Peachum. (See POLLY.)--J. Gay, _The
Beggar's Opera_ (1727).

=Pearl= (_Little_), illegitimate child of Hester Prynne and Arthur
Dimmesdale. A piquant, tricksy sprite, as naughty as she is
bewitching--a creature of fire and air, more elfish than human, at once
her mother's torment and her treasure.--Nathaniel Hawthorne, _The
Scarlet Letter_ (1850).

=Pearl.= It is said that Cleopatra swallowed a pearl of more value than
the whole of the banquet she had provided in honor of Antony. This she
did when she drank to his health. The same sort of extravagant folly is
told of AEsopus, son of Clodius AEsopus, the actor (Horace, _Satire_, ii.
3).

A similar act of vanity and folly is ascribed to Sir Thomas Gresham,
when Queen Elizabeth dined at the City banquet, after her visit to the
Royal Exchange.

Here [pounds]15,000 at one clap goes
Instead of sugar; Gresham drinks the pearl
Unto his queen and mistress.

Thomas Heywood.

=Pearson= (_Captain Gilbert_), officer in attendance on Cromwell.--Sir W.
Scott, _Woodstock_ (time, Commonwealth).

=Peasant-Bard= (_The_), Robert Burns (1859-1796).

=Peasant-Painter of Sweden=, H[:o]rberg. His chief paintings are
altar-pieces.

The altar-piece painted by H[:o]rberg.

Longfellow, _The Children of the Lord's Supper_.

=Peasant Poet of Northamptonshire=, John Clare (1793-1864).

=Peasant of the Danube= (_The_), Louis Legendre, a member of the French
National Convention (1755-1797); called in French _Le Paysan du Danube_,
from his "['e]loquence sauvage."

=Peau de Chagrin=, a story by Balzac. The hero becomes possessed of a
magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of gratifying every
wish; but for every wish thus gratified, the skin shrank somewhat, and
at last vanished, having been wished entirely away. Life is a _peau
d'ane_,[TN-74] for every vital act diminishes its force, and when all its
force is gone, life is gone (1834).

=Peckhams= (_The_), _Silas Peckham_, "a thorough Yankee, born on a windy
part of the coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish; keeps a young
ladies' school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of
cattle--for the simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money
in just as few years as can be safely done."

_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 p