BIO: Robert McBurney, Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Blair County, PA

Contributed April 2003 for use in the USGenWeb Archives 
by Judy Banja <jbanja@comcast.net>

Copyright 2003.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/
_________________________________________ 

                Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches
                                by J. N. Tillard

             Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911 

                          He is Faithful in All Things

  ROBERT MCBURNEY Is The Type of Quiet Citizen Who Is Best Known By His Deeds
                    and Most Loved By Those Who Know Him Best

THERE are some good fellows who go through life with a whoop and a shout. 
Their earthly pilgrimage is one continuous picnic of effervescing joy, except 
when the fates occasionally administer a rude jolt by way of discipline, and 
then they are apt to howl as loudly as they rejoiced in their days of 
prosperity. In any case, they are always in evidence, and their friends never 
have any trouble in locating them because of their diffidence or shy attempts 
to avoid notice. Their natural exhuberance always keeps them in the band 
wagon, and their love of attention in the spot light. These have their 
antipodes in the men with mixed motives whose every action is the result of 
cold calculation, and who always gumshoe their way down the byways, because 
they find the gumshoe method profitable and of vast assistance in the various 
schemes they evolve to get the better of their unsuspecting neighbors. They 
pretend to despise the garrulousness and bad taste of their penial [sic] and 
noisy neighbor, but the truth is that they despise only his artlessness and 
transparent honesty of purpose.
  But there is a third class who are as open as the noonday and as simple as 
a child in all their modes of thought and purposes of their lives, and who 
are as innocent of evil or sinister motives as the angels of heaven, but who 
nevertheless are chary of speech and so quiet and shrinking in manner that 
their acquaintances are scarcely conscious of their presence except from the 
mellowed radiance of the kindly light they shed about them apparently without 
effort and in utter absence of self-consciousness.
  Every man in the grocery trade in this city knows such a man. Though his 
step grows feeble and is very slow, and the weight of his years has whitened 
his locks and is bending his form, Robert McBurney still finds his way about 
the town as the faithful agent of the well-known wholesale house of Fay, 
Hutchison & Co. For many years he has been calling upon the local trade and 
it is safe to say that there is no man in the business better loved or more 
highly respected than this man of quiet way and unobtrusive personality. And 
beneath that quiet exterior and feeble frame lies an iron will. Of the utmost 
probity and uncompromising righteousness, his undemonstrative manner gives 
but little evidence of his brave spirit or the rock-like strength of his 
character. He is not silent on account of taciturnity or sullenness, for 
there never was a sunnier heart or spirit, but because of a fineness of fibre 
that is out of harmony with the boisterous and blatant. While he regards with 
good-natured toleration the antics of the roystering blade and endures with 
quiet patience the loud-mouthed disturber of the peace, he always preserves 
an outward calm that is the expression of the still but deep waters of his 
soul.
  Born in the Emerald Isle, he came to America when a little lad and was 
brought to the heart of the Keystone State so many years back that Huntingdon 
County was rather a wild place. For a large portion of his life he kept a 
grocery store at McAlevy's Fort, and his naturally placid nature took on much 
of the characteristics of his peaceful surroundings. With the inborn piety of 
his race, he was devoutly attached to the Methodist church, of which he early 
became a member, and all down the years he has been a steady and shining 
light without variableness or shadow of turning. He is one of the few men in 
the world whose word is not only as good as his bond, but a trifle better. 
That is, in all his business relations he constantly goes out of his way to 
prevent unwise or careless customers from cheating or overreaching 
themselves. The people who deal with him come to feel that he will guard 
their interests as carefully as he would his own and put as much intelligence 
and conscientious effort into seeing that they are saved from the 
consequences of their own inadvertances or stupid blunders as if he were 
personally responsible for the safe conduct of their affairs. In short, he is 
that "noblest work of God, a thoroughly honest man," not only in action, but 
in thought and intent.
  As he pursues the even tenor of his way up and down the avenues of trade in 
all weathers, despite his apparent feebleness, against the wishes of his 
friends, he is indulging in the only selfishness that he ever developed, in 
the enjoyment and satisfaction that comes to the man who wants to every day 
feel that he has furnished some reason for his incumbrance of the ground and 
remaining upon earth by performing the duty that comes to his hand.  Surely, 
when the end comes, he will have no regret for wasted time or opportunities, 
for, though his ambitions have not embraced great things, he has been so 
faithful in the discharge of the duty of the hour that the straight paths 
that he has trodden are sure to lead to everlasting peace.

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