These facts are here set down that they who read in days
to come may marvel as I do now that two score issues of a
provincial paper should consistently contain such a freight
of imperishable literature, revealing a learning positively
prodigious, a style that flows with a sonorous majesty and
crashes with a vitriolic and destroying power, a lavish
richness in figurative language, a beauty of Aeolian harps,
of sapphire seas, of the flushed and ardent splendor of
poetic nights.

Whence came the towering intellect, the wealth of
knowledge, the mastery of words, the music of style, the
diapason of feeling? It could only come from the sources
that are available to any American who can read. The
most formal aid that could have contributed is the free
shelves of the St. Louis public library.

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. But, unless we invent
some theory of universal telepathy to have wafted
inspiration to Waco from all the canonized dead from
Homer to Carlyle, we can only conceive that Brann derived
his knowledge and his power, without encouragement and
without guidance, by poring over the printed page in lonely
hours bitterly wrested from the wolf of poverty that for forty
years held mortgage on his time.