Excerpt from Life the Right Reverend William Pinkney D. D. LL. D: Fifth Bishop of Maryland The work of writing this Biography of the late Bishop Pinkney very unexpectedly devolved upon me. Shortly after the Bishop's decease a number of the clergy and laity united in a letter to the late Rev. Dr. Meyer Lewin, requesting him to prepare such a Memoir. He consented to do so, but while engaged in gathering materials for the work, he was suddenly called to his rest before he had written a line or made a single note. Thereupon, I was solicited by the family and personal friends of the Bishop to undertake the work. Among those specially urgent that I should do so was the late Mr. W. W. Corcoran, whose affection for the person and devotion to the memory of Bishop Pinkney were of the most ardent character. So emphatic were Mr. Corcoran's expressed wishes upon the subject, and so generous his proposals with regard to the expenses of the preparation and publication of the Life, that I felt constrained to subordinate all other considerations and assume the task. Owing to the pressure of other cares and duties, which I could not wholly neglect, the task is only now accomplished. Mr. Corcoran did not live to see the work completed and to carry out personally his intentions respecting its publication: but in pursuance of his request and direction the entire expense of the preparation and publication of this work has been borne by his executors. As Bishop Pinkney kept no diary except of strictly official acts, used no care in filing letters received, and made no copies of his own letters except in some rare instances, the difficulty of placing in consecutive order and with desired completeness the records and incidents of his life has been very great. Most consistently with his nature, it seems never to have occurred to him that occasion would arise for the use of such materials in a Biography of himself. I have endeavored to give from those materials that I could secure a fair detail of the incidents and experiences of his life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.