Explore "The Luck of Barnabas Mudge" by R. Austin Freeman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BARNABAS MUDGE was a man whose intellect was above his station in life; which is not necessarily to rate him with Aristotle or Herbert Spencer. For his station was only that of a jobbing bricklayer. Still, there are bricklayers and bricklayers; and Barnabas was of the brainy variety, which is by no means the most common.
Hitherto, however, his mental gifts had not materially advanced him along the road to prosperity. Possibly luck had been against him, or it may have been that the village of Baconsfield offered but a limited scope for the working of his philosophic mind. At any rate, when we make his acquaintance on a sweltering day in June, we find him occupied in the unworthy task of demolishing a ruinous, isolated cottage on the extreme outskirts of the village.