[A synopsis of Mr. Brann's address to the Ladies'
Reading Club, San Antonio, Texas.]
I have been asked to lecture to the ladies of the Reading
Club, but shall do nothing of the kind. That were to
admit that you require improvement, and I would not have
you better than you are. We would have to clip your
wings or keep you in a cage. Besides, I never saw a
woman whom I could teach anything--she already knew it.
I have been going to school to the ladies all my life. My
mother carried me through the kindergarten, lady
preceptors through the intermediate grade, and my wife is
patiently rounding off my education. When I graduate
I expect to go direct to heaven. As near as I can figure
it out, the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem will consist of
several million women--and just men enough to fill the
municipal offices.
"I would not live always, I ask not to stay."
No lecture then, but an informal talk, without text or
subject--a vagrant ramble through such fields as tempt
us. If we should find fruit, or even flowers, let us be
thankful. If we encounter only briars, it will not be the
first half hour we have wasted.
The fact that you are members of the Reading Club
indicates that you are seeking knowledge. I trust that
you are finding it,--that every stroke of the intellectual
pick turns up a golden nugget; but do not make the mistake
of supposing that all the wisdom of the world is
bound in calf. You may know all that was ever penned in
papyrus or graved on stone, written on tablets of clay
or preserved in print and still be ignorant--not even know
how to manage a husband. As a rule people read without
proper discrimination, and those who are most careful
often go furthest astray. I once knew a woman with no
more music in her soul than a rat-tail file, who spent three
laborious years learning to play the piano, then closed the
instrument and never touched it again. One day I said to
her:
"Mary, what good did all the patient practice do you?"
"Lot's o' good," she replied; "I used to be dreadfully
ashamed to have people know that I COULDN'T play." And
a great deal of laborious reading is undertaken on the same
principle that Mary learned to play the piano--and is of
just as little benefit. Many people are with books as with
medicine--imagine that whatever is hardest to get down
will do them the most good. No mortal man--and, as the
preacher correctly stated, the men embrace the women--
ever yet got any permanent good out of a book unless he
enjoyed its perusal. Jno. J. Ingalls says that everybody
praises Milton's Paradise Lost, but nobody reads it.
Ingalls is mistaken. Everybody making any pretension to
culture has read the book--as a disagreeable duty; but
that man don't live--at least outside of the lunatic asylum
--who can quote a dozen lines of it. Same with Dante's
Divine Comedia and a host of other books with which
people are expected to inflict their brains. Read few
books and those of the very best,--books that you enjoy.
Read them thoroughly; make them your very own--then
forget them as soon as possible. Having submitted to the
mental or moral discipline of another, decline to lean on
him, but stand up in your own independent individuality.
Don't be a copy. There is on earth no more pitiable person
than
"The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head."
Do not interpret too literally. What I warn you against
is the habit, all too common, of imagining ourselves rich
because we have counted the golden hoard of others. One
may admire the Medicean Venus without becoming a sculptor,
or have Plato at his fingers' ends and ever remain a
fool. Were I an artist I would study with attention the
works of all the great masters; but when I put my hand to
my own task I would turn my back upon them all and my
face to nature. My work would then be a "creation,"
not a copy. Did I aspire to be truly learned I would
study the words of the world's wisest--then dig for wisdom
on my own behoof, I would thus become a philosopher
instead of a parrot.
. . .
I have been frequently called an iconoclast, and bad as
the title is popularly supposed to be, I trust it is not
altogether undeserved. I have striven to break foolish idols
and shatter false ideals, to hurl unclean gods from their
pedestals in the public pantheon. A work of destruction
is not, I admit, of a high order. Anybody may destroy;
it requires genius to build up. The wonder of the ancient
world sank to ruin irremediable beneath the torch of a
morbid dude who had rather be "damned to everlasting
fame" than altogether forgotten. A hungry wolf may
destroy a human life which Almighty God has brought
to perfection through long years of labor. But destruction
is sometimes necessary. The seas must be cleared
of pirates before commerce can flourish; the antiquated
and useless building must come down before the school-
house or business block can occupy the site. In the great
cities are men who do nothing but destroy old buildings--
professional wreckers of those works of man that have
outlived their usefulness. They build nothing; but are
they, therefore, to be condemned? So in the social world,
a man may be a professional wrecker, without the constructive
ability to build a political platform on a piecrate,
and still be useful, indispensable. The wrecker of bad
buildings does not contract to put good ones in their
places; nor is the iconoclast under any obligation to find
a heavenly grace for every false god that falls beneath
his hammer, a saint for every sinner he holds up to scorn,
a new truth for every old falsehood he fells to earth. He
may, if he thinks proper, leave that labor to others and
go on, with brand and bomb, bludgeon and bill-hook,
wrecking, destroying--playing John the Baptist to a
greater to come after.
A great many good people have taken the trouble to
inform me that I am a pessimist. Perhaps so; but I am
not worrying much about it. A pessimist is a person
somewhat difficult to define. The fool who smokes in a
powder-house, or believes that his neighbors always speak
well of him behind his back; the wife who encourages her
husband to pay court to other women on the supposition
that no harm can ensue; the banker who accepts a man's
unsecured note because he is a church member and powerful
in prayer, and the servant girl who lights the fire
with kerosene--then goes to join the angels taking your
household goods and gods with her--are certainly not
pessimists; they are only idiots.
It is easy enough to say that a pessimist is a person
afflicted with an incurable case of mulligrubs--one whom
nothing in all earth or heaven or hades pleases; one who
usually deserves nothing, yet grumbles if he gets it. But
we should not forget that every reform this world has
known; every effort that has lifted man another notch
above the brute level; every star in our flag of freedom;
every line and letter in our constitution of human liberty;
every gem of knowledge that gleams in the great world's
intellectual crown of glory; every triumph of science and
religion, philosophy and mechanics was the work of
pessimists, so-called--of men who were not satisfied with the
world's condition and set determinedly to work to better it.
They strove with their full strength against those conditions
panegyrized and poetized by the smirking optimists
of their time, and thereby incurred the enmity of pedants
and self-sufficient purists,--were denounced and denied,
belittled and belied.
But, says the enthusiastic optimist, things are not what
they used to be. When a college of cardinals gave Galileo
to the gaoler for maintaining that "the world do move;"
when Christ cast forth the money manipulators and purged
the porches of the temple of the disreputable dove dealers;
when Luther raised the standard of revolt and the Puritan
packed his grip there were cruel wrongs to right. But look
at us now! We've got a constitution and a Confession of
Faith, prize rings and Parisian gowns, sent missionaries to
Madagascar and measured Mars' two moons. Of course
we've made some mendicants, but please admire the
multifarious beauty of our millionaires! Who can doubt that
we've triumphed over the world, the flesh and the devil?
Have not the Spanish inquisition and the English Court of
High Commission gone glimmering? Do we bore the
tongues of Quakers or amputate the ears of non-conformists
as in Auld Lang Syne? Do we not run troublesome
wives into the divorce court instead of into the river, as
was once our wont,--scientifically roast our criminals with
electricity instead of pulling their heads off with a hair
halter? Do we not fight our political battles with wind
instead of war clubs? Have not our great partisan paladins
substituted gall for Greek fire?
Progressing we certainly are, but the devil has adapted
the Fabian tactics and is leading us a wild dance through
unprofitable deserts. While we have been shattering
ethnic images he has been building new idols. While we
have been dragging the Phalaris Bull from its pedestal the
Golden Calf of ancient Israel has reached maturity and
maternity and its progeny is now worshipped in a thousand
pantheons.
Everywhere the false and the true, the good and the evil,
the lambent light of heaven and the sulphurous shadows
of hell meet and blend. Nowhere, yet everywhere, floats
the white veil and flaming ensign of the modern Mokanna--
and we stand wrangling about the proper cut of a collar;
debating whether the Gadarenes, whose swine the outcast
devils drowned, were Jews or Gentiles; dogmatizing anent
the proper form of baptism; doubting with which hand we
should tip the hat; wondering if Joseph's coat were a sack
or a swallow-tail--ninety-and-nine out of every hundred
wasting upon childish trifles the strength given us to do
the work of demi-gods--and every foolish breath, every
heartbeat bearing us across Time's narrow sands into the
broad bosom of that sea which hath no shore!
What does the all-seeing sun that has for so many
centuries glared down upon this wretched farce-tragedy, think
of it all? And yet man boasts that he is the mortal image
of immortal God! It was for this trifling, straddling
biped, intent only upon getting his goose-head above the
foolish geese, that the Regent of the universe suffered
ignominy and death. I sometimes think that had the
Almighty cast the human horoscope he would never have
given Noah a hint to go in out of the wet.
I am no perfectionist. I do not build the spasmodic sob
nor spill the scalding tear because all men are not Sir
Galahads in quest of the Holy Grail, and all women angels
with two pair o' reversible wings and the aurora borealis
for a hat-band. I might get lonesome in a world like
that. I do not expect to see religion without cant, wealth
without want, and virtue without vice; but I do hope to
see the human race devote itself to grander aims than
following the fashions and camping on the trail of the cart-
wheel dollar. I want to see more homes and fewer hovels,
more men and fewer dudes. I want to see more women with
the moral courage to brave the odium of being old maids
rather than the pitiful weakness to become loveless wives.
I want to see more mothers who would rather be queens
of their homes than the favorites of fashionable circles;
women who would rather have the love of their husbands
than the insolent admiration of the whole he-world--women
who do not know too much at 15 and too little at 50.
I want to see more men who are not a constant reminder
of a monkey ancestry. Some philosopher once remarked:
"As between men and dogs, give me dogs." I have been
often tempted to indorse the sentiment--and I am not
much of a lover of dogs either. I want to see men who are
not fops in their youth, fools in their prime and egotists
in their old age--a race of manly men to whom life is not
a lascivious farce; whose god is not gold; who do not
worship at the shrine of the Pandemian Venus nor devote
their lives to the service of Mammon, "the least erect of
all the angelic host that fell from heaven." I want to see
men who scorn the pusillanimity of the policy-prayer, who,
--like Caesar, dare tell greybeards the truth e'en though
it cost a crown; men of leonine courage, men of iron mould,
men strong of hand and heart, who defiantly throw down
the gage to destiny--who can trample hell itself beneath
their proud feet, even while it consumes them.
. . .
The dream may be Utopian. I much fear it will never
be made a blessed reality by either philosophy or religion.
We have had both for forty centuries, yet the fool has
become ever more offensive and the liar has overrun the land.
Yet we imagine that because we no longer live in caves and
fight naked with the wild beasts of the forest for our food
we are away up at the head of the procession, with Greek
civilization distanced and all the other times and half times
nowhere.
Human development, like the earth, the sun, the stars--
like all things brought into being by the breath of Omnipotent
God--travels ever in a circle. Savagery and ignorance,
barbarism and ambition, civilization and sybaritism,
dudeism and intellectual decay; then once more savagery
and ignorance proclaim the complete circle,--that we have
traveled from nadir to zenith and from zenith to nadir--
when once again we begin with painful steps and slow to
repace the path which carries us to the very verge of
godhood and wreathes our brows with immortal bays, then
brings us down--even while we think we mount--until we
touch a level beneath the very brute. Such has ever been
the world's history, and such it will ever be until a force
is found that can transform this circle into a straight line
--that can blend the rugged manhood of the barbarism
with the graces of our higher civilization and give us
wisdom without weakness and culture without cowardice; that
can incorporate us as corpuscles in the social organism
without eliminating every spark of God-like individuality,
making us helpless dependents upon social, political and
religious precedent.
If the Car of Progress travels in a circle--and history
says it does; if neither science, philosophy nor religion can
deflect it from its seemingly predestined path--and the
condition of their birth-place proclaims their failure so to
do--where is hope? Must the human race forever go the
weary round of birth and death, like Buddhist souls wandering
through all that's fair and foul, until it finds Nirvana
in the destruction of the world? Not so, for there
is a hope--a blessed hope--that like.
"A poising eagle burns above the unrisen morrow."
That hope is in the union of all the mighty forces that
make for the emancipation of mankind,--a union of religion
and philosophy, science and woman. And of these
the first is the last and the last is the first in point of
power and importance.
. . .
When I reflect that until within comparatively recent
times women were slaves, I don't much wonder that the old
civilizations went to the dogs--that the millennium is not
yet due. Trying to make a civilization that would stick
without the help of woman were like building a cocktail
with a basis of buttermilk. God gave her to man to be an
helpmeet, not a plaything. I don't think that she can help
him much by going into politics, or becoming a crusading
she-Peter-the-Hermit while her own children need her care,
but I do believe that the wife and mother--that erstwhile
ignorant drudge, raised by God's great mercy to royalty--
made Queen of the home, and thereby absolute Empress of
the great round earth--is to be the dynamics of a new and
grander civilization that can never recede; that the
womanly woman, self-poised as a star, pure as the polar
snows, fit companion for the true nobleman of nature, is
to be the Providence that will lead humanity, step by step,
ever onward and upward, until our cruel age of iron is
transformed into an age of gold in which there'll be neither
millionaire nor mendicant, master nor slave--in which
Selfishness will be considered the worst of crimes and Love
the all-powerful law.
Such, ladies, is my dream of the future. You see, with
true mannish instinct, I throw the work of the world's
salvation upon the women. I don't know, however, but
it's retributive justice. If you got us fired out of the first
Paradise it is your duty to find another and put us in
possession. But really with all due respect to Sacred
Writ, I could never accept that serpent story without
considerable salt. My observation--and experience--has
been that men are much more addicted to the snake habit
than are women. I gather from Genesis that after the
Edenic reptile had done the damage it was condemned to
go upon its belly all the days of its life. That indicates
that it was not only a good conversationalist, but had legs.
Now I submit it to you in all seriousness: which member of
the original family was most likely to see such a serpent
as that? I think I should have given Adam the Keeley
cure, then crossexamined him a little before laying the
burden of the blame on Eve. If the latter was really the
tempter she was probably trying to reach the heart of
her hubby by that direct route, the stomach--lost heaven
for love, as too many of her daughters have since done.
The fact that Adam was not willing to father her fault
proved him unworthy of his wife, and the bad example he
set is too often followed by many of his sons--who attribute
all their trials and tribulations to the patient wives
whose watchful care keeps them out of the penitentiary.
Whatever may have been Eve's fortune, Adam was no great
loser by being ejected from Eden, for the man who
possesses the love of a good woman carries Paradise with
him wherever he goes. A woman's love can transform a
hovel into a heaven and fill it with supernal sunshine--and
her scorn can make perdition of a palace and put in all the
fancy touches.
Woman is the only thing extant, if Genesis be believed,
that was not evolved from a solid slug of nothing. That
I presume, is why she amounts to something. Nothing was
good enough raw material of which to make the father
of mankind; but when the Almighty came to create our
common mother he required something more substantial
than a hole in the atmosphere.
I always bank on a boy who has a good mother, regardless
of what the old man may be. The fathers of philosophers
have sometimes been fools, but their mothers never.
A wise man may beget dudes or a good man practical
politicians; but it's his misfortune, not his fault. The good
Lord expects no man to gather grapes of thorns or figs of
thistles. I have yet to hear of a single man who became
distinguished in any line of human endeavor according to
his father the credit for his greatness. Character is
moulded at the mother's knee, and in the light of her loving
eyes is born that ambition which buoys man up in a sea of
troubles--that drive him on through dangers and
difficulties, straight to the shining goal.
The Nineteenth century marks the culmination of an era
of human triumphs, a brilliant coruscation of victories over
the cohorts of Ignorance and Prejudice; but its crown of
imperishable glory is the recognition that woman was
created to be man's companion and co-laborer instead of
his chattel, his joint sovereign of the earth instead of his
slave. Fronting the dawn of a grander day, her hand
ungyved and her brain unfettered; with broader opportunities
for usefulness and boasting a nobler beauty than
during the dark and dreary centuries that lie behind her
like a hideous dream--such is the woman of the Nineteenth
century, and upon the shapely shoulders of this new
Pallas I hang my second Providence, to her loving hands
I commit the destiny of the race, to her true heart the
salvation of the world.
* * *
BRANN'S REPLY TO SLATTERY.
[Ex-Priest Joseph Slattery, in his lecture at Waco,
Texas, in the interest of the A.P.A., bitterly denounced the
ICONOCLAST. During the Slattery lecture Brann rose,
pointed his finger at Slattery and said: "You lie and you
know it, and I refuse to listen to you." Brann then turned
on his heel and walked out. He then hired the same opera
house at his own expense and replied to Slattery.]
Fellow Americans: The ICONOCLAST does not please ex-
Priest Slattery, "Baptist minister in good standing," and
I am not surprised. Its mission, as its name implies, is to
expose Frauds and abolish Fakes, to make unrelenting war
upon Humbugs and Hypocrites, hence it is not remarkable
that Slattery should regard its existence as a personal
affront. It is ever the galled jade that winces; or, to
borrow from the elegant pulpit vernacular of the Rev. Sam
Jones, "it's the hit dog that yelps."
Slattery would have you believe that I'm a rank atheist
who's trying to rip religion up by the roots and bang it
across a barbed wire fence in close companionship with the
hides of Protestant preachers. This charge has been
hurled at me by various sectarian papers and malicious
ministers; but not one iota of evidence has ever been
submitted. It is simply a bald assertion born of sanctified
malice, a brazen libel, similar to that which charges the
Pope with trying to subvert the American government. I
defy Slattery and all that unclean brood of moral vultures,
assassins of character and thieves of reputation which trail
in his wake and applaud his infamies, to produce one line
I ever wrote, or quote one sentence I ever uttered disrespectful
of ANY religion, Pagan, Protestant or Catholic.
If in the wilds of Central Africa I should find a man bowing
down to a dried toad, a stuffed snake or a Slattery,
I'd remove my hat as a tribute of respect, not to his
judgment, but to his honesty. I have no word of condemnation
for any religious faith, however fatuous it may appear
to me, that has comforted the dying or consoled the living
--that has cast one gleam of supernal sunshine into the
dark vale where grope, each beneath his burthen of sorrow,
the sons of men. I am not warring upon religious faith,
but on falsehood; not upon Christ, but on those who disgrace
his cause--who mistake bile for benevolence, gall for
godliness and chronic laziness for "a call to preach."
Nor have I taken the Pope of Rome under my apostolic
protection. The Popes managed to exist for a great many
years before I was born, and, despite the assaults of
Slattery, will doubtless continue in business at the old
stand for several years to come. I was raised a Protestant,
and--thank God!--I'm no apostate. I learned Protestantism
at my mother's knee, and from my father's pulpit;
but I did not learn there that the Church of Rome is the
"Scarlet Woman," nuns unclean creatures and priests the
sworn enemies of my country. I learned that but for the
Church of Rome the "glad tidings of great joy," which
Christ brought to a dying world, would have been irredeemably
lost in that dismal intellectual night known as the
Dark Ages. I was taught that for centuries the Church
of Rome was the repository, not only of the Christian
faith, but of civilization itself. I was taught that the
Catholic is the mother of the Protestant church, and that
no matter how unworthy a parent may be, a child should
not become the herald of its mother's shame.
And while being taught my duty as a Protestant, my
education as an American citizen was not neglected. I was
taught that this was a land of religious liberty, where
every man is privileged to worship God in his own way, or
ignore him altogether: that it was my duty to insist upon
this right, both for myself and for my fellows.
That is why I am the uncompromising enemy of the A.P.A.
Any attempt to debar an American citizen from the
honors and emoluments of a public office because of his
religious faith, or non-faith, is a flagrant violation of a
fundamental principle of this Republic. And no patriot;
no man in whose veins there pulses one drop of the blood of
the Conscript Fathers, or who would recognize the Goddess
of Liberty if he met her in the road; no man imbued with
the tolerant spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ will aid or
abet such an un-Christian and un-American movement.
The A.P.A. is the bastard spawn of Ignorance and
Intolerance, was conceived in sin and brought forth in
iniquity.
There may be some honest men connected with the
movement; but if honest they should get their heads
trepanned to give their brains room to grow. They are as
unable as a mule-eared rabbit to comprehend either the
broad principles upon which this government is grounded,
or its political and religious history. No man--not even
Judas Iscariot Slattery--is to blame for his ignorance;
so we should humbly pray, Father forgive them, they
know not what they do. Nor is the Church of Rome
responsible for the shameless apostate's lack of information.
It did all that it could to transform him from an
ignorant little beggar into an educated gentleman--but
even the Pope cannot make a silk purse of a sow's ear. It
is no fault of the Church of Rome that he's densely ignorant
of the very text-book truths of history; that he knows
nothing of that Reformation of which he talks so glibly;
that he is unable to comprehend the genius of the government
upon which he has conferred his more or less valuable
citizenship. The fault, if fault it be, lies with the
Almighty, who gave him a bad heart and a worse head.
. . .
American Protective Association, eh? That signifies
that Uncle Sam is in need of protection. I had hitherto
supposed that the gentleman in the highwater pants and
star-bespangled cutaway was able to protect himself; but
it now appears that unless he crawls under the aegis of the
redoubtable Slattery he is--to again borrow from the
most popular of all Protestant divines--"a gone sucker."
Think of placing Uncle Sam under the protection of a
man who is an apostate in religion and a renegade in
politics--of an Irishman who apostrophizes the British flag!
Think of that kind of a bird presuming to tell the grandsons
of Revolutionary soldiers their duties as American citizens.
Slattery assures us that we need protection from the
Pope. There was a time when the proudest monarchs of
Europe trembled at the Papal nod; but gradually the Pope
has been shorn of temporal power, confined ever more to
the realm of spiritual, until to-day he exerts about as little
influence on the political destiny of this world as does Dr.
Cranfill with his little Prohibition craze. But Slattery
will have it that the Pope is gradually undermining American
institutions--leads us to infer that, sooner or later,
he'll blow our blessed constitution at the moon and scatter
fragments of the Goddess of Liberty from Dan to Beersheba,
from Cape Cod to Kalamazoo. The Pope, it appears,
is a veritable Guy Faux, who is tunnelling beneath
our national capitol with a keg of giant powder in one hand
and a box of lucifer matches in the other. What's the
evidence? Why, out in San Francisco, so Slattery says--
but as Slattery's been convicted of lying it were well to
call for papers--a Catholic school-board was elected and
employed only Catholic teachers. The same awful thing
happened in Detroit--if Slattery's telling the truth, which
is doubtful in the extreme. Then what? With a pride
worthy a more American act, this illogical idiot informs us
that "when the Protestants captured the school-boards
of those cities they discharged every one of the Catholic
teachers and put only good Protestants on guard." And
at that Baptist brethren--with water on the brain--who
boast of Roger Williams, cheered so loudly as to be in
danger of lockjaw. In the exuberant imagination of
Slattery and his dupes there appears to be a wonderful
difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. It doesn't
seem to have occurred to them that what is sauce for the
Protestant goose should be sauce for the Catholic gander.
They damn the Catholics for doing the very thing for
which they commend the Protestant. That's the logic of
the A.P.A.--the Aggregation of Pusillanimous Asses. In
my humble opinion both were engaged in very small business.
The only difference in the offenders that I can see
is that while the Catholics are saying nothing, the Protestants
are loudly boasting of their vicious subversion of
the American principle of religious liberty. The circumstance
is a sharp reminder that if we are to preserve a government
of the people, for the people and by the people,
we've got to keep religion of ALL kinds out of our politics,
just as the framers of the federal constitution intended
that we should do. Mixing religion and politics is like
mixing whiskey and water--it spoils both.
Slattery would have you believe that our Catholic
citizens are simply emissaries of the Pope, to whom they owe
allegiance both spiritual and temporal, and that they will,
at the first opportunity, subvert American institutions and
make this Nation simply a satrapy of the Vatican.
The American Catholic takes his theology from Rome;
he takes his politics from the ecumenical council of his
party--from the national convention of that partisan
organization to which he may chance to belong.
That there can be no "Catholic conspiracy" against
the free institutions of this country must be evident to
every man of common sense from the simple fact that
Catholics are divided among all the political parties--
are continually voting against each other. Now I appeal
to your judgment--lay aside your religious prejudices for
the moment and look at the matter from a non-partisan,
non-sectarian standpoint: If our Catholic fellow-citizens
be under the thumb of the Pope politically, as the apostate
now evangelizing for the A.P.A. would have us believe;
and if the Pope desires to make himself temporal ruler of
this land, or in any manner direct its affairs, would they
not be found voting as a unit--a mighty political machine
--instead of being as badly divided on secular questions
as the Baptists themselves? San Antonio is a Catholic
stronghold, yet a prominent Roman Catholic was overwhelmingly
defeated in the last mayoralty election. And
I could cite you hundreds of instances where Catholics have
voted against men of their own religious faith and elected
Protestants or infidels.
Again: If the Pope is plotting against America; and if
all manner of crime be considered a virtue when committed
by Catholics in furtherance of his ends, as Slattery would
have you believe, then it were well to keep a sharp eye on
apostate priests. How are we to know that they are not
emissaries of the Vatican, commissioned to stir the
Protestants up to persecute their brethren in Christ and thereby
solidify the Catholic vote? No one, not even Slattery, has
accused the Pope of being a fool; and certain it is that the
A.P.A. movement, if persisted in, will have the effect of
driving the Catholics of this country to political unity in
self-defense. Persecution, political ostracism for religious
opinion's sake, will infallibly bring about those very
conditions which Slattery, Hicks, et al. declare that the Pope
desires. The communicants of the Church of Rome will no
longer vote as Democrats or Republicans, but as Catholics
--and then? With unlimited wealth, and such a political
machine at the command of a man so ambitious and unscrupulous
as we are asked to believe the Pope to be, the
capture of the federal government and the political domination
of this country were as easy as lying! The Protestants,
divided into a hundred warring factions, many of
them farther apart theologically than Episcopalianism
and Catholicism, could offer no resistance to such a
political machine, and they would receive but cold comfort from
the liberal element, which has suffered so long from their
petty persecutions.
And I tell you Protestants right here, that if it be the
intention of the Church of Rome to transform this government
into a theocracy by fair means or by foul, then the
Pope is the real founder of the A.P.A. and Slattery's a
Papal spy.
. . .
According to the story of this self-constituted protector
of the American government, he studied Roman Catholic
theology for years, then officiated as a priest for eight
more before discovering anything immoral in the teachings
of the Mother Church, when it suddenly occurred to him
that it was but a tissue of falsehoods, a veritable cesspool
of rottenness. His transformation appears to have been
almost as sudden as that of Saul of Tarsus--or that of
Judas Iscariot. I have no objection to his leaving the
Catholic priesthood--his bishop stopped his pay. Like
the servant maid caught pilfering, he "gave notice, with
the missus a pintin' at the door." If Slattery believes
that the Protestant Through Line runs more comfortable
cars to the great hereafter, he's welcome to take his ticket
over that route; but I would have thought better of him
had he made the change quietly and refrained from
assaulting with the vindictiveness of a renegade that church
to which he owes his education, such as it is; had he
treated the religion of his mother with decency if not with
respect.
I thought I had met all manner of men; men hardened
in crime--men destitute of even a semblance of shame; but
never before did I behold one with the hardihood to stand
up before American women and boast that he had incurred
a mother's curse. When a man falls so low in the scale
of human degradation that his own mother disowns him it
were well to watch him. When a creature asks strangers
to accept him because his relatives have rejected him;
when, for the sake of gain, he snaps like a mangy fice at
the hand that once fed him, and stings like a poisonous
adder the bosom that once nurtured him; when, to promote
his personal ends, he will use his best endeavors to
exterminate religious liberty and precipitate a bloody
sectarian war, I tell you he was not born a man but begotten
a beast.
From the very foundation of this government the Catholics
have been its firm defenders. Their wisdom and eloquence
have adorned its councils from the signing of the
Declaration of American Independence to this good day,
and its every battlefield, from Lexington to the Custer
massacre, has been wet with Catholic blood. Nine Roman
Catholics signed the Declaration of Independence, and the
Roman Catholics of New York contributed so liberally of
their blood and treasure to the cause of the new-born
Nation that Washington wrote them a letter praising their
patriotism. Several Roman Catholics helped frame the
Federal Constitution, and the interpretation of that
wonderful instrument by a Roman Catholic chief-justice to-
day constitutes the fundamental law of the land. Yet
Slattery and that ridiculous organization of which he
boasts himself a member, would have you believe that the
American Catholics would, at a nod from the Pope, ruthlessly
trample under foot that flag in whose defense they
pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor--
that they would wreck without remorse and ruin without
regret that Nation they helped place on the map of the
world. How do you old Confederates, who followed Pat
Cleburne, relish having this blatant tramp defame your
dead commander? Can you believe, on the unsupported
testimony of this mendacious mountebank, that Father
Ryan's tribute to the Stars-and-Bars was rank hypocrisy
--that the poet-priest was the political tool of a foreign
power? Sherman died a Catholic. Fighting Phil Sheridan
was a Catholic. Old Pap Thomas, "the Rock of
Chickamauga," was a Catholic. The "Bloody Sixty-ninth" New
York was a Catholic regiment, and its heroism at the
Battle of Bull Run forms one of the brightest pages in the
military history of this nation. Strange it never occurred
to those demoralized Protestant regiments which took
refuge behind the bayonets of the Sixty-ninth that they
were throwing the Vatican between themselves and the
Confederate forces!
Slattery assures us that the number of Irish Catholics
on the police force of our great cities is evidence that the
Church of Rome is on mischief bent. I am not surprised
that an Irish Catholic with a club in his hand should prove
rather alarming to Bro. Slattery. But, although he says,
"meet a policeman and you'll see the map of Ireland in
his face," those same policemen have several times saved
his worthless bacon. When he was mobbed in St. Louis
for defaming Catholic nuns, the police formed a cordon
around his infamous carcass and saved him from a well-
merited trouncing at the hands of the slandered women's
relatives. Probably the police did not relish the job
overmuch, but they had sworn to uphold the laws, and although
Slattery insists that a Catholic oath amounts to nothing,
they risked their lives in his defense.
We have many nationalities in this country, and each
of them, as every observant man well knows, manifests a
predilection for some special occupation. Thus the Jews
take to trade, the Germans to agriculture, the Norwegians
to lumbering, the French to catering and the Irish to
politics. Make a Freewill Baptist or a Buddhist of an
Irishman and you do not change his nature--he'll turn up
at the next political convention just the same. And the
man who's too good to take a hand in practical politics;
who's too nice to mingle with the horny-handed at the
ward primaries; who's too busy to act as delegate to the
convention--who deliberately neglects his duty as an
American citizen--finds that Pat's activity has been
rewarded with a place on the police force, and blames it all
on the Pope.
. . .
It is not my province to defend Roman Catholic theology
--I suppose that Slattery said all that could be urged in
its behalf before he apostatized. Perhaps the Catholics
really believe the Pope infallible; and if they do, it is
certainly no worse than for certain Waco Protestants to believe
that Slattery's infallible. I noticed that at his lecture
last week they cheered every charge he preferred against
either the Pope or the "Apostle," and that without asking
for an iota of evidence. When I arose at the stag party
with which he wound up the intellectual debauch, and
questioned his infallibility, the good brethren cried,
"Throw him out!" Why did they so unless they believed
that to question the supernal wisdom and immaculate
truth of aught a Baptist minister might say, were sacrilege
--a sin against the Holy Ghost?
Here was I, their fellow citizen of Waco, I had done
them no harm; yet when a strolling vagabond, wearing
God's livery, and whose forte is the defamation of women,
made a statement, which if true, would forever disgrace
me in the eyes of the world; when he preferred this charge
against me within two blocks of where my babies lay sleeping,
they wanted to mob me for branding him then and
there as an infamous liar and a cowardly blackguard.
Mark you, I'm no tramp in America. This is the house
of my fathers. They helped hew it out of the Virginia
wilderness. They helped put Old Glory in the heavens,
and to keep it there for more than a hundred years, still
it appears that I have no rights in this country which a
foreigner with the smell of the steerage still upon him is
bound to respect, if he chances to be a Baptist preacher.
Talk to me about the Church of Rome muzzling free
speech when the A.P.A. would mob an American citizen
for defending his character from the infamous falsehoods
of a foreign tramp! "Throw him out!" Why throw him
out? I'll tell you: The sanctified buzzards had gone there
with appetites sharpened for a mess of carrion, and they
were afraid I'd kill their cook. "Throw him out!" But I
noticed that those who were splitting their faces as wide
as Billy Kersands' were glued to their seats. They wanted
somebody else to throw him out. They were anxious to see
a gang of three or four hundred sanctified hoodlums
trample upon me, but there was not one among the self-
constituted protectors of this mighty American Nation
with sufficient "sand" to lead the mob. If there were no
better Americans than those trailing in the wake of the
Rev. Joseph Slattery, like buzzards following a bad smell,
I'd take a cornstalk, clean out the whole shooting-match
and stock the country with niggers and yaller dogs. If
such cattle were sired by Satan, damned by Sycorax and
born in hell they would dishonor their parents and disgrace
their country.
Slattery insists that Catholics believe thus-and-so, and
that no man with such a faith concealed about his person
can be a good American citizen. I don't know about that;
but I do know that if the Catholics act in strict accordance
with their religious creed they are the only people in this
country that do so. I've learned that you can't judge a
man by his catechism. Slattery assures us that he has
discarded the Pope and taken Christ for his immediate guide.
The latter commands his followers to pray for those who
despitefully use them; but if Slattery did any praying
for the "Apostle" during his sojourn in this city he
managed to keep that fact a profound secret. Christ
enjoins patience and humility. He tells his followers to turn
the other cheek to the smiter; yet Slattery assured the
ladies Wednesday night that he was "a great believer in
muscular Christianity." Then he placed his 250 pounds
of stall-fed beef in fighting attitude and declared he'd
"like to have his enemies come at him one at a time"--to
be prayed for, I presume. If Christ taught "muscular
Christianity" I have inadvertently overlooked a bet.
Christ commands us to love our enemies, but doesn't
suggest that we should manifest our affection by lying about
'em. He rebuked those who tattled about a common
courtesan, yet Slattery defamed decent women. No, you
can't judge a man by his creed. If the allegiance of the
Catholics to the Pope is of the same character as that of
Slattery to the Lord Jesus Christ, Uncle Sam need not
lie awake o' nights to worry about "Papal plots."
Had Slattery been truly a Christian, instead of black-
guarding me when protected by the presence of ladies, he
would have put up a fervent prayer for my immediate
conversion to the Baptist faith. But his milk of human
kindness had soured--he was short on Christian charity
and long on gall.
"Faith, hope and charity," says St. Paul; "and the
greatest of these is charity." And he might have added
that it's also the scarcest. Perhaps that's what makes it
so valuable--the supply is ever equal to the demand.
Speaking of charity reminds me of my experience with
the Protestant preachers of San Antonio, some of whom, I
understand, are aiding and abetting this A.P.A. movement,
"designed to preserve the priceless liberty of free
speech." While editor of the morning paper of that city
I was in the habit of writing a short sermon for the Sunday
edition, for the benefit of those who could not go to
church, I supposed that the ministers would sanction my
clerical efforts, but they didn't. They wanted no
assistance in saving souls, considered that they should be
accorded a monopoly in that line and were entitled to all
the emoluments. They proceeded to thunder at me from
the pulpit, and sometimes three or four perspiring
pulpiteers were pounding away at me at the same time--and
incidentally making me very popular. I dropped into a
swell church one Sunday morning to get a little grace--
a building that cost up in the six figures while people were
living in $4 jackals and subsisting on 50 cents a week
within sound of its bells--and the minister was holding a
copy of the Express aloft in one hand and a Bible in the
other and demanding of his congregation: "Which will
you take--Brann or God?" Well, they seemed to think
that if they couldn't have both they'd best take God,
though some of the sinners on the back seats were a trifle
subsequent in making up their minds.
I kept hammering away--preaching to my little congregation
of fifteen or twenty thousand readers every Sunday,
as I now do to ten times that many a month--until
finally the Ministerial Association met, perorated,
whereased, resoluted and wound up by practically demanding
of the proprietor of the Express that I be either muzzled
or fired. And all this time the Catholic priests said never
a word--and San Antonio is a Catholic city. But the
Baptist ministers were running a sneaking boycott! Yet
the Church of Rome is the boa-constrictor that's trying to
throttle the American right of free speech!
The Y.M.C.A. invited me to lecture on Humbugs, and
that scared the Ministerial Association nearly to death.
They thought I was after 'em now sure, so they went to
the officials of the Y.M.C.A. and made them cancel the
date. And the only Protestant minster in the entire city
who did not join in this attempt to throttle free speech
was an Episcopalian--and the Episcopalians are not
Protestants to hurt. Yet when these ministers, who are
now so fearful that the Church of Rome will muzzle
somebody, found that they couldn't drive me out of town;
that they couldn't take the bread from the mouths of my
babes because I had dared utter my honest thoughts like
a freeman; that I was to continue to edit the Express
so long as I liked, they came fawning about me like a lot
of spaniels afraid of the lash! But not one of them ever
tried to convert me. Not one of them ever tried, by kindly
argument, to convince me that I was wrong. Not one of
them ever invited me to church--or prayed for me, so
far as I could learn. Perhaps they thought I was past
redemption.
Slattery cautions you not to send your children to
convent schools, declaring that he "never yet saw a nun who
was an educated woman." That statement, standing alone,
ought to convince every one blessed with a thinking apparatus
that Slattery's a fraud. Some of the best educated
women in this world have entered convents. Women
upon whose tuition fortunes have been expended are now
making convent schools deservedly popular with the
intelligent people.
He says ignorance is the correlative of Catholicism, and
points to Spain as proof of this startling assertion. There
was a time when Spain stood in the very forefront of
civilization, in the van of human progress, the arbiter of
the world's political destiny,--and Spain was even more
Catholic then than it is to-day. Nations and civilizations
have their youth, their lusty manhood and their decay,
and it were idle to attribute the decline of Spain to
Catholicism as the decadence of Greece to Paganism. The
Catholic church found Spain a nation of barbarians and
brought it up to that standard of civilization where a
Spanish monarch could understand the mighty plans of
Columbus. It was her Catholic Majesty, Queen Isabella,
who took from her imperial bosom the jewels with which
to buy a world--who exchanged the pearls of the Orient
for the star of Empire. The Catholic church found England
a nation of barbarians and brought it up, step by
step, until Catholic barons wrung from King John at
Runnymede the Great Charter--the mother of the American
Constitution. It found Ireland a nation of savages
and did for it what the mighty power of the Caesars could
not--brought it within the pale of civilization. But for
the Roman Catholic Church Slattery might be wearing a
breech clout, digging roots with his finger nails and gorging
himself with raw meat in Ireland to-day instead of
insulting the intelligence of American audiences and wringing
money from fanatics and fools by warring upon the
political institutions of their fathers.
. . .
Slattery was horrified to learn that some of the nuns
were inclined to talk about each other. I sincerely trust
that he will find none of the Baptist sisters addicted to
the same bad habit.
From what I could gather of his discourse,--before I
was "put out"--and from the report of his alleged wife's
lectures, I infer that this delectable twain impeach the
virtue of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods. Malice, like
death, loves a shining mark, and there is no hate so
venomous as that of the apostate. But before giving credence
to such tales, let me ask you: Why should a woman
exchange the brilliant parlor for a gloomy cell in which to
play the hypocrite? Why should a cultured woman of
gentle birth deliberately forego the joys of wife and
motherhood, the social triumph and the freedom of the
world and condemn herself to a life of labor, a dreary
round of drudgery, if her heart's impure? For shame!
Who is it that visits the slums of our great cities
ministering to the afflicted, comforting the dying, reclaiming
the fallen? When pestilence sweeps over the land and mothers
desert their babes and husbands their wives, who is it
that presses the cup of cold water to the feverish lip
and closes the staring eyes of the deserted dead? Who
was it that went upon the Southern battle-fields to minister
to the wounded soldiers, followed them to the hospitals
and tenderly nursed them back to life? The Roman
Catholic sisterhoods, God bless them!
One of those angels of mercy can walk unattended and
unharmed through our "Reservation" at midnight. She
can visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the
White-chapel district. At her coming the ribald song is
stilled and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen
creatures reverently touch the hem of her garments, and
men steeped in crime to the very lips involuntarily remove
their hats as a tribute to noble womanhood. The very
atmosphere seems to grow sweet with her coming and the
howl of hell's demons to grow silent. None so low in the
barrel-house, the gambling hell or the brothel as to breathe
a word against her good name; but when we turn to the
Baptist pulpit there we find an inhuman monster clad in
God's livery, saying, "Unclean, unclean!" God help a
religious denomination that will countenance such an
infamous cur!
As a working journalist I have visited all manner of
places. I have written up the foulest dives that exist on
this continent, and have seen Sisters of Charity enter
them unattended. Had one of the inmates dared insult
them he would have been torn in pieces. And I have sat
in the opera house of this city--boasting itself a center of
culture--and heard a so-called man of God speak flippantly
of the Catholic sisterhoods, and professing Christians
applaud him to the echo.
Merciful God! if heaven is filled with such Christians,
send me to hell, with those whose sins are human! Better
everlasting life in a lake of fire than enforced companionship
in Paradise for one hour with the foul harpies that
groaned "awmen" to Slattery's infamous utterances.
God of Israel! to think that those unmanly scabs, those
psalm-singing vultures are Americans and our political
brethren!
. . .
I know little about the private lives of the Catholic
priesthood; but this I do know: They were the first to
plant the standard of Christian faith in the New World.
They were the first to teach the savages something of the
blessings of civilization. I do know that those of them
who were once Protestants are not making a specialty of
defaming the faith of their fathers. I do know that neither
hardship nor danger can abate their holy zeal and that
hundreds of them have freely given their lives in the service
of the Lord. And why should a man devote his body
to God and his soul to the devil? I do know that one of
them has given us the grandest example of human sacrifice
for others' sake that this great world affords. Even
Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "If it be
possible, let this cup pass from me"; but Father Damien
pressed a cup even more bitter to his own lips and drained
it to the dregs--died for the sake of suffering mortals a
death to which the cross were mercy.
The Protestants admit that they are responsible for the
inoculation of the simple Sandwich Islanders with the
leprosy; yet when those who fell victims to the foul disease
were segregated, made prisoners upon a small island
in the mid-Pacific, not a Protestant preacher in all the
earth could be found to minister to them. The Lord had
"called" 'em all into his vineyard, but it appears that he
didn't call a blessed one of them to that leper colony where
people were rotting alive, with none to point them to that
life beyond the grave where all the sins and corruptions of
the flesh are purged away and the redeemed stand in robes
of radiant white at the right hand of God. I blame no
man for declining the sacrifice. To set foot upon that
accursed spot was to be declared unclean and there
confined until death released you--death by leprosy, the most
appalling disease in all the dreadful catalogue of human
ills, the most dreaded arrow in the quiver of the grim
Destroyer. Yet Father Damien, a young Roman Catholic
priest, left home and country and all that life holds dear,
and went deliberately forth to die for afflicted barbarians.
There he reared an humble temple with his own hands to
the God of his fathers, there, through long years of
confinement, he ministered to the temporal and spiritual wants
of the afflicted; there he died, as he knew he must die, with
his fingers falling from his hands, his flesh from his bones,
a sight to appall the very imps of hell. No wonder the
Protestant ministers held aloof. Merciful God. I'd rather
be crucified!
We are all brave men when the war-drum throbs and
the trumpet calls us to battle beneath the eyes of the world,
--when, touching elbows with our fellows and clad in all
the glorious pomp and circumstance of war we seek the
bubble of fame e'en at the cannon's mouth. When the
music of the battery breeds murder in the blood, the electric
order goes ringing down the line, is answered by the
thrilling cheer, the veriest coward drives the spur deep
into the foaming flank and plunges, like a thunderbolt,
into the gaping jaws of death, into the mouth of hell; but
when a man was wanted to go forth alone, without blare
of trumpet or drum, and become a life-prisoner in a leper
colony, but one in all the world could be found equal to
that supreme test of personal heroism, and that man was
a Roman Catholic priest. And what was his reward?
Hear what Thos. G. Sherman, a good Protestant, says in
the New York Post:
"Before the missionaries gained control of the islands;
leprosy was unknown. But with the introduction of
strange races, leprosy established itself and rapidly
increased. An entire island was properly devoted to the
lepers. No Protestant missionary would venture among
them. For this I do not blame them, as, no doubt, I should
not have had the courage to go myself. But a noble
Catholic priest consecrated his life to the service of the
lepers, lived among them, baptized them, educated them,
and brought some light and happiness into their wretched
lives. Stung by the contrast of his example, the one
remaining missionary, a recognized and paid agent of the
American Board, spread broadcast the vilest slanders
against Father Damien."
So it appears that the world is blessed with two Slatterys.
There are three kinds of liars at large in the land: The
harmless Munchausen who romances for amusement, and
whose falsehoods do no harm; the Machiavellian liar, whose
mendacity bears the stamp of original genius, and the
stupid prevaricator, who rechews the fetid vomit of other
villains simply because he lacks a fecund brain to breed
falsehoods to which he may play the father. And Slattery's
a rank specimen of the latter class. When he attempts
to branch out for himself he invariably comes to
grief. After giving a dreadful account of how Catholics
persecute those who renounce the faith, declaring that they
were a disgrace to the church while within its pale, he
produced a certificate from a Philadelphia minister to the
effect that he--the Philadelphian--had visited Slattery's
old parish in Ireland and the Catholics there declared that
he was a good and faithful priest! What Slattery seems
to lack to become a first-class fraud is continuity of
thought. He lies fluently, even entertainingly, but not
consistently.
The apostate priest would have the various Protestant
denominations throw down the bars that separate them
and mark off their theological bailiwicks "with little beds
of flowers." The idea is a good one--and I can but
wonder where Slattery stole it. Still I can see no cogent
reason for getting all the children together in happy union
and leaving their good old mother out in the cold.
Throw down all the bars, and let every division of the
Great Army of God, whether wearing the uniform of
Buddhist or Baptist, Catholic or Campbellite, Methodist
or Mohammedan, move forward, with Faith its sword,
Hope its ensign and Charity its shield. Cease this foolish
internecine strife, at which angels weep, swing into line as
sworn allies and, at the command of the Great Captain,
advance your standards on the camp of the common foe.
Wage war, not upon each other, but on Poverty, Ignorance
and Crime, hell's great triumvirate, until this beautiful
world's redeemed and bound in very truth,
"With gold chains about the feet of God."