Add additional documents for e2e test
This commit is contained in:
Ian Molee
parent
0cced3a14e
commit
4f4c3f152a
41
main_test.go
41
main_test.go
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@ -102,22 +102,41 @@ func TestFileContentsCache(t *testing.T) {
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}
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}
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func TestEndToEnd(t *testing.T) {
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func TestEndToEnd(t *testing.T) {
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docs, err := run([]string{"argv0", "-path", "testdata/e2e"})
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docs, _, err := run([]string{"argv0", "-path", "testdata/e2e"})
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want := []int{1, 6, 9, 12, 14, 18}
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want := []Document{
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{
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ID: 1,
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AssociatedFiles: []int{1, 6, 9, 12, 14, 18},
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LatestTimestamp: 5,
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},
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{
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ID: 2,
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AssociatedFiles: []int{2, 7, 13, 15, 22, 25},
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LatestTimestamp: 5,
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},
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{
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ID: 3,
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AssociatedFiles: []int{11, 19},
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LatestTimestamp: 7,
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},
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{
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ID: 4,
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AssociatedFiles: []int{21},
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LatestTimestamp: 3,
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},
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}
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if err != nil {
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if err != nil {
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t.Fatal("error running program: ", err)
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t.Fatal("error running program: ", err)
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}
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}
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if len(docs) != 1 {
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for i, doc := range docs {
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t.Fatalf("expected %d documents, got %d", 1, len(docs))
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if got, want := doc.ID, want[i].ID; got != want {
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t.Errorf("expected ID %d, got %d", want, got)
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}
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}
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doc := docs[0]
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if want, got := doc.LatestTimestamp, want[i].LatestTimestamp; got != want {
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if doc.ID != 1 {
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t.Errorf("expected latest timestamp %d, got %d", want, got)
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t.Errorf("expected ID %d, got %d", 0, doc.ID)
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}
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}
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if doc.LatestTimestamp != 5 {
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if want, got := doc.AssociatedFiles, want[i].AssociatedFiles; !reflect.DeepEqual(got, want) {
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t.Errorf("expected latest timestamp %d, got %d", 3, doc.LatestTimestamp)
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t.Errorf("expected associated files %v, got %v", want, got)
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}
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}
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if !reflect.DeepEqual(doc.AssociatedFiles, want) {
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t.Errorf("expected associated files %v, got %v", want, doc.AssociatedFiles)
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}
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}
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}
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}
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@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
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7
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CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
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I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my
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arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city
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of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night
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in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little
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packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching
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that place would offer, till the following Monday.
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As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
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this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well
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be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
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made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
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fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
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old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
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of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though
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in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
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was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the
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first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
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did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes
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to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did
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that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with
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imported cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in
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order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the
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bowsprit?
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Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me
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in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a
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matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
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very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold
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and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had
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sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So,
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wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of
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a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the
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north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you
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may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to
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inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.
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With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The
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Crossed Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
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on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came
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such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and
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ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay
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ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,—rather weary for me,
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when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from
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hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most
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miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one
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moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of
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the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t
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you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are
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stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets
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that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not
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the cheeriest inns.
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Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,
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and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At
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this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of
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the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light
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proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood
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invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the
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uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble
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over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying
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particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city,
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Gomorrah? But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-Fish?”—this, then
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must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” However, I picked myself up and
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hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior
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door.
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It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black
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faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of
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Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the
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preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping
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and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing
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out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The Trap!’
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Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the
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docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a
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swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly
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representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words
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underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”
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Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought
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I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this
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Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
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the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated
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little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here
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from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a
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poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very
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spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
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It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied
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as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner,
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where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than
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ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless,
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is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the
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hob quietly toasting for bed. “In judging of that tempestuous wind
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called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose works I possess the
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only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou
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lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the
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outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where
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the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only
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glazier.” True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my
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mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are
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windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t
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stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint
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here and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The
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universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted
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off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth
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against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with
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his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a
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corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the
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tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken
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wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty
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night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their
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oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the
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privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
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But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
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to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
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than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
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line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in
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order to keep out this frost?
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Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
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door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
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moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a
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Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a
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temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
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But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there
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is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted
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feet, and see what sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.
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@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
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1
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CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
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little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
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on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
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of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and
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regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
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the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
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I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
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bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
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my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
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principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
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methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to
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get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
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With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I
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quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they
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but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
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cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
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There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
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wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
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surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
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downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
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cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
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land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
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But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
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seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
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extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
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warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
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as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
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them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
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and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell
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me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
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those ships attract them thither?
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No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
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plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
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True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
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spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
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thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
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particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
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Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
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just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
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lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
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awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
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schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
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the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
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in time.
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What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
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and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
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I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
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Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
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respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t
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a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
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order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
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satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
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one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
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metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
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passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
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and be content.
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Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
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paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
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penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
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pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
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being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
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infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
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paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
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receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
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believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
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account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
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ourselves to perdition!
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@ -0,0 +1,158 @@
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3
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CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
|
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|
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
|
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|
on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
|
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|
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and
|
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|
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
|
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|
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
|
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|
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
|
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|
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
|
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|
my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
|
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|
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
|
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|
methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to
|
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|
get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
|
||||||
|
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I
|
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|
quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they
|
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|
but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
|
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|
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
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|
|
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|
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
|
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|
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
|
||||||
|
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
|
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|
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
|
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|
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
|
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land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
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Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
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Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
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do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
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thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
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leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
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looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
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rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
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are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to
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counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
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the green fields gone? What do they here?
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But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
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quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley
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of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his
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trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were
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within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up
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from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands
|
||||||
|
winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in
|
||||||
|
their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and
|
||||||
|
though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this
|
||||||
|
shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were
|
||||||
|
fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,
|
||||||
|
when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among
|
||||||
|
Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop
|
||||||
|
of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel
|
||||||
|
your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon
|
||||||
|
suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy
|
||||||
|
him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian
|
||||||
|
trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a
|
||||||
|
robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?
|
||||||
|
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a
|
||||||
|
mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
|
||||||
|
of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did
|
||||||
|
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely
|
||||||
|
all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that
|
||||||
|
story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild
|
||||||
|
image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that
|
||||||
|
same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image
|
||||||
|
of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
|
||||||
|
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
|
||||||
|
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
|
||||||
|
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
|
||||||
|
thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
|
||||||
|
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
|
||||||
|
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
|
||||||
|
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
|
||||||
|
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
|
||||||
|
awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
|
||||||
|
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
|
||||||
|
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
|
||||||
|
in time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
|
||||||
|
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
|
||||||
|
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
|
||||||
|
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
|
||||||
|
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t
|
||||||
|
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
|
||||||
|
order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
|
||||||
|
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
|
||||||
|
one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
|
||||||
|
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
|
||||||
|
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
|
||||||
|
and be content.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
|
||||||
|
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
|
||||||
|
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
|
||||||
|
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
|
||||||
|
being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
|
||||||
|
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
|
||||||
|
paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
|
||||||
|
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
|
||||||
|
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
|
||||||
|
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
|
||||||
|
ourselves to perdition!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
|
||||||
|
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
|
||||||
|
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
|
||||||
|
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
|
||||||
|
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
|
||||||
|
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
|
||||||
|
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
|
||||||
|
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But
|
||||||
|
wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
|
||||||
|
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
|
||||||
|
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
|
||||||
|
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in
|
||||||
|
some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And,
|
||||||
|
doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
|
||||||
|
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in
|
||||||
|
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
|
||||||
|
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
|
||||||
|
something like this:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._
|
||||||
|
“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
|
||||||
|
Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
|
||||||
|
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short
|
||||||
|
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I
|
||||||
|
cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
|
||||||
|
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
|
||||||
|
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
|
||||||
|
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
|
||||||
|
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
|
||||||
|
and discriminating judgment.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
|
||||||
|
himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
|
||||||
|
curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
|
||||||
|
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
|
||||||
|
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,
|
||||||
|
helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things
|
||||||
|
would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an
|
||||||
|
everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and
|
||||||
|
land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
|
||||||
|
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let
|
||||||
|
me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of
|
||||||
|
the place one lodges in.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
|
||||||
|
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
|
||||||
|
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
|
||||||
|
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
|
||||||
|
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
|
||||||
|
3
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my
|
||||||
|
arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city
|
||||||
|
of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night
|
||||||
|
in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little
|
||||||
|
packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching
|
||||||
|
that place would offer, till the following Monday.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
|
||||||
|
this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well
|
||||||
|
be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
|
||||||
|
made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
|
||||||
|
fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
|
||||||
|
old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
|
||||||
|
of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though
|
||||||
|
in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
|
||||||
|
was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the
|
||||||
|
first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
|
||||||
|
did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes
|
||||||
|
to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did
|
||||||
|
that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with
|
||||||
|
imported cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in
|
||||||
|
order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the
|
||||||
|
bowsprit?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me
|
||||||
|
in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a
|
||||||
|
matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
|
||||||
|
very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold
|
||||||
|
and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had
|
||||||
|
sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So,
|
||||||
|
wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of
|
||||||
|
a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the
|
||||||
|
north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you
|
||||||
|
may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to
|
||||||
|
inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The
|
||||||
|
Crossed Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
|
||||||
|
on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came
|
||||||
|
such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and
|
||||||
|
ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay
|
||||||
|
ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,—rather weary for me,
|
||||||
|
when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from
|
||||||
|
hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most
|
||||||
|
miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one
|
||||||
|
moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of
|
||||||
|
the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t
|
||||||
|
you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are
|
||||||
|
stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets
|
||||||
|
that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not
|
||||||
|
the cheeriest inns.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,
|
||||||
|
and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At
|
||||||
|
this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of
|
||||||
|
the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light
|
||||||
|
proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood
|
||||||
|
invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the
|
||||||
|
uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble
|
||||||
|
over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying
|
||||||
|
particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city,
|
||||||
|
Gomorrah? But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-Fish?”—this, then
|
||||||
|
must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” However, I picked myself up and
|
||||||
|
hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior
|
||||||
|
door.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black
|
||||||
|
faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of
|
||||||
|
Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the
|
||||||
|
preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping
|
||||||
|
and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing
|
||||||
|
out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The Trap!’
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the
|
||||||
|
docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a
|
||||||
|
swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly
|
||||||
|
representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words
|
||||||
|
underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought
|
||||||
|
I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this
|
||||||
|
Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
|
||||||
|
the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated
|
||||||
|
little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here
|
||||||
|
from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a
|
||||||
|
poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very
|
||||||
|
spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,200 @@
|
||||||
|
5
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
|
||||||
|
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
|
||||||
|
on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
|
||||||
|
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and
|
||||||
|
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
|
||||||
|
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
|
||||||
|
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
|
||||||
|
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
|
||||||
|
my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
|
||||||
|
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
|
||||||
|
methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to
|
||||||
|
get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
|
||||||
|
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I
|
||||||
|
quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they
|
||||||
|
but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
|
||||||
|
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
|
||||||
|
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
|
||||||
|
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
|
||||||
|
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
|
||||||
|
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
|
||||||
|
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
|
||||||
|
Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
|
||||||
|
do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
|
||||||
|
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
|
||||||
|
leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
|
||||||
|
looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
|
||||||
|
rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
|
||||||
|
are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to
|
||||||
|
counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
|
||||||
|
the green fields gone? What do they here?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
|
||||||
|
seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
|
||||||
|
extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
|
||||||
|
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
|
||||||
|
as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
|
||||||
|
them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
|
||||||
|
and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell
|
||||||
|
me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
|
||||||
|
those ships attract them thither?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
|
||||||
|
almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a
|
||||||
|
dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in
|
||||||
|
it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
|
||||||
|
reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
|
||||||
|
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
|
||||||
|
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this
|
||||||
|
experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
|
||||||
|
professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for
|
||||||
|
ever.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
|
||||||
|
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley
|
||||||
|
of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his
|
||||||
|
trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were
|
||||||
|
within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up
|
||||||
|
from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands
|
||||||
|
winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in
|
||||||
|
their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and
|
||||||
|
though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this
|
||||||
|
shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were
|
||||||
|
fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,
|
||||||
|
when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among
|
||||||
|
Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop
|
||||||
|
of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel
|
||||||
|
your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon
|
||||||
|
suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy
|
||||||
|
him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian
|
||||||
|
trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a
|
||||||
|
robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?
|
||||||
|
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a
|
||||||
|
mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
|
||||||
|
of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did
|
||||||
|
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely
|
||||||
|
all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that
|
||||||
|
story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild
|
||||||
|
image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that
|
||||||
|
same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image
|
||||||
|
of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin
|
||||||
|
to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my
|
||||||
|
lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a
|
||||||
|
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
|
||||||
|
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers
|
||||||
|
get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy
|
||||||
|
themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger;
|
||||||
|
nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
|
||||||
|
Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
|
||||||
|
of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
|
||||||
|
honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
|
||||||
|
whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,
|
||||||
|
without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
|
||||||
|
And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory
|
||||||
|
in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I
|
||||||
|
never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously
|
||||||
|
buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
|
||||||
|
will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
|
||||||
|
fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
|
||||||
|
Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
|
||||||
|
mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
|
||||||
|
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
|
||||||
|
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
|
||||||
|
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
|
||||||
|
thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
|
||||||
|
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
|
||||||
|
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
|
||||||
|
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
|
||||||
|
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
|
||||||
|
awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
|
||||||
|
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
|
||||||
|
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
|
||||||
|
in time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
|
||||||
|
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
|
||||||
|
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
|
||||||
|
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
|
||||||
|
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t
|
||||||
|
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
|
||||||
|
order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
|
||||||
|
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
|
||||||
|
one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
|
||||||
|
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
|
||||||
|
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
|
||||||
|
and be content.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
|
||||||
|
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
|
||||||
|
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
|
||||||
|
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
|
||||||
|
being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
|
||||||
|
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
|
||||||
|
paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
|
||||||
|
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
|
||||||
|
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
|
||||||
|
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
|
||||||
|
ourselves to perdition!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
|
||||||
|
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
|
||||||
|
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
|
||||||
|
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
|
||||||
|
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
|
||||||
|
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
|
||||||
|
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
|
||||||
|
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But
|
||||||
|
wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
|
||||||
|
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
|
||||||
|
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
|
||||||
|
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in
|
||||||
|
some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And,
|
||||||
|
doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
|
||||||
|
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in
|
||||||
|
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
|
||||||
|
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
|
||||||
|
something like this:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._
|
||||||
|
“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
|
||||||
|
Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
|
||||||
|
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short
|
||||||
|
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I
|
||||||
|
cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
|
||||||
|
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
|
||||||
|
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
|
||||||
|
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
|
||||||
|
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
|
||||||
|
and discriminating judgment.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
|
||||||
|
himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
|
||||||
|
curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
|
||||||
|
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
|
||||||
|
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,
|
||||||
|
helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things
|
||||||
|
would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an
|
||||||
|
everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and
|
||||||
|
land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
|
||||||
|
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let
|
||||||
|
me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of
|
||||||
|
the place one lodges in.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
|
||||||
|
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
|
||||||
|
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
|
||||||
|
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
|
||||||
|
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
3
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
|
||||||
|
low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
|
||||||
|
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
|
||||||
|
oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
|
||||||
|
unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent
|
||||||
|
study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of
|
||||||
|
the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
|
||||||
|
purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
|
||||||
|
you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
|
||||||
|
England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
|
||||||
|
of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
|
||||||
|
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
|
||||||
|
entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however
|
||||||
|
wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,
|
||||||
|
portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the
|
||||||
|
picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a
|
||||||
|
nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive
|
||||||
|
a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,
|
||||||
|
half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to
|
||||||
|
it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what
|
||||||
|
that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas,
|
||||||
|
deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight
|
||||||
|
gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a
|
||||||
|
blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of
|
||||||
|
the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to
|
||||||
|
that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. _That_ once found
|
||||||
|
out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint
|
||||||
|
resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
|
||||||
|
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with
|
||||||
|
whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner
|
||||||
|
in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its
|
||||||
|
three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale,
|
||||||
|
purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of
|
||||||
|
impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
|
||||||
|
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with
|
||||||
|
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots
|
||||||
|
of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping
|
||||||
|
round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed
|
||||||
|
mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal
|
||||||
|
and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,
|
||||||
|
horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances
|
||||||
|
and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With
|
||||||
|
this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan
|
||||||
|
Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that
|
||||||
|
harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away
|
||||||
|
with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The
|
||||||
|
original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle
|
||||||
|
sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last
|
||||||
|
was found imbedded in the hump.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,179 @@
|
||||||
|
4
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
|
||||||
|
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
|
||||||
|
on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
|
||||||
|
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and
|
||||||
|
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
|
||||||
|
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
|
||||||
|
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
|
||||||
|
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
|
||||||
|
my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
|
||||||
|
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
|
||||||
|
methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to
|
||||||
|
get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
|
||||||
|
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I
|
||||||
|
quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they
|
||||||
|
but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
|
||||||
|
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
|
||||||
|
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
|
||||||
|
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
|
||||||
|
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
|
||||||
|
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
|
||||||
|
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
|
||||||
|
Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
|
||||||
|
do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
|
||||||
|
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
|
||||||
|
leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
|
||||||
|
looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
|
||||||
|
rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
|
||||||
|
are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to
|
||||||
|
counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
|
||||||
|
the green fields gone? What do they here?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
|
||||||
|
seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
|
||||||
|
extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
|
||||||
|
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
|
||||||
|
as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
|
||||||
|
them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
|
||||||
|
and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell
|
||||||
|
me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
|
||||||
|
those ships attract them thither?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
|
||||||
|
almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a
|
||||||
|
dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in
|
||||||
|
it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
|
||||||
|
reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
|
||||||
|
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
|
||||||
|
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this
|
||||||
|
experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
|
||||||
|
professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for
|
||||||
|
ever.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
|
||||||
|
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley
|
||||||
|
of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his
|
||||||
|
trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were
|
||||||
|
within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up
|
||||||
|
from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands
|
||||||
|
winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in
|
||||||
|
their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and
|
||||||
|
though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this
|
||||||
|
shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were
|
||||||
|
fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,
|
||||||
|
when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among
|
||||||
|
Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop
|
||||||
|
of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel
|
||||||
|
your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon
|
||||||
|
suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy
|
||||||
|
him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian
|
||||||
|
trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a
|
||||||
|
robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?
|
||||||
|
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a
|
||||||
|
mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
|
||||||
|
of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did
|
||||||
|
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely
|
||||||
|
all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that
|
||||||
|
story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild
|
||||||
|
image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that
|
||||||
|
same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image
|
||||||
|
of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
|
||||||
|
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
|
||||||
|
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
|
||||||
|
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
|
||||||
|
thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
|
||||||
|
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
|
||||||
|
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
|
||||||
|
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
|
||||||
|
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
|
||||||
|
awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
|
||||||
|
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
|
||||||
|
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
|
||||||
|
in time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
|
||||||
|
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
|
||||||
|
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
|
||||||
|
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
|
||||||
|
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t
|
||||||
|
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
|
||||||
|
order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
|
||||||
|
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
|
||||||
|
one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
|
||||||
|
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
|
||||||
|
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
|
||||||
|
and be content.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
|
||||||
|
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
|
||||||
|
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
|
||||||
|
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
|
||||||
|
being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
|
||||||
|
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
|
||||||
|
paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
|
||||||
|
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
|
||||||
|
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
|
||||||
|
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
|
||||||
|
ourselves to perdition!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
|
||||||
|
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
|
||||||
|
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
|
||||||
|
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
|
||||||
|
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
|
||||||
|
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
|
||||||
|
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
|
||||||
|
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But
|
||||||
|
wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
|
||||||
|
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
|
||||||
|
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
|
||||||
|
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in
|
||||||
|
some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And,
|
||||||
|
doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
|
||||||
|
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in
|
||||||
|
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
|
||||||
|
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
|
||||||
|
something like this:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._
|
||||||
|
“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
|
||||||
|
Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
|
||||||
|
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short
|
||||||
|
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I
|
||||||
|
cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
|
||||||
|
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
|
||||||
|
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
|
||||||
|
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
|
||||||
|
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
|
||||||
|
and discriminating judgment.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
|
||||||
|
himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
|
||||||
|
curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
|
||||||
|
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
|
||||||
|
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,
|
||||||
|
helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things
|
||||||
|
would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an
|
||||||
|
everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and
|
||||||
|
land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
|
||||||
|
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let
|
||||||
|
me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of
|
||||||
|
the place one lodges in.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
|
||||||
|
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
|
||||||
|
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
|
||||||
|
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
|
||||||
|
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
|
||||||
|
2
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
|
||||||
|
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
|
||||||
|
on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
|
||||||
|
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and
|
||||||
|
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
|
||||||
|
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
|
||||||
|
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
|
||||||
|
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
|
||||||
|
my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
|
||||||
|
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
|
||||||
|
methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to
|
||||||
|
get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
|
||||||
|
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I
|
||||||
|
quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they
|
||||||
|
but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
|
||||||
|
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
|
||||||
|
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
|
||||||
|
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
|
||||||
|
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
|
||||||
|
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
|
||||||
|
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
|
||||||
|
seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
|
||||||
|
extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
|
||||||
|
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
|
||||||
|
as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
|
||||||
|
them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
|
||||||
|
and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell
|
||||||
|
me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
|
||||||
|
those ships attract them thither?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
|
||||||
|
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
|
||||||
|
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
|
||||||
|
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
|
||||||
|
thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
|
||||||
|
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
|
||||||
|
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
|
||||||
|
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
|
||||||
|
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
|
||||||
|
awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
|
||||||
|
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
|
||||||
|
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
|
||||||
|
in time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
|
||||||
|
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
|
||||||
|
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
|
||||||
|
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
|
||||||
|
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t
|
||||||
|
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
|
||||||
|
order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
|
||||||
|
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
|
||||||
|
one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
|
||||||
|
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
|
||||||
|
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
|
||||||
|
and be content.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
|
||||||
|
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
|
||||||
|
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
|
||||||
|
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
|
||||||
|
being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
|
||||||
|
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
|
||||||
|
paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
|
||||||
|
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
|
||||||
|
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
|
||||||
|
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
|
||||||
|
ourselves to perdition!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
|
||||||
|
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
|
||||||
|
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
|
||||||
|
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
|
||||||
|
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
|
||||||
|
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
|
||||||
|
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
|
||||||
|
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But
|
||||||
|
wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
|
||||||
|
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
|
||||||
|
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
|
||||||
|
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in
|
||||||
|
some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And,
|
||||||
|
doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
|
||||||
|
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in
|
||||||
|
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
|
||||||
|
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
|
||||||
|
something like this:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._
|
||||||
|
“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
|
||||||
|
Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
|
||||||
|
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short
|
||||||
|
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I
|
||||||
|
cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
|
||||||
|
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
|
||||||
|
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
|
||||||
|
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
|
||||||
|
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
|
||||||
|
and discriminating judgment.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
|
||||||
|
himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
|
||||||
|
curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
|
||||||
|
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
|
||||||
|
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,
|
||||||
|
helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things
|
||||||
|
would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an
|
||||||
|
everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and
|
||||||
|
land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
|
||||||
|
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let
|
||||||
|
me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of
|
||||||
|
the place one lodges in.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
|
||||||
|
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
|
||||||
|
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
|
||||||
|
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
|
||||||
|
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
|
||||||
|
0
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
|
||||||
|
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
|
||||||
|
on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
|
||||||
|
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and
|
||||||
|
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
|
||||||
|
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
|
||||||
|
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
|
||||||
|
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
|
||||||
|
my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
|
||||||
|
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
|
||||||
|
methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to
|
||||||
|
get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
|
||||||
|
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I
|
||||||
|
quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they
|
||||||
|
but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
|
||||||
|
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
|
||||||
|
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
|
||||||
|
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
|
||||||
|
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
|
||||||
|
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
|
||||||
|
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
|
||||||
|
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
|
||||||
|
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
|
||||||
|
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
|
||||||
|
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t
|
||||||
|
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
|
||||||
|
order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
|
||||||
|
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
|
||||||
|
one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
|
||||||
|
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
|
||||||
|
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
|
||||||
|
and be content.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
|
||||||
|
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
|
||||||
|
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
|
||||||
|
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
|
||||||
|
being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
|
||||||
|
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
|
||||||
|
paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
|
||||||
|
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
|
||||||
|
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
|
||||||
|
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
|
||||||
|
ourselves to perdition!
|
||||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue