I believe I am the best-tempered man that
ever lived. I know I am the most patient and
long-suffering. My inner consciousness reveals
to me that any one less eminently endowed with
amiable qualities would have given way, years
ago, either to transports of anger, or settled
down into a brooding or confirmed misanthrope,
tried and tempted as I have been. I will state
my case in the fewest words I can. My father
was the younger son of a younger son, who
never would— or, I believe, could— do anything
for his own support. I was born to the family
gift, and so thorough a gentleman that by no
possible exertion could I have procured myself
one day's sustenance. I inherited something
under three hundred a year, which the world
called eight, and my creditors believed to be
two. I had some reasonably good connexions,
none of whom cared to hear about, or recognise
me; a tolerable share of good looks, and a disposition
which, for gentleness and sweetness,
never knew matched. It was my impression
that, with these gifts and graces, a man
might float down the stream of life (I never
wanted to breast the current) pleasantly, not
giving himself any especial calling, nor taxing
his energies for any peculiar craft. I could
"live," in fact— and, if I only knew how, live
pleasantly. Young as I was, and with no very
wide experience of the world, I discovered
that, though society has its especial caresses and
favours for great celebrities, yet its most permanent
favourites are, so to say, very ordinary,
common-place people, with nothing brilliant or
remarkable about them; just as, in our daily
food, the staple should be something as
devoid of taste as possible, so, in our daily
intercourse, we ought to have certain persons
without any flavour of a peculiar excellence, or
any spice of special ability— people, in a word,
who would be to our intellectual wants what
the ordinary twopenny loaf is to our hunger.
"I will be this," said I to myself; "I will be
in that category of the useful things which
outlive all caprice and survive all changes of
fashion," and I did become so, and with a
considerable success. When persons enumerated
the twelve of a dinner-party, they stopped at
the eleventh, every one knowing that it was I
who made the complement. When they arranged
places in a carriage for a drive, mine was
reserved as rigidly as the coachman's. Weddings,
christenings, and funerals, too, were ceremonials
always graced by my presence, and though now
and then I would overhear some rude bumpkin
from the country, or some self-created swell, ask
impertinently, " Who is that little fellow with
the light whiskers? I see him every where;"
or, " Do tell me who is that smart little party
yonder, who seems to know everybody?" I
could afford the taunt and not need to resent it—
if resentment were, which it assuredly was
not, any part of my policy. As I have said, I
went on and prospered. I was asked to all the
best houses in my own city, and to a wide circle
of country mansions besides. Shall I own I
was proud of this invention of mine? I felt, as
the French say, that I had " created a part,"
and that, practically speaking, I was a poet, as
to the daily incidents of life. Do not imagine
that it was by a studious observance of petty
attentions, a vast host of little services, that I
attained this position. No, it was by a complete
self-negation and an utter unobtrusiveness that
I succeeded. I was of no actual use to any
living being!

I couldn't accompany a singer on the piano,
nor play a quadrille for the children, nor even tell
them a fairy tale. I was of no account in the
private theatricals; I could ride no man's horse;
I was not considered safe to drive a pony-chaise.
I sustained but one part in life. I stood in.
society as the standard measure stands in the
barrack-yard, and to me came all in turn to
measure their intellectual height against mine,
and go away happy and rejoicing. There was
not a creature so crushed by superciliousness or
so trampled down by insolence that he could
not recover some self-esteem by comparing
himself to me! Feeble old tottering fellows felt
athletic in my company, and schoolboys would
engage me in argument with a conscious
superiority that was really imposing. " Eh, Barnes?"
I would hear across the breakfast-table, " you
got the worst of that discussion with me;" or,
"Barnes, old fellow, I rather put your classical
knowledge to shame yesterday. You haven't
your Horace so fresh as I have." I was a sort
of human skittle, that every one bowled down;
but, exactly for that reason, I was sure to be
set up again. Had I been — if there could be
such a thing— a self-adjusting nine-pin, they'd
have made short work of me long ago.
Sycophancy! not a bit of sycophancy in all this!
I was no more a sycophant than is your hat
when it suffers you to put it on, or your gloves.
I was passive, nothing more. Nature has made
me a gambler inversely, that is, I had a greater
pleasure in losing than other men have in
winning. The beaten man was my part, by
predilection, and it had this advantage, I could
always secure it.

I was dining one day at the mess of the  9— th.
I was always a welcome guest at messes, where
a great proportion of the talk is boastful and
personal, and where a listener of my stamp has
an especial value. I was intimate with all the
officers, and consequently frequently heard my
name quoted as evidence in fifty matters of
which I knew nothing. Another guest, a thin,
high-nosed man, with a glass fixed in his eye,
continued to regard me fixedly, and whenever my
name occurred, his glance invariably reverted to
me, as though to say, " What will Barnes say to
this," " How will he deal with that?" and, struck
by the impenetrability of my manner, his interest
in me seemed to increase, so that when we
retired after dinner to our coffee, I was not
surprised at the major saying to me, "Barnes, I
have a friend here very desirous to make your
acquaintance. Mr. Watkins— Mr. Barnes;" and
then we bowed, and smirked, and looked foolishly
pleased with each other. More Brittanico,
all the world over.