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. Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence,
and could not anywhere be found.

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 regranted 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 mouldy 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
characterized 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 realization
of his dreams. Years and years after their claim had passed out of
the public memory, the Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the