Pinckney

“ Had you dissected her love for Richard Pinckney you would have found a thousand living wrappings before you reached the core. Vernons, the garden, the birds, the flowers, the blue sky, the sunlight, Meeting Street, the story of Juliet, Miss Pinckney, even old Prue. Memories, sounds, scents, and colours all formed part of the living thing that Frances Rhett had killed. ”

“ Indeed if Marshall had laid his hand on Pinckney's shoulder and said, "Young man, so frame your constitution that I shall be able to interpret it according to the necessities of [Pg 254] the Republic and in harmony with the general requirements of our nationality," Pinckney would not have needed to change a single line.
For more than 70 years, Pinckney has been a condemned and misrepresented man, and what is strange, though not inexplicable, his disgrace was primarily caused by the indispensable work which he unselfishly performed for his country without honor and without reward. ”

“ Would you try a china store, Or a gent's furnishin's place?"
"Don't they have them at drug stores?" says Pinckney.
"I never seen any glass eye counters in the ones I go to," says I. And then, right in the midst of our battin' our heads, I comes to.
"Oh, splash!" says I. "Pinckney, if anyone asks you, don't let on what a hickory head I am. Why, I've got a glass eye that Sir Hunter can have the loan of over night, just as well as not."'
"You!" says Pinckney, lookin' wild.
"Sure thing," says I. "It's a beaut, too. Can't a feller own a glass eye without wearin' it?" ”

“ Infinitely disgusted, Pinckney writes King that Gerry, "as I suspected, is resolved to remain here," notwithstanding Pinckney's "warm remonstrances with him on the bad consequences ... of such conduct and on the impropriety of" his secret "correspondence with Talleyrand under injunction not to communicate it to his colleagues." Pinckney says: "I have made great sacrifices of my feelings to preserve union; but in vain. I never met [Pg 334] with a man of less candour and so much duplicity as Mr. Gerry. General Marshall is a man of extensive ability, of manly candour, and an honest heart." ”

“ Poor Laurence Pinckney, however, had hit nothing at all; and, indeed, his shooting must be execrable, to judge by what one hears. I heard Mr. Oliver muttering that he would not get within range of him, not if he knew it; while Captain Awdry's contempt lies too deep for smiles or sneers. But Mr. Pinckney does not care; he carries a notebook with him, which he whips out whenever the view strikes him as worth remembering, or whenever something happy occurs to him. He says it is extraordinary what happy thoughts do come to a man who carries a gun. ”

“ Therefore having the necessity of a preamble, and the production of one in 1818, and the strict adherence in words and intent to the constitution of Massachusetts and Pinckney's familiarity with that constitution, the severally slender strands become a cord of circumstantial evidence which must satisfy an unprejudiced mind that Pinckney was the author of the preamble in his draught. There are too many clews here to be disregarded, and they all lead one way. The unquestionable sketches of a preamble in Wilson's and Randolph's handwriting show only three attempts and three failures. ”

“ The whites, at this time, were coming from all quarters, and Kline was enrolling them as fast as they came. Their numbers alarmed Pinckney, and I told him to go and sit down; but he said, "No, I will go down stairs."
I told him, if he attempted it, I should be compelled to blow out his brains. "Don't believe that any living man can take you," I said. "Don't give up to any slaveholder." ”

“ Pinckney had been a Senator of the United States, Governor of South Carolina, Minister to Spain and had just been elected to the important Congress which was to grapple with the National questions involved in the Missouri Compromise. He may have been a vain man as Madison thought him— (most men of great ability and prominence are egotistical; it is egotism ordinarily which impels them to the front) but no one has intimated that Pinckney could have been guilty of an act which from moral and historical points of view was little better than a crime. ”

“ Bearing the diploma of the Lyric Muse, Mr. Leslie Pinckney Hill, schoolmaster of Cheyney, Pennsylvania, and authentic singer, is one of the Leslie Pinckney Hill newest arrivals on the slopes of Parnassus. A first glance tells that he is an agile climber, sinewy, easy of movement, light of step, with both grace and strength. Every indication in form and motion is for some point far up toward the summit. Youthful he is, ambitious, plainly, and, in spite of a burden, buoyant. ”

“ In the second clause of the latter alternative Sparks with admirable sagacity applied the most delicate test that could be applied to the matter. He brings the dilemma down to this: The Committee must have used Pinckney's draught or Pinckney must have sketched his draught from the Committee's; and more than that, he must have sketched it "in so artful a manner as to make it seem the original."
When one instrument is fashioned after another the natural and even unconscious action of the mind is to correct and improve. It is a going forward toward a desirable result. ”

“ Pinckney, "and to all the friends who have been so kind to me," again that little foreign manner of bowing. "He is a good man, that poor uncle," she went on, "and he is happy for me. Now, my dear grandfather, I belong to you and to my dear aunt. Beso a ustedes la mono, señor y señora," she said with a little laugh and dropping a pretty curtsey.
"I never doubted for one moment that you belonged to us," returned Mr. Pinckney, "but I am glad, for your sake, that you have this further testimony. Now, then, good people, all, when do we start? Ho, for the Yellowstone! Will you go with us, Jennie?" ”

“ What’s his name—Richard Pinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett.”
“He is not.”
“He is—Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I’ve seen them canoodling often, and every one says they are engaged.”
“Well, he’s not, or Miss Pinckney would have told me.”
“Oh, she’s blind. I tell you he is, and she’ll be your guardian when he’s married her.”
“That she won’t,” said Phyl. ”

“ I finds Pinckney got up in his frock coat and primrose pants, and lookin' mighty pleased about something or other.
"Huh!" says I. "You seem to take this as a reg'lar cut-up act. I call it blamed nonsense, encouragin' folks like the Dillons to——"
But there ain't any use arguin' with Pinckney when he's feelin' that way. He only grins and looks mysterious. We don't have to hunt for the number of the Dillons' flat house, for there's a gang of kids on the front steps and more out in the street gawpin' up at the lighted windows. ”

“ For Madison in 1835, when he wrote to Judge Duer, was twenty-five years older than Pinckney was when he sent the draught to Mr. Adams; and twenty-five years at that end of life is no small difference. Moreover his memory from his youth up had been laden and taxed with great events. It was fifty-two years since he had made this despondent note in his record of the debates in Congress ”

“ A correspondent of Rufus King, writing from New York in July of that year, says, “No two men can be more beloved and honored than Pinckney and Marshall;” and again in November: “Saving General Washington, I believe the President, Pinckney, and Marshall{34} are the most popular characters now in our country. There is a certain something in the correspondence of Pinckney and Marshall ... that has united all heads and hearts in their eulogy.” It is understood that the American side of this correspondence was by Marshall. ”

“ Tell me!"
"His name was John Pinckney."
"Pinckney? Pinckney? The same as our good friend?"
"Yes, yes, and oh, to think your father was his own son. You are dear Mr. St. Nick's granddaughter, and Mrs. Bobs is your aunt."
"No, no! I dream! I am asleep!" cried the señorita, putting her hands on Mary Lee's shoulders and gazing into her eyes.
"You are wide awake. Oh, isn't it too good to be true? But it is true."
"And he, Mr. Pinckney, does he know?"
"I think he must by now. Mother and Aunt Helen are telling him." ”

“ Each noble deed which conquer’d Death:
And show them in the golden sun
Of Peace and Fame that shall be won.
Right bravely hast thou borne thy part—
Hope on—Trust on—true patriot heart.
Columbia, S. C., Dec. 1853.
E. P. R.
* The noble residences of Gen. C. C. Pinckney and of John Rutledge, which were destroyed with all their precious contents, in the great fire of 1861.
†Mrs. Holbrook, grand-daughter of John Rutledge and great-niece of Gen. Pinckney, died October 1863. ”

“ The objection that Pinckney framed a provision at one time and disapproved of it at another is easily superable: the objection that "there is in the paper a similarity in some cases and an identity in others with details, expressions and definitions, the results of critical discussion and modification in the Convention which could not have been anticipated," is insuperable—if it be well founded. ”

“ Breeze," said Miss Austin; and Pinckney woke up with a start, for he was thinking of Miss Warneld too.
"Why?" said he.
"I don't like him," said Emily. "He isn't good enough for her."
As this is a thing that women say of all wooers after they have won, and which the winner is usually at that period the first to admit, Pinckney paid little attention to this remark. But that evening he met Miles Breeze, saw him, talked with him, and heard others talk of him. A handsome man, physically; well made, well dressed, well fed; well bred, as breeding goes in dogs or horses ”

“ Harry looked in better health than I: every one thought I was the invalid. The doctor was called in immediately, who said I had endangered my life by the expedition. I found out my lady had been to balls and on excursions all the time she was writing those harrowing letters."
"Is it possible," said Miss Featherstone, "that you think Mrs. Pinckney is false—that she deliberately tells untruths?"
"Not a bit of it," interrupted Colonel Pinckney. "She loves to complain and make herself an object of sympathy. ”

“ I never saw a man run faster. Returning, I saw Joshua Gorsuch coming, and Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he would like "to take hold of a nigger," told him that now was his "chance," and struck him a blow on the side of the head, which stopped him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave him a blow which brought him to the ground; as the others passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon him, until the blood oozed out at his ears.
Nicholas Hutchings, and Nathan Nelson of Baltimore County, Maryland, could outrun any men I ever saw. They and Kline were not brave, like the Gorsuches. ”

“ The committee, so all the circumstances unite in telling us, took Pinckney's draught and considered it; some [Pg 237] provisions they retained; some they corrected, some they amended, some they changed, some they struck out. The amendments they wrote on the broad margin of the large foolscap sheets or wrote out on separate slips of paper which they wafered to the margin. When they had finished this work Pinckney's draught had become "printer's copy." For one brief week it served a great purpose and was the most useful document in the world. ”

“ General Pinckney was one of the old school gentlemen of South Carolina. A man he was of the most punctilious precision in manners and customs, in courtesy, and cleanliness of dress and person; a man of brilliant talents, and, in every sense of the word, "a perfect gentleman!" ”

“ Pinckney appreciated the difference between a constitution and a statute and in maintaining this difference his hand rarely erred. The Committee of Detail corrected Pinckney's language, occasionally, and sometimes rendered the meaning more certain by amplification but whenever they departed from his draught, there is an immediate falling off in style. ”

“ Pinckney knows something of it, and he is very kind.”
“When a reporter is kind, it’s only for his personal benefit. The moment crime is committed, Avice, the reporters are on the job, and they never let go of it, until all suspects are freed or sentenced. But what they learn by their ‘detection’ is only for their paper; it is rarely given in testimony, or turned to real account.”
“Mr. Pinckney will help me, I’m sure,” Avice persisted. “And besides, he was in college with Mr. Landon, uncle’s nephew out West.”
“Landon? The chap you used to be in love with?” and Judge Hoyt made a wry face. ”

“ Now, there's a lot of eatin' shops in this town; but I'll bet Pinckney couldn't name more'n four, to save his neck, and the Fifth-ave. joint he picks out was the one he's most used to.
It ain't what you'd call a fam'ly place. Mostly the people who hang out there belong to the Spender clan. It's where the thousand-dollar tenors, and the ex-steel presidents, and the pick of the pony ballet come for broiled birds and bottled bubbles. But that don't bother Pinckney a bit; so we blazes right in, kids and all. The head waiter most has a fit when he spots Pinckney towin' a twin with each hand ”

“ Thomas Pinckney, then, is to be distinguished from others of the name as the founder of the family in America.
The eldest son of Thomas, that grew to man's estate, was Charles Pinckney, who embraced the legal profession, and rose to be Chief Justice of the Province of South Carolina, and hence he is usually spoken of and distinguished from the rest of the family as "Chief Justice Pinckney." He was educated in England, and was married there. Returning to Charleston, he acquired a large fortune by the practice of his profession. ”