Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 255, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1913 — Self Opinioned Barnaby [ARTICLE]

Self Opinioned Barnaby

‘ - . s* vl-3 iM WWJll?> flil'. y j''.rv* ft ft : BARNABY NEVER READ Shakespeare. He never read much of anything appertaining to the various branches of what he called “sport," or 'trophe to Man, it is long odds that he would have taken it as a direct personal tribute to himself. Bamaby Is tmlky, and distinctly approves of bulky men, and looka scornfully down from his elevation of likes to see a fine, fresh color add decent upholstery of the osseous fraigework, just as the pasty-faced qaid lettn exfcitb his disgust; he hai.Sti tumbling bull-bass voice that he" Is mighty proud of and he has money, has surrounded him with paraites from,, an early age. a rooor wish h!S hands In his t rousera pockets. He grain. If him, be will ijll in jovian-Approbation; If you amuße him, ids smile- will throw his plump cheeks upward until bis little eyes are squeezed to slits, and If Wsi peculiar sense of humor Is towlsedt'-BUfflciently, Seismic rumblings vrfll proceed from ,fiis IriteriofJ and people In remote Will sit’ up and twist their It tbete Is anything that Barnaby cannot do better than anybody else, you may depend upon It it’s not worth doing. Not worth' his while, at leastIf There Is anything that be doesn’t know It is, briefly, but emphatically, “rot,” and he will dismiss the sublect with this hllghting qnallflcatlon. from which there is no appeal and against which all argument is futile and piffling: “Rot! That’s all It is: Rot!” Can you pull the wool over Barnaby’s eyes? Well, I trow not. Wisdom of the Wiseheimer variety has been vouchsafed Barnaby in overflowing measure. That Is something beyond all doubt and dispute. And what Barnaby knows, he knows. There Is a respectable wad of yellow-backed bills in Barnaby’s breeches pocket that sustains his position in language loud, eloquent and convincing. Can you cover It? No? Well, put up or shut up, one of the two. You would better shut up anyway. Listen. Listen respectfully and admiringly while Barnaby instructs you concerning the law and the prophets, or rather the proplieL, for he Is Barnaby, and the law is the breath of Barnaby’s thick-lipped mouth in the ear of the pliant legislator, and the wink of Bamaby’s plg-llke eye. In the two towns that are Barnaby’s, the towns where his tolling and spinning Is done for him, you may see how thoroughly this divine ordination is recognized. There, like the centurion of old, he says to one, “Go!” and he goeth, and to another “Come” and he coineth —“hat in hand and In all humility, and sometimes they come, being permitted, and complain, still humbly, of this and that. But barnaby checks them. “Rot!” he says. “You will do thus and so.” And of course they do It. Gan you suppose anybody having the Ineffable gall necessary to flout, deprecate and disparage such a being as Bamaby to his florid face? It was at the club and the presumptuous person was a dreamy-eyed-lunatic ; by name, Treweck, and by lack of occupation, poet. He was Just returned from the West and was talking the Gleason canal and dam, which work he had viewed from an adjacent mountain peak. “It Is a wonderful thing, no doubt,” he said. “I suppose it’s the biggest and costliest plectt of engineering up to date, bar the Panama Canal, but for all the millions of money and years of time, the 1 incessant labor of armies of men, what a tiny scratch and blot It la upon that stupendous landscape! How little we amount to In the face of nature after all!”

“Rot!” observed Barnaby, who Jbad Just loomed up. Treweck looked at him mildly. “Do you think so, really?” he asked. “When you look at something very big and very old in nature, aren’t you sometimes overwhelmed with a sense of your own Insignificance?” Bamaby got a little pinker. “What d’you mean?” he growled. “Of course, when you’re hustling around In your own little ant hills and rubbing shoulders with your fellow ants, you hardly realize It,” pursued Treweck, “but In silence and solitude, Isn’t it different?” “Rot!” said Bamaby, becoming pinker still. “At night,” urged Treweck, don't you ever look up at the stars—a million of millions of suns with their planets glimmering through incalculable distances, in space Illimitable. Can you contemplate the wonder and marvel of that glolden universe, that vast and awe-inspiring creation without feeling your utter unimportance, your lees than Insect value? Isn’t it borne upon you what a crawling, Infinitesimal atom you are, what a grain, what a mote, what a helpless” Barnaby’s pudgy palm, with the force of his brawny arm behind It, swung around and landed In Treweefle’s cheek in a resounding buffet "You Insulting vagabond!” roared Bamaby, struggling against those who held him, to repeat, the blow. "Let me get at him; I'll show him the kind of a crawling atom I am.” We drftggod him away and pacified him with high balls. And really Treweok ought to have known better. I suppose he didn’t think about it being Bamaby.