Pinch

“ Pinch, but Mr. Pinch is a fellow-creature, my dear; Mr. Pinch is an item in the vast total of humanity, my love; and we have a right, it is our duty, to expect in Mr. Pinch some development of those better qualities, the possession of which in our own persons inspires our humble self-respect. No," continued Mr. Pecksniff". "No! Heaven forbid that I should say, nothing can be expected from Mr. Pinch; or that I should say, nothing can be expected from any man alive (even the most degraded, which Mr. Pinch is not, no really) ”

“ Pinch," pursued the landlady, "if ever there was a dear, good, pleasant, worthy, soul alive, Pinch, and no other, is his name. But how do we know that old Mr. Chuzzlewit himself was not the cause of difference arising between him and Mr. Pecksniff? No one but themselves can tell: for Mr. Pinch has a proud spirit, though he has such a quiet way; and when he left us, and was so sorry to go, he scorned to make his story good, even to me."
"Poor old Tom!" said Martin, in a tone that sounded like remorse. ”

“ To let you into a secret, Mr Pinch, I never was so much in want of something warm and cheering in my life; but I didn’t like to run the chance of being found drinking it, without knowing what kind of person you were; for first impressions, you know, often go a long way, and last a long time.’
Mr Pinch assented, and the punch was ordered. In due course it came; hot and strong. After drinking to each other in the steaming mixture, they became quite confidential.
‘I’m a sort of relation of Pecksniff’s, you know,’ said the young man. ”

“ Pinch.
"Sir, you have been impressed by my friend Slyme?"
"Not very pleasantly, I must say," answered Tom, after a little hesitation.
"I am grieved but not surprised," cried Mr. Tigg, detaining him by both lapels, "to hear that you have come to that conclusion; for it is my own. But, Mr. Pinch, though I am a rough and thoughtless man, I can honour Mind. I honour Mind in following my friend. To you of all men, Mr. Pinch, I have a right to make appeal on Mind's behalf, when it has not the art to push its fortune in the world. ”

“ Good-bye for the present.’
‘Good-bye, sir! Good-bye, Mr Pinch!’ he added by way of soliloquy, as he stood looking after him. ‘Although you are a damper to a honourable ambition. You little think it, but you was the first to dash my hopes. Pecksniff would have built me up for life, but your sweet temper pulled me down. Good-bye, Mr Pinch!’
While these confidences were interchanged between Tom Pinch and Mark, Martin and John Westlock were very differently engaged. ”

“ With what intention Martin made a stride forward at these words, it is impossible to say. It is enough to know that Tom Pinch caught him in his arms, and that, at the same moment, Mr Pecksniff stepped back so hastily, that he missed his footing, tumbled over a chair, and fell in a sitting posture on the ground; where he remained without an effort to get up again, with his head in a corner, perhaps considering it the safest place.
‘Let me go, Pinch!’ cried Martin, shaking him away. ‘Why do you hold me? Do you think a blow could make him a more abject creature than he is? ”

“ Pinch.
"Well, sir," said Mark, "I don't know as there's much to answer further than that. Him and his friend goes and stops at the Moon and Stars till they 've run a bill there; and then comes and stops with us and does the same. The running of bills is common enough, Mr. Pinch; it an't that as we object to; it's the ways of this chap. Nothing's good enough for him; all the women is dying for him he thinks, and is overpaid if he winks at 'em; and all the men was made to be ordered about by him. ”

“ And now so abject and so pitiful was he—at once so maudlin, insolent, beggarly, and proud—that even his friend and parasite, standing erect beside him, swelled into a Man by contrast.
‘Chiv,’ said Mr Tigg, clapping him on the back, ‘my friend Pecksniff not being at home, I have arranged our trifling piece of business with Mr Pinch and friend. Mr Pinch and friend, Mr Chevy Slyme! Chiv, Mr Pinch and friend!’
‘These are agreeable circumstances in which to be introduced to strangers,’ said Chevy Slyme, turning his bloodshot eyes towards Tom Pinch. ”

“ Chuzzlewit is my name.’
‘Dear me!’ cried Mr Pinch, with an involuntary start.
‘You’re not surprised at my having two names, I suppose?’ returned the other, setting his glass to his lips. ‘Most people have.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Mr Pinch, ‘not at all. Oh dear no! Well!’ And then remembering that Mr Pecksniff had privately cautioned him to say nothing in reference to the old gentleman of the same name who had lodged at the Dragon, but to reserve all mention of that person for him, he had no better means of hiding his confusion than by raising his own glass to his mouth. ”

“ Pinch will come by me. Let us drink to our new inmate, and may we be happy together! Martin, my dear friend, my love to you! Mr. Pinch, if you spare the bottle we shall quarrel."
And trying (in his regard for the feelings of the rest) to look as if the wine were not acid and didn't make him wink, Mr. Pecksniff did honour to his own toast.
"This," he said, in allusion to the party, not the wine, "is a mingling that repays one for much disappointment and vexation. Let us be merry." Here he took a captain's biscuit. "It is a poor heart that never rejoices; and our hearts are not poor? No!" ”

“ The business lies entirely between yourself and me, Mr. Pinch. With reference to your duties, I can set you going; and with reference to your salary, I can pay it. Weekly," said Mr. Fips, putting down the wafer-stamp, and looking at John Westlock and Tom Pinch by turns, "weekly; in this office; at any time between the hours of four and five o'clock in the afternoon." As Mr. Fips said this, he made up his face as if he were going to whistle. But he didn't.
"You are very good," said Tom, whose countenance was now suffused with pleasure: "and nothing can be more satisfactory or straight-forward. ”

“ This naturally led him to dwell upon Tom’s character, and to hint that Mr Pecksniff understood it pretty well. He only hinted this, and very distantly; knowing that it pained Tom Pinch to have that gentleman disparaged, and thinking it would be as well to leave the new pupil to his own discoveries.
‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘It’s impossible to like Pinch better than I do, or to do greater justice to his good qualities. He is the most willing fellow I ever saw.’
‘He’s rather too willing,’ observed John, who was quick in observation. ”

“ Still he was Pecksniff; it was impossible to deprive him of that unique and paramount appeal to Tom. And he returned Tom's glance, as if he would have said, "Aye, Mr. Pinch, look at me! Here I am! You know what the Poet says about an honest man; and an honest man is one of the few great works that can be seen for nothing! Look at me!"
"I tell you," said Martin, "that as he lies there, disgraced, bought, used; a cloth for dirty hands; a mat for dirty feet; a lying, fawning, servile hound; he is the very last and worst among the vermin of the world. And mark me, Pinch. ”

“ Here Mr Pecksniff wiped his eyes again, and gave himself two or three little knocks upon the breast, as if he were answering two or three other little knocks from within, given by the tinkling hammer of his conscience, to express ‘Cheer up, my boy!’
‘I know the human mind, although I trust it. That is my weakness. Do I not know, sir’—here he became exceedingly plaintive and was observed to glance towards Tom Pinch—‘that my misfortunes bring this treatment on me? Do I not know, sir, that but for them I never should have heard what I have heard to-day? ”

“ Though Mercy laved the wound herself; and Mr Pecksniff held the patient’s head between his two hands, as if without that assistance it must inevitably come in half; and Tom Pinch, in his guilty agitation, shook a bottle of Dutch Drops until they were nothing but English Froth, and in his other hand sustained a formidable carving-knife, really intended to reduce the swelling, but apparently designed for the ruthless infliction of another wound as soon as that was dressed; Charity rendered not the least assistance, nor uttered a word. ”

“ Boy and youth afore that I served Pinch-a-Penny Peter in his shop at Gingerbread Cove. I was born in the Cove. I knowed all the tricks of Pinch-a-Penny's trade. And I tells you it was Pinch-a-Penny Peter's conscience that made Pinch-a-Penny rich. That's queer two ways: you wouldn't expect a north-coast trader to have a conscience; and you wouldn't expect a north-coast trader with a conscience to be rich. But conscience is much like the wind: it blows every which way; and if a man does but trim his sails to suit, he can bowl along in any direction without much wear and tear of the spirit. ”

“ Tom Pinch seemed a little disposed to be melancholy for half a minute or so, but he found comfort very soon, and pursued his ruminations thus:
"I'm a nice man, I don't think, as John used to say (John was a kind, merry-hearted fellow: I wish he had liked Pecksniff better) to be feeling Tom, on account of the distance between us, when I ought to be thinking, instead, of my extraordinary good-luck in having ever got here. I must have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I am sure, to have ever come across Pecksniff; And here have I fallen again into my usual good-luck with the new pupil! ”

“ A MERRY PIN, a roysterer. See PEG.
Pinch, to steal or cheat; also, to catch, or apprehend.
Pinchbeck, inferior, deteriorated. Anything pretending to more than its proper value is said to be PINCHBECK.
“Where, in these PINCHBECK days, can we hope to find the old agricultural virtue in all its purity?”—Framley Parsonage. ”

“ Pinch!" said Miss Pecksniff. "It all comes of this unfortunate marriage. If my sister had not been so precipitate, and had not united herself to a Wretch, there would have been no Mr. Chuffey in the house."
"Hush!" cried Tom. "She 'll hear you."
"I should be very sorry if she did hear me, Mr. Pinch," said Cherry, raising her voice a little: "for it is not in my nature to add to the uneasiness of any person: far less of my own sister. I know what a sister's duties are, Mr. Pinch, and I hope I always showed it in my practice. ”

“ Pecksniff's unobtrusive remarks on the establishment, might possibly have had some share in their dismissal. Poor Miss Pinch, however, had to bear the brunt of it with both parties: being so severely taken to task by the Seraph's mother for having such vulgar acquaintances, that she was fain to retire to her own room in tears, which her natural cheerfulness and submission, and the delight of having seen Mr. Pecksniff, and having received a letter from her brother, were at first insufficient to repress. ”

“ Roger Ascham, some years earlier, had written in the same strain. In many towns the office of schoolmaster was conferred on "an ancient citizen of no great learning." Sometimes a quack con [97] juring doctor had the position, like Pinch in the Comedy of Errors (v. 1. 237) , whom Antipholus of Ephesus describes thus:—
"Along with them
They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac'd villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man. ”

“ It was all on Mr Pinch’s side, and Mr Chuzzlewit said he was very much afraid it would encumber him; to which Tom said, ‘Not at all;’ though it forced him into such an awkward position, that he had much ado to see anything but his own knees. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the wisdom of the saying was verified in this instance; for the cold air came from Mr Pinch’s side of the carriage, and by interposing a perfect wall of box and man between it and the new pupil, he shielded that young gentleman effectually ”

“ At the door, he stopped.
"You'll bear us company, Tom Pinch?"
Ay, cheerfully, though it had been to death, would Tom have followed him: glad to lay down his life for such a man!
"This," said Mr. Pecksniff, opening the door of an opposite parlour, "is the little room of state, I mentioned to you. My girls have pride in it, Martin! This," opening another door, "is the little chamber in which my works (slight things at best) have been concocted. ”

“ He saw that Mr. Pecksniff reckoned on his not denying it, because his doing so and explaining, would incense the old man more than ever against Martin, and against Mary: while Pecksniff himself would only have been mistaken in his "fragments." Deny it! No.
"You find the amount correct, do you Mr. Pinch?" said Pecksniff.
"Quite correct Sir," answered Tom.
"A person is waiting in the kitchen," said Mr. Pecksniff, "to carry your luggage wherever you please. We part, Mr. Pinch, at once, and are strangers from this time." ”

“ Pecksniff's speech, attacked the bottle with such vigour, that every time he filled his glass anew, Miss Charity, despite her amiable resolves, could not repress a fixed and stony glare, as if her eyes had rested on a ghost. Mr. Pecksniff also became thoughtful at those moments, not to say dejected: but, as he knew the vintage, it is very likely he may have been speculating on the probable condition of Mr. Pinch upon the morrow, and discussing within himself the best remedies for colic. ”

“ Not even then.
‘I will not say,’ cried Mr Pecksniff, shedding tears, ‘what a blow this is. I will not say how much it tries me; how it works upon my nature; how it grates upon my feelings. I do not care for that. I can endure as well as another man. But what I have to hope, and what you have to hope, Mr Pinch (otherwise a great responsibility rests upon you) , is, that this deception may not alter my ideas of humanity ”