Salmagundi [bishop Wilyum Doane]

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Title:     Salmagundi [bishop Wilyum Doane]
Author: William Cowper Brann [More Titles by Brann]

Bishop Wilyum Doane hath an abiding place at Albany, N. Y., a village on the Hudson where the peons of the political bosses most do congregate to leg for bribes. In his recent annual address to the clergy the Bish. lamented bitterly that the American "jingo" was provoking dear patient Christian England to put on her war-paint. "The English press," quoth he, "has been most patient." Yea, it hath--in the optic of ye animal yclept the hog. For two years past nearly every English paper, large and small, has systematically insulted Uncle Sam--has belched upon him all the feculent bile it could rake from its putrid bowels, all the moldy mucus it could snort from its beefy brain. Even the press of Canada--that Christ-forsaken land of bow-legged half-breeds which continues to lick the No. 7 goloshes of old Gilly Brown's leavings because it lacks sufficient sand to set up for itself--barks across the border like a mangy fleabitten fice yawping at a St. Bernard. But Doane would have America swallow it all--just as the Thibetans swallow pastiles made of the excrement of their Dalai Lama. The Bish. evidently has John Bull's trademark branded on the rear elevation of his architecture. So Hingland is growing blawsted tired of our Hawmewikan himpudence. Aw! Vewy likely, don-cherknow. But we shoved it down the old harlot's throat twice with the business end of a bayonet, and we'll fill her pod again with the same provender whenever she passes her plate. Doane ought to amputate his ears and send them to the British monarch to be used as door-mats.

. . .

My old friend, Major-General Whistletrigger Vanderhurst, of the Amazonian Guard, minister plenipotentiary of the Gal-Dal News, has just run a superb "scoop" on all his contemporaries. He rustled out one morning all by his lone self and discovered that prosperity had arrived--that every Texan afflicted with chronic hustle hath greenbacks to burn, and blue yarn socks galore stuffed to the bursting point with "yellow boys," while ye farmer simply slings the silver dollar of our sires at marauding blackbirds. Whistletrigger turns up his patrician nose at all "pessimists" and broadly intimates that the man who hasn't a new silk cady, seventeen pair o' tailor-made "pants," a silken nightshirt and sufficient provender in his pantry to run a Methodist camp-meeting for a month, would starve to death in a Paradise whose springs run Pomery Sec, and whose trees grew pumpkin pies, hot weinerwurst and pate de foie gras. Texas, according to this Columbus of prosperity, is a veritable Klondyke bowered with roses instead of imbedded in snowbanks--a place where every financial prospect pleases and only the popocrat is vile. But I note with pained surprise that the farmers are still selling middling cotton below six cents, buying bacon and wearing pea-green patches on the bust of their blue jeans two-dollar hand-me-downs; that I can hire all the common labor I want at 75 cents a day despite the advance in flour; that scores of mechanics are idle; that there is no longer a wage rate in any trade; that the streets are full of able-bodied beggers, while merchants offer me 2 per cent a month for the use of a little money. I note that in every Texas city realty is being cast upon the bargain counter, while great newspapers are cutting down the pay of their employees. There's prosperity and prosperity. Perhaps Whistletrigger has been talking to the agent of some mortgage company or to Colonel Hogg--who's making so much money compromising railroad cases with the Chollie Boy Culberson administration and suppressing prize-fights for $2,500 fees that he really cannot afford to serve Texas in the United States Senate.

. . .

Now that Henry George is dead, those papers and politicians that were wont to abuse and misrepresent him most brutally are fairly falling over each other to do him honor. The post-mortem gush is sickening because of its insincerity. If Henry George was not a great man living he is not a great man dead. If his economic views were fatuous while he was among us they are folly forevermore. I am not of those jackasses that delight in kicking dead lions; I insist that simple justice be done a man while he is in the land of the living--that we should not hound him to the grave with gross misrepresentation then try to make restitution by placing him among the stars. Henry George was a good man, but he was not great. He was an advocate, not an originator. He created no new epoch; he added nothing of importance to the world's knowledge; but he did stimulate most wonderfully economic investigation. He was a thought-compeller. He brushed the mold of prejudice and the cobwebs of partisanship from many a brain. By so doing he rendered the world invaluable service and is entitled to its profoundest gratitude. So long as men can be induced to THINK there is hope for the race. Although his Single Tax theorem will perish, it has served a good purpose.

. . .

A Denver party wants to know if I would KNEEL if given an audience by the Pope of Rome. I would be pretty apt to do so if such action on my part was expected. I would ascertain beforehand what conduct was required, then prove myself a gentlemen by either observing the proprieties or declining the audience. What would the Denver man do? Waltz up to the august head of the Catholic church, slap him on the back and offer to shake him for the drinks? Novalis says: "There is but one temple in the world and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh." We, whose ancestors for so many centuries bowed, not only to the Pope, but to 2 x 4 kings and petty princelings, should not unduly exalt our Ebenezer--should not become so stiff in the joints that we prove ourselves boors by declining when in Rome to do as the Romans do. Were I to seek the presence of Queen Victoria I would observe all the court etiquette.

. . .

It is said that Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, editress of the Houston Post, and winner of the ICONOCLAST'S $500 prize as the most beautiful woman in the world, will be a candidate for the office of lieutenant-governor. If this be true she can depend on the unswerving support of the ICONOCLAST. If there be constitutional objections to her holding the office with both lily-white hands we will amend that remarkable instrument. I will take it upon myself to elect Rebecca and ask no other reward than the privilege of dancing with her at the inaugural ball. She was my first, if not my only love; and although she threw me over for Pinkie Hill, by whose effulgent aurora borealis she was hypnotized, and took to wearing pantaloons in public despite my protest, she has since repented and given all her maidenly heart to me; hence it will be my duty and my pleasure to manage her campaign. Rebecca may safely consider herself elected and discount her salary whenever the Post gets into a pinch. I am willing to do anything for Rebecca except pay off the mortgage on her paper.

. . .

Because a young man was killed while playing football, the lower house of the Georgia legislature passed a bill prohibiting that game under severe penalties. To be consistent the same body should now prohibit swimming because some boys are drowned, and possum hunting because some nocturnal sportsmen are killed. Georgia appears to take it for granted that nature makes no mistake--when she finds a man who's good for nothing else in the universe she sends him to the legislature to make laws. There's an element of danger in foot-ball as in all other athletic exercises; but that is no reason why we should confine the youngsters to croquet, mumble-peg and finger-billiards, and allow the race to degenerate into a lobeliaceous aggregation of lollipops. That Georgia legislature is full o' goobers and red lemonade.

. . .

I am rejoiced to learn that the two factions of Texas Baptists, after having for months past denounced each other in language that smelled of sulphur and would have disgraced opposing parties of Parisian gamins--after resorting to all the petty meanness of peanut politics to control the flesh-pots--have kissed and hugged, slobbered and boohooed each on the other's brisket. "How sweet it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" That's whatever. I'm glad the ruction is over, for it was becoming a rank stench in the nostrils of the Protestant religion. It was enough to drive an intelligent man to Atheism, to make him not only suspicious of religion but ashamed of his race. It seems to me that the ICONOCLAST should have had a reserved seat at the love-feast--should have been forguv and slobbered over with the rest of the sinners, for it had not said nearly as hard things about its dear brethren in Christ as they had urged against each other. It might at least have been permitted to collect the tears of the penitents. That flood of brine, if carefully evaporated, would have supplied Scholtz's Garden with beer salt for a century. And it all went to waste! Doc Hayden and myself were the only Baptist parsons who didn't get hugged. Hayden was made a scape-goat for the sins of both factions and sent to wander in the wilderness, and it was decided to no longer recognize the ICONOCLAST as the official organ of the Baptist faith. It looks as though Hayden and I would have to start a little Baptist hell of our own.

. . .

J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, one of those "village Hampdens" whom G. Cleveland discovered when raking the country with a fine-tooth comb in a frantic search for intellectual insects even smaller than himself, says the Bryan Democracy is composed of fanatics, bigots and idiots. He must have seen that brilliant bon mot in the Chicago Inter-Ocean. Poor J. Sterling Morton. Not being born great, nor having the ability to achieve greatness, it was his misfortune to have it driven into him with a maul. And he's never gotten over it. Had Cleveland done naught else evil he would have damned himself everlastingly by pulling this intumescent jay out of a Nebraska turnip- patch to make him a cabinet clerk. I say cabinet-clerk, for the so-called secretaries of the Cleveland regime were merely stool-pigeons for the Stuffed-Prophet. And now this erstwhile seneschal of the Buffalo Beast, this pitiful stool-hopper for the d--est fool that ever disgraced the presidency, turns up his beefy proboscis at the intellectuality of the Bryanites. If J. Sterling Morton would only shave his head he could get four dollars a day for playing What-Is-It in a dime museum. As an anthropological curio Oofty-Gofty or the Wild Man of Borneo wouldn't be "in it."

. . .

The committee sent to Europe by McKinley to talk a little twaddle about international bi-metallism has completed its alleged labors, and the net product is nothing--just as the people knew it would be when saddled with the expense of this high-fly junketing trip to enable the administration to make a pretense of redeeming the kangaroo promise of the Republican platform. The silver problem is not at present the burthen of my song--I simply rise to remark that the American people have been buncoed by this commission business. It was sent abroad at great outlay of boodle to ascertain what is perfectly well-known to every man outside the insane asylum, viz.: that England, being a creditor nation, would not consent to the remonetization of silver. Now let us send a commission to Europe to see if the water over there is wet. O Lord! how long will Uncle Sam consent to enact the role of a long-eared, pie-bald ass?

. . .

I wonder, O I wonder who that "prominent lawyer and sound money Democrat" was who got drunk at Charlie Cortizio's in Austin the other day and toasted Chollie Boy Culberson as "Texas' most distinguished son, the man who has done most to distinguish his state abroad"--just a bummy little boost for Chollie Boy's anaemic senatorial boom? I cannot imagine who he may be, but I was pleased to see his toast followed in my pet daily by an "ad" for a tansy compound warranted to "give relief from painful and irregular periods regardless of cause." I hope that the "sound money Democrat" aforesaid did not overlook the "ad," as he was evidently having a painful period and much in need of relief. I sincerely hope that he doesn't get that way often. It is a trifle difficult to determine whether he was pregnant with a great idea or full o' prunes--whether he needed a tansy compound or a cathartic. Poor Chollie Boy! His senatorial boom must indeed be in a bad way when he must fill old boozers with beer to induce them to boost it. But it is quite true he has been heard of outside the state--the ICONOCLAST has mentioned him several times.

. . .

I noticed in one of the local papers that "Dallas wants Baylor," $50,000 to $75,000 worth. Doubtless I'm a hopeless heretic, but I don't believe a d--n word of it. If anybody thinks that Dallas will put up $25,000 cash to secure the removal thither of Baylor, he can find a man about these premises who will make him a 2 to 1 game that his believer is 'way of his base. Dallas doesn't want Baylor even a little bit. There isn't a town in this world that wants it except Waco. It is simply another Frankenstein monster that has destroyed its architect. Baylor spends no money here worth mentioning. Its students are chiefly forks-of-the-creek yaps who curry horses or run errands for their board and wear the same undershirt the year round. They take but two baths during their lifetime--one when they are born, the other when they are baptized. The institution is worth less than nothing to any town. It is what Ingersoll would call a storm-center of misinformation. It is the Alma Mater of mob violence. It is a chronic breeder of bigotry and bile. As a small Waco property owner, I will give it $1,000 any time to move to Dallas, and double that amount if it will go to Honolulu or hell. There is no bitterness in this, no desire to offend; it is simply a business proposition by a business man who realizes that Baylor is a disgrace to the community, is playing Old Man of the Sea to Waco's Sinbad. The town could well afford to give it $100,000 to "pull its freight."

[The end]
William Cowper Brann's essay: Salmagundi [bishop Wilyum Doane]

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