| Но, несмотря на красноречивые слова доброго мистера Хиггинсона по случаю кончины полковника Пинчона, это было единственное дело, которое покойник при всей своей предусмотрительности не смог довести до конца. |
| So far as the prospective territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. | Сыну его не только не доставало высшего положения, какое занимал в обществе отец, но и способностей и силы характера для того, чтобы достичь его. |
| His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but the talent and force of character to achieve it: he could, therefore, effect nothing by dint of political interest; and the bare justice or legality of the claim was not so apparent, after the colonel's decease, as it had been pronounced in his lifetime. | Поэтому он не мог ни в чем преуспеть посредством личного влияния, а справедливость притязаний Пинчонов была совсем не так очевидна после смерти полковника, как при его жизни. |
| Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence, and could not anywhere be found. | Из цепи доказательств потеряно было одно звено -только одно, но его нигде нельзя было теперь найти. |
| Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not only then, but at various periods for nearly a hundred years afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly persisted in deeming their right. But, in course of time, the territory was partly re-granted to more favored individuals, and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These last, if they ever heard of the Pyncheon title, would have laughed at the idea of any man's asserting a right-on the strength of moldy parchments, signed with the faded autographs of governors and legislators long dead and forgotten-to the lands which they or their fathers had wrested from the wild hand of nature, by their own sturdy toil. This impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing more solid than to cherish, from generation to generation, an absurd delusion of family importance, which all along characterised the Pyncheons. It caused the poorest member of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility, and might yet come into the possession of princely wealth to support it. In the better specimens of the breed, this peculiarity threw an ideal grace over the hard material of human life, without stealing away any truly valuable quality. In the baser sort, its effect was to increase the liability to sluggishness and dependence, and induce the victim of a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while awaiting the realisation of his dreams. |