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His vocabulary is conceded, even by his most envious critics, to outrange that of any other American. His gift of figurative speech that essential that distinguishes literature from mere correct writing rivals that of any writer in any country, language or time. Brann's compass of words, idioms and phrases harks back to the archaic and reaches forward to the futuristic.
That a magazine so located and written by one man, having but a paltry advertising patronage, no illustrations, no covers, could in three years' time rival the circulation of any magazine then published is as much a miracle as the parting of the Red Sea waters or the bountiful persistence of the widow's oil. It is on this three years' work that Brann's fame must rest.
That O. Henry's ambition to write may be accredited to the influence of Brann seems more than probable. Brann's first attempt to start The Iconoclast was made in Austin, Texas, but this first paper survived for only a few issues.
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.
There were previous years of yearning and dreaming while he fretted beneath the yoke of galling servitude to newspaper editors unworthy to loose the latchets of Brann's shoes.
And Armour won; but it was like that last shot of Brann's, sent after he, himself, had fallen. Philip Armour slipped down into the valley and passed out into the shadow, unafraid. Like Cyrano de Bergerac he said, "I am dying, but I am not defeated, nor am I dismayed!" And so they laid his tired, overburdened body in the windowless house of rest.
It is only the transcendent genius who can afford to be careless of the preservation of his product. Socrates merely talked to chance disciples in the Groves of Athens; other men wrote and preserved his words. Shakespeare wrote plays for his current theatrical business; others gathered and printed his manuscripts. While he lived, Brann's writing never saw the dignity of a clothbound book.
They traveled up and down the world of men, mingled with many races, sailed seas, climbed mountains, lived in metropoles, and dined with princes. Brann's most notable personal acquaintances were country- town editors and provincial politicians, very like the ilk of a hundred other States and provinces in the raw corners of the world.
The miracle of Brann's growth and flowering is more marvelous than that of Poe, less explainable than that of Shakespeare. That Brann knew the literary classics of the world is obvious from his every line.
The germ of such a life as Brann's we can but accept in worshipful, unquestioning gratitude, for the process of its spawning is too entangled to unravel. But of the environment of his life we cannot refrain from rebellious questioning, appreciative though we be of that which was, and of our heritage of the unquenchable spirit that is and shall be as long as our language shall last.
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