Brann from the author of "The Bradley-Martin Bal Masque"
or "Garters and Amen Groans." The Brann who wrote
"Life and Death," by that work alone, wins to undying fame
as surely as does Grey by his "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard." I have combed my memory in vain to match
it from an American pen. A few paragraphs from Ingersoll,
a few pages from Poe, a few stanzas from Whitman--but
make your own search and your own comparisons; and if,
in your final ranking, Brann stands not among the Titans
who number less than the fingers on God's hand, it will be
because you cannot divorce the sublime beauty of "Life
and Death" from the coyotes and the jackals that run
rampant through the pages of Brann the shocker of the thin
of skin.

Lastly, consider Brann the teller of stories--for laughter and
for tears. Some of these tales are allegories as universal to
the life of man as "Pilgrim's Progress." Elsewhere, as in
the fictional essay on the "The Cow" and in the delightful
lies that Brann in rollicking mischief attributed to his fellow
Texas journalists, we find the humorous tale enriched with
the bizarre and scintillating figure. Nor was Brann
unconscious of his fictional gift, for he was working on a
novel at the time of his death. 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.

O. Henry, then a drug clerk in Austin, being filled with