Clinch

“ Hale and Rawlins felt their hearts beat quickly; the others followed Clinch's slow movements and downcast mien with amused curiosity. After locking the other outlet from the room, and putting the keys in his pocket, Clinch returned to the fire. For the first time he lifted his eyes; the man nearest him shrank back in terror.
“I am the man,” he said slowly, taking deliberate breath between his sentences, “who gave up those greenbacks to the robbers. I am one of the three passengers you have lampooned in that paper, and these gentlemen beside me are the other two.” ”

“ Clinch gave me permission, at nine o'clock, to be absent the rest of the day, if necessary. He was curious to know what business I had at the courts, and I told him enough of the story to enable him to understand the situation.
"I was sure that Morgan Blair was getting into bad ways," said Mr. Clinch. "I tell you, Phil, when a young fellow is lazy, and don't take any interest in his business, he is getting into a bad way. All I want to know about a boy is, whether he feels an interest in his business or not. ”

“ Clinch, “that the lawyers can't help themselves, but must just talk and rant and swear for any one that asks them first?”
“It's exactly what I mean, ma'am,” responded the Captain. “They 've no more choice in the matter than the hangman has as to who be 'll hang.”
“Then I'd as soon be a gauger!” exclaimed the lady, with a contemptuous glance at poor Clinch, who winced under the observation.
“But I don't see what they wanted young Nelligan for,” said Miss Busk; “what experience or knowledge has he?”
“He's just the first man of the day,” said Bodkin. ”

“ Clinch to look out for another situation. Mr. Clinch's misconduct was of the kind especially designed by Providence to test the fortitude of a Christian wife and mother, and the Bishop was absolutely distended with seasonable advice and edification; so that when Bella met his tentative exhortations with the curt remark that she preferred to do her own housecleaning unassisted, her uncle's grief at her ingratitude was not untempered with sympathy for Mr. Clinch.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bishop's warmest greetings were always reserved for Mrs. Fetherel ”

“ He brought your daughter in."
"Yes, 'n' he'd jail us all if he got anything on us."
"Yes; and he'll shoot to kill if any of Quintana's people come here and try to break in."
Clinch grunted, peeled off his coat and got into a leather vest bristling with cartridge loops.
Trooper Stormont came in the back door, carrying his rifle.
"Some rough fellow been bothering your little daughter, Clinch?" he inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl Marsh—clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. ”

“ You'll see her at dinner time. She sticks to Clinch. He's a rat. He's up against the dry laws and the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed.
"He kills Harrod's deer. That's certain. I mean Harrod's nephew's deer. Harrod's dead. Darragh's the young nephew's name. ”

“ Meanwhile, you need not be under any apprehension. This is the war-chief of the whites; he will protect you.”
“Yes,” said Clinch, drawing himself proudly up. “My warriors are numerous and strong. There are many in the fort, and many more on the way. You have nothing to fear.”
“It is good!” rejoined the chiefs. “If troubles arise, we shall seek your protection; you have promised it—it is good.”
“Ask the chiefs,” said the commissioner, to whom a new question had suggested itself—“ask them if they know whether Holata Mico will remain for the council of to-morrow.” ”

“ But Clinch turned ugly and wouldn't budge. And that's how Clinch began to go wrong."
"Poor devil," said Stormont.
"Devil, all right. Poor, too. But he needed money. He was crazy to make a lady of Eve Strayer. And there are ways of finding money, you know."
Stormont nodded.
"Well, Clinch found money in those ways. The Conservation Commissioner in Albany began to hear about game law violations. The Revenue people heard of rum-running. Clinch lost his guide's license. But nobody could get the goods on him.
"There was a rough backwoods bunch always drifting around Clinch's place in those days. ”

“ I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy that lays the heft of a single finger onto Eve."
"I'd do so, too, if I were you," said Stormont.
"Would ye? Well, I guess you're a real man, too, even if you're a State Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act pleasant and cozy. She ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her an egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by sundown."
"Nearer morning," remarked Smith.
Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch." ”

“ In spite of himself, old Clinchell laughed grimly.
"You see, I got to do it myself. I hate to, too. A man don't like to kill anybody, not without it's necessary; but I expect this is one of them times." Clinchell sighed. ”

“ Old Clinchell had almost had apoplexy at the thought of his Sue Belle kissing or squeezing, or anything like that, with the shiftless shanty-boater, who shipped his own furs and fish, who whistled to all kinds of dicky-birds, who knew all the flowers by their right names, and who squandered his time shucking clam-shells and cutting little images out of knuckle woods. He swore that he would "get shet" of Andrest. He ordered the plantation hands to keep him informed about the shanty-boater's movements. He worked himself up into a fine frenzy of anger and resentment. ”

“ Other men less fugitive than Payne, though of purely local fame, contributed to the good-fellowship of the later Knickerbocker period. Charles P. Clinch wrote plays, poems, and criticisms; held public office; and became the devoted friend of Halleck and Drake. “The Spy,” “The First of May,” “The Expelled Collegians,” and an address prepared for the opening of the Park Theatre, testify to his industry, but failed to give his reputation more than local and passing importance. ”

“ Clinchell couldn't blame them for being trapped into doing their duty; and it was a warning which the old man could not help but take to heart.
"He's got money enough! He don't have to do his own killing!" people laughed when they heard of the matter. "Lawzee, but that young shanty-boater sure has his nerve with him!"
Old Clinchell was so angry that he forgot to hire a livery rig to drive him back to his plantation in the swamps. ”

“ One of the persons was Sue Belle and the other was a man. Adjusting the focus of the glasses, old Clinchell glared at the two.
They stopped in the edge of the timber and talked to each other. The mule leaned up against a gum-tree and rested his head on the man's shoulder, which indicated a degree of familiarity maddening for Clinchell to behold. At intervals the man held something up for the mule to eat, and that accounted for the mule not kicking the man through an acre of landscape. ”

“ Clinchell allowed himself to chuckle. He was a shrewd old man, with a thousand wiles and ways, and he took an ignorant man's delight in smartness and trickery. First he must make sure that there was no loophole through which the young shanty-boater could escape his wiles.
"He's got two-three thousand dollars, and he could buy as good a lawyer as is to be had around for that," he told himself frankly. "I don't want any good lawyers mussing up my ideas—no, sir!" ”

“ Clinchell shouted. "I'll shoot him like a dog! I know that young scoundrel—I know him!"
"If you lay hand on hair or hide of Lunmer Andrest, you forfeit that bond," Ferris declared sharply. "Don't you blame any man till you know he's guilty."
"That bond won't hurt me!" Clinchell exclaimed. "I can pay forty bonds!"
Summons to dinner took the sheriff, his two deputies, and Clinchell down to the dining-room. They found an abundant meal there, and wagons carried lunches for the searchers out on all the traces and roads leading from the plantation into the timber-brakes. ”

“ People were apt to talk too much sometimes. Old Clinchell's early life had been milestoned, so to speak, by injudicious conversations, his own and other people's. If Morlung had been fooled and bulldozed into telling too much, there was no telling what the law of the case would be. It might involve the fifty-thousand-dollar bond, to make up for any damages done to the feelings and property of Lunmer Andrest, if the young man pressed the point. ”

“ Francis into old Mississip', and there would be slight chance of old Clinchell chasing him farther. That meant abandoning the beautiful forest river, fleeing from the wonderful Dark Bend swamps, and leaving Sue Belle Clinchell for some other young man to get. If he went, she would properly despise him; if he remained, he must fight—fight bushwhacking enemies and bought assailants.
Lunmer Andrest could have cried for vexation—could have shed tears, the evidence of the poetry in his soul. Practical people do not weep, but those who love things of beauty know the welling of tears into their eyes. ”

“ He peered out of the pantry window at the forest, shuddered, cursed it and every separate tree in it; cursed Quintana, too, wishing him black mischance. No; it was settled. He'd take his chance here in the pantry.... And there must be a mattress somewhere upstairs.
He climbed the staircase, cautiously, discovered Clinch's bedroom, took the mattress and blankets from the bed, dragged them to the pantry.
Could any honest man be more tight and snug in this perilous world of the desperate and undeserving? Sard thought not. ”

“ The attack on the Deerport National Bank hurt local pride in the town, where President Lesgar was every man's friend.
Rich as he was, Clinchell had stepped too far over the bounds, and the Dark Bend swamps had lost, for a time at least, their influence in politics. The very quality of the food served to Clinchell was significant to the wilful man, for it was precisely the same as that of the other white prisoners. It did him no good to complain. After one outburst he held his peace and consulted with the more experienced Morlung, who had long been used to having every man's hand against him. ”

“ The intricate coast-line of England, so difficult for an enemy to blockade, so difficult at every point for combined naval and military forces to defend against raiders, presents to the student of history an extremely interesting subject. It is to its insularity that England owes something of its greatness, and to the great length of its coast-line that its vulnerability is due. ”

“ For the most difficult thing in the world is for a person to change his established way of thinking or of doing anything. It is so much easier to think as one’s grandfather did and to do as one’s father did than it is to think and do for one’s self. ”

“ Finding the communications interrupted, and unable to procure assistance, he walked a distance of thirty miles, narrowly escaping attack from the enemy and insurgent peasantry. He served through the campaign of 1845–6, including the battle of Sobraon, where he was wounded. ”

“ One may be so long among loud noises, bad odors, inharmonious colors and wrong arrangements of things that one doesn’t mind them, because one has let them become an integral part of one’s self. They are there, and they are as bad as they were at first, but one has become immune to them. ”

“ Intelligent selection—the art of buying the most appropriate furnishings and decorations for the home—leads logically to intelligent decoration, the art of arranging the furnishings and decorations so as to make possible a thoroughly attractive home and keenly enjoyable living for the family. ”

“ The first duty of our English navy is, and always has been, offensive, as well as defensive. In times of peace we have been accustomed to regard our Navy as our first line of defence, and this is a perfectly accurate description of its functions. But it is obvious that these functions have always been different from, and in most periods independent of, what is generally understood by the term coast defences. ”

“ Who can see nature insulted in various objects by the sticking-in of pins or the driving-in of nails? The whole thing is too simple. Nature has its place, but it is not art, nor is the imitation of it art. ”

“ Perhaps no better way to think of the principle of unity can be suggested than to quote the definition of an eminent Nineteenth Century historian: “A unit is that to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken without interfering materially with the idea itself.” ”

“ Just and reasonable homage to nature has impelled people to try in all sorts of ways to imitate it. This is not art. Art is creation, not imitation. One has but to reflect, and amazement must result when one realizes to what this impulse has led in every [Pg 10] field of expression. ”

“ It is certainly not hard to see what effect is produced by living in any wrong environment. As a person accustoms himself to it, he becomes like it. When he is like it, he will admire only its kind, and whatever he does will be as nearly like his environment as he himself is.
The importance of thoroughly comprehending this truth cannot be overstated. The mental and artistic quality of the nation and even its physical comfort depend upon it. This viewpoint, being somewhat new to us, accounts for the upheaval in our ideas of what a home really is. ”