intellect
flows back and forth forever? But here! We are drifting into
metempsychosis--are in a fair way to get ourselves
excommunicated. Furthermore, we are actually predicating a
probability that the editor of the Chicago Inter-Ocean is a
reincarnation of Balaam's ass. I am not prepared to assert that
Spiritualism is all brazen charlantry or foolish self-deception.
It may be that the "inspiration" of which Beecher speaks as an
emanation from God himself, is but a higher wisdom taught the
longing heart by those it has loved and lost. The souls of the
dead scratch no messages on greasy slates for stupid eyes, shout
none across the Styx that can be heard by vulgar ears; but there
be men who can hear in the silent watches of the night the music
of lips long mute. There be those for whom the veil that
separates the two eternities is no black inpenetrable pall, but
an Arachne's web, a sacred shadow through which comes sweeping,
not the roar of myriad voiced hosannahs and the rustle of
countless wings of dazzling white beating the everlasting blue;
but the soft incense of love, bringing healing to broken hearts,
calm to rebellious souls. These seek no thaumaturgic incantations
to secure messages from the other shore, for they are coming
continually. They do but listen, and interpret as best they may
to their dull-eared brethren, the celestial wisdom. The latter
protest that they "inspired," and the trumpet Fame casts upon
them her purple robe. It is not the peripatetic "mediums," but
the poets and prophets who "call up the spirits" and bid them
speak to us; those who find all the dead Past living in the
Present; who are themselves so spirituelle that they can
understand Nature's finer tones--who realize that
"Life is but a dome of many-colored glass
That stains the white radiance of eternity."
All truly great men are spiritualists--even mystics. A
materialist may be a logician, a mathematician, in a limited way;
but never an orator nor a poet. He is of the earth earthly; an
intellectual Antaeus--the moment his feet leave the sodden clay
he is strangled by the gods. For him there is no Fount of Castaly
whose sweet waters make men mad. Parnassus is but an Egyptian
pyramid to be scaled with ladders, and by the aid of guides who
serve for salary. Fancy has no wings to waft him among the stars.
He sees in the Bible only its errors, never its wild beauty. For
him Villon was only a sot and Anacreon a libertine. In his cosmos
there's neither Garden of the God, nor Groves of Daphne. He can
understand neither the platonic love of Petrarch nor the
psychological ferocity of Rousseau.
"The Apostle of affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from
Woe wrung overwhelming eloquence."
For him all, all is clay--even the laughter of childhood is a
cunning mechanism, and the Uranian Venus but a lump of animated
earth. The flowers bring him messages only from the muck in which
their roots are buried, the "concord of sweet sounds" is but a
disturbance of the atmosphere. Such men do not live; they merely
exist. They do not enjoy life; they do not even suffer its pangs.
They know naught of that sweetness "for which Love is indebted to
Sorrow." God pity them.
* * *
The gang of mutton-heads whose duty it was to select twelve poets
whose names should be commemorated in the new congressional
library, excluded that of Tom Moore on the plea that he wasn't
much of a poet, and now the Irish-Americans are fairly seething
with indignation. Take it easy; Tom Moore doesn't need a memorial
tablet. He will be read and honored centuries after the library
building with its poet's corner has perished of old age. He is
the poet of the people, and has more readers than any ten of
those honored by the committee.
* * *
SOME GOLD-BUG GUFF.
If it is gold that has appreciated, as the silverites claim,
aren't the farmers now getting two dollars a bushel for their
wheat?--Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser.
The foregoing is irrefutable evidence that the fool-killer is
enacting the role of cunctator. Only a gold-bug editor could
insult the people of Alabama with such an exhibition of idiocy. I
am heartily tired of this whole currency question; but the
Advertiser has been fairly stinking for attention a long
time--its Smart Alecism has become simply insupportable.
Politically considered, the Advertiser has been all things to all
men and "nothing to nobody." It is a journalistic George Clark,
mistaking political treachery for diplomacy and impudence for
intellect. As Clark cannot interview himself to the extent of
half a column for the Morning Bazoo without getting his goozle
entangled in the skein of his own intorted argument, so the
Advertiser cannot grind out an editorial of equal length without
getting hoist with its own logical sequence, split from vermiform
appendix to occipitofrontalis by the recoil of its own
syllogisms. The Advertiser is unreliable as Proteus; the base
vulpine instinct serves it in lieu of brains; the clink of cash
in the counting room is the keeper of its conscience. At least
such is the pen-portrait drawn of it by the best men in Alabama.
Its allusion to $2 wheat is a trick that would disgrace the
sophists who practice in our municipal courts with drunks and
courtesans for clients. Such a horse-play for the benefit of the
political gallery gods would be contemptuously ignored by the
ICONOCLAST were not the Advertiser's betters indulging in the
same unmitigated bosh. Our Alabama contemporary is but an anile
echo of the New York Tribune, a faint adumbration of the Chicago
Inter-Ocean. The bigwigs cut out the work for the journalistic
wiggletails. They pitch the tune and all the intellectual eunuchs
come in on the chorus. The editorials of all such sheets as the
Advertiser are but a stale re-hash of Eastern utterances. They
pick up these things and "work 'em over," just as the Herald of
Astoria, Ore., revamps articles from the ICONOCLAST and runs them
as original. The farmer IS now receiving $2 a bushel for his
wheat. That is to say, the dollar with which he is paid has
double the purchasing power of the dollar two decades ago. He is
exactly as well off as though he received two old-time
dollars--if he chances to be out of debt. If he is not out of
debt, if he must discharge old scores with these 200-cent
dollars, he is being deprived of his adventitious good fortune
resulting from foreign crop failures. It makes no earthly
difference what the measure of value may be if it is immutable.
The purchasing power of the dollar might be safely increased or
decreased 90 per cent. were the whole business of this country on
a cash basis. Under such conditions we might contract our volume
of money to a million dollars or expand it to five billions, and
harm nobody; but it seems to me that any fool on earth--even the
editor of the Advertiser could comprehend the following
unequivocal facts: (1) that a majority of the American people owe
money; (2) that an enhancement of the purchasing power of the
dollar must work grievous injury to the debtor; (3) that unless
the volume of money keeps pace with the increase in the money
work to be done the unit of value must inevitably appreciate. Let
us state the case in kindergarten language for the benefit of
intellectual infants; while the demand for money is increasing in
a ratio of geometrical progression we have eliminated one great
source of supply--have cast upon gold alone the money work which
from time immemorial had been done by two metals. The gold
product has not kept pace with the growth of the world's
business; the law of supply and demand is irrevocable; ergo, gold
HAS appreciated and the debtor HAS been despoiled. The temporary
rise in price of one or two or a score of American products in
obedience to the laws of trade cannot obscure these
incontrovertible facts. WHILE THE PRICE OF WHEAT HAS ADVANCED THE
PRICE OF LABOR HAS DECLINED. The wage-worker now receives LESS
than formerly, while it costs him MORE to feed his family. And
this is what the Republican press and its mugwump echo call
prosperity! The wheat-growers, numerically unimportant, are
prospering despite the gold standard, just as the placer-miner
who washes out ten dollars each day and gives up five of it
nightly to cut-throat gamblers; but in this prosperity the great
body of the American people have neither lot nor part. Texas is
selling middling cotton at 5 1/2 and paying $3 for flour. Adult
male operatives are working in Massachusetts cotton mills for 50
cents a day, and their families doing without flour. Pennsylvania
miners are braving subterranean dangers for 90 cents a day and
living on potatoes and point. Although this is the busiest season
of the year--the time when the Republican tidal wave of
prosperity is supposed to buss the very clouds--there is scarce a
town or city in the United States where able-bodied men are not
begging for employment. If you don't think so put a 3-line "ad"
in your morning paper that you want to employ a man for any
purpose, and offer ONE-HALF the salary that such service would
have commanded before the demonetization of silver, and see how
quickly your office will be jammed! Texas has probably suffered
less than any other American state from hard times, Waco less
than any other Texas city, for here we can subsist on climate and
sanctification. Waco is a city of but 30,000 souls--conceding
that the Baptists are supplied with that immortal annex; yet when
it was reported the other day that the ICONOCLAST needed another
book- keeper applications were filed before night by a score of
men competent in the craft. Men apply a month ahead for
employment on mailing day, because at that time a dozen or so
extras can each earn a dollar. I have in hand an article by one
of the brightest journalists of Chicago, who states that
reporters are paid $10 to $25, editorial writers $25 to $35 per
week, and that a man who offends the newspaper trust can get no
further employment in the town. Twenty years ago a scribe who
could turn a bright editorial paragraph or manufacture an
interesting falsehood was worth $50 to $75 a week in Chicago, and
if lost one situation he'd find two more before he got half-
sober--but that was before Markhanna and his peon took charge of
this country's prosperity. Will the Advertiser or any other
mugwump organ, kindly explain why it is, if the gold standard is
making this country to flourish like a green-bay horse, the idle
money of Europe and New England continues to pour across the
state of Texas, ignoring its matchless resources, to find
employment in free-silver Mexico! Why wages are slowly but
steadily rising in that country and are steadily declining in
this? Why is it that when a man cannot obtain employment here he
turns his face to "the Land of God and Liberty" if he has the
price of passage, feeling assured that there he has but to ask
for a job to obtain it? Why is that above all this cackle about
prosperity can be heard the stentor tones of Markhanna's organ
advising American workmen that they must come squarely down to
the European wage level before they can hope for permanent
employment? Perhaps I could find answers to these questions
myself had not my Baptist brethren lately pounded my head to a
pulp. As it is, I humbly ask for information, beseech the
Advertiser to uncork its omniscience. Will the millions of
Americans who can barely make a living of it during the busy
season, thank God and the gold-buggers for manifold mercies when
the fall trade is over and the crops are all in?
* * *
"THE TYPICAL AMERICAN TOWN."