He is from the West, that huge quarry out of which a new order of ideas is being gradually dug and shaped. The echoes of the clang of tool upon inchoate material, of sharp wits and keen purpose carving anew at the problems of existence, reach us from time to time in this more conventional East. We may smile at the crudeness of some of the results achieved, but cannot disregard the import of the endeavour. The force which animates it is the craving for larger, fuller liberty than mankind has yet attained; a titanic force, often brutal in its material manifestation, but with inherent mightiness of spirit. It is this spirit which has enveloped Barnard’s imagination since his childhood, and forms, as it were, the basis of his art. Its keynote is humanity, the elemental relationship of man to man and of men to the universe; a liberty of life and art, that would shake off the trammels devised for narrower theories and conditions and adjust itself to the perspective of a wider horizon. A boyhood nourished on literature and nature-studies sowed the seed from which these matured ideals were to spring. He was born at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 1863, the son of a Presbyterian minister; but his early years up to the age of twelve were spent in Chicago, after which the family moved to Iowa. When only nine years old he began to learn something of shells and minerals from a retired sea captain; later he studied birds and animals, taught himself to draw them and by fifteen was an expert taxidermist with as many as 1,200 specimens in his collection. Then for nearly two years he earned his living as an engraver and worker in gold and silver ornaments, learning meanwhile to model, until, having saved a little sum of money, he returned to Chicago, determined to become a sculptor. He was now seventeen and had not yet seen a statue.