_Mrs. Peckham’s_ specialty is “to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class.”--Oliver Wendell Holmes _Elsie Venner_ (1861). =Peck´sniff=, “architect and land surveyor,” at Salisbury. He talks homilies even in drunkenness, prates about the beauty of charity, and duty of forgiveness, but is altogether a canting humbug, and is ultimately so reduced in position that he becomes a “drunken, begging, squalid, letter-writing man,” out at elbows, and almost shoeless. Pecksniff’s specialty is the “sleek, smiling abominations of hypocrisy.” If ever man combined within himself all the mild qualities of the lamb with a considerable touch of the dove, and not a dash of the crocodile, or the least possible suggestion of the very mildest seasoning of the serpent, that man was Mr. Pecksniff, “the messenger of peace.” _Charity_ and _Mercy Pecksniff_, the two daughters of the “architect and land surveyor.” Charity is thin, ill-natured, and a shrew, eventually jilted by a weak young man, who really loves her sister. Mercy Pecksniff, usually called “Merry,” is pretty and true-hearted; though flippant and foolish as a girl, she becomes greatly toned down by the troubles of her married life.--C. Dickens, _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843). =Peculiar=, negro slave, endowed with talent, ambitious of an opportunity to develop and use these, but hopeless of gaining it, until emancipated by the Civil War between the United States and the Southern Confederacy.--Epes Sargent, _Peculiar_. =Pedant=, an old fellow set up to personate Vincentio in Shakespeare’s comedy called _The Taming of the Shrew_ (1695). =Pèdre= (_Don_), a Sicilian nobleman, who has a Greek slave of great beauty, named Isidore (3 _syl._). This slave is loved by Adraste (2 _syl._), a French gentleman, who gains access to the house under the guise of a portrait-painter. He next sends his slave, Zaïda,[TN-75] to complain to the Sicilian of ill-treatment, and Don Pèdre volunteers to intercede on her behalf. At this moment Adraste comes up, and demands that Zaïde be given up to deserved chastisement. Pedrè[TN-76] pleads for her, Adraste appears to be pacified, and Pedrè[TN-76] calls for Zaïde to come forth. Isidore, in the veil of Zaïde, comes out, and Pedrè[TN-76] says, “There, take her home, and use her well.” “I will do so,” says Adraste, and leads off the Greek slave.--Molière, _Le Sicilien ou L’Amour Peintre_ (1667). =Pedrillo=, the tutor of Don Juan. After the shipwreck, the men in the boat, being wholly without provisions, cast lots to know which should be killed as food for the rest, and the lot fell on Pedrillo, but those who feasted on him most ravenously went mad. His tutor, the licentiate Pedrillo, Who several languages did understand. Byron, _Don Juan_, ii. 25; see 76-79 (1819).