Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, April 1922 · page 36 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #32 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page describes the funeral of **Riley Grannan**, a famous racehorse gambler and track plunger who died in Rawhide, Nevada (a mining boom town). The text eulogizes him in a way that satirizes both frontier democracy and religious hypocrisy. The satire centers on **H. W. Knickerbocker**, a former clergyman turned mine operator, who delivers the eulogy. He's depicted in working-class miner's garb rather than clerical dress—a deliberate visual rejection of religious authority. His speech emphasizes "the religion of the brotherhood of man" over institutional religion, appealing to frontier egalitarianism ("class forgotten, all men were equal"). The humor and critique lie in this contradiction: a defrocked minister preaching secular humanism at a gambler's funeral, while mines blast overhead and saloons close for the day. It mocks both Victorian respectability and shallow frontier "democracy" that temporarily suspends class divisions during mourning. The satirical point: even in supposedly classless mining camps, genuine equality is performed rather than lived.
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Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 35 high-grade grime, prospectors sun-tanned, brokers, bank- ers, merchants, promoters, owners of saloons, bartenders, gamblers, rounders. Tears that were shed dropped from the eyes of all. Again, as always in mining camps, class forgotten, all men were equal. A solemn hush came down upon the little playhouse where last night and tonight, jostling crowds drank and smoked while listening to doubtful wit from the coarse jesters, men and women on the variety forum. Hovered about the bier of Riley Grannan, race track plunger of national renown, was as solemn a group of sincere mourn- ers as ever gathered to pay final tribute. Solos were offered by Mrs. Hedricks, once an actress of wide fame, now wife of the editor of a Rawhide daily paper, and by Jack Hines, miner of Alaska, and leaser of Rawhide. Punctuations came with resounding blasts from a score of mines on the mountains just above. Saloons were closed and the streets were silent through- out the service. At its end a solemn cortege trudged with the remains, destined by automobile to travel thirty miles to Schurz, there to go aboard the cars to Riley's brother in Kentucky. Unique beyond experience and dramatic beyond com- pare was the eulogy pronounced by H. W. Knicker- bocker, once a clergyman, then a mine operator of Gold- field, later a Rawhide pioneer. Hardly orthodox, but wholly in keeping with the scene and the mute desires of the dead, was the orator's appearance. The once pulpit exponent stood beside the lily-laden bier, his eyes be- dimmed with tears, his voice choked with a fraternal emotion, he was shod in high boots and clothed in the rough garb of a miner. A stenographic report of the eulogy follows: "I feel that it is incumbent upon me to state that I now occupy no ministerial or prelatic position. I am only a prospector. I make no claims to moral merit whatever or to religious authority except it be the re- ligion of the brotherhood of man. I wish to be taken only as a man among men, feeling that I can shake hands