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mobydick.txt
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ipurcbasefc for tbe Sltbrars of
be TUniverait? of {Toronto
out of tbe proceeds of tbe fun&
bequeatbefc bp
Stewart,
OB. A.D. 1892.
THE WORKS OF
HERMAN MELVILLE
STANDARD EDITION
VOLUME
VII
MOBY- DICK
OR, THE WHALE
BY
HERMAN MELVILLE
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY
1922
Ps
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD
at the Edinburgh University Press
IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOB HIS GENIUS
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. LOOMINGS . 1
II. THE CARPET-BAG ...... 8
III. THE SPOUTER-INN . . . . . . 13
IV. THE COUNTERPANE . . . . . 31
V. BREAKFAST ...... 36
VI. THE STREET . . . . . 39
VII. THE CHAPEL . . . . . . 42
VIII. THE PULPIT ....... 46
IX. THE SERMON ...... 49
X. A BOSOM FRIEND ...... 60
XI. NIGHTGOWN 65
XII. BIOGRAPHICAL ...... 68
XIII. WHEELBARROW . . . . . . 71
XIV. NANTUCKET ....... 77
XV. CHOWDER ....... 80
XVI. THE SHIP . 84
XVII. THE RAMADAN ...... 102
XVHI. HIS MARK ....... 110
XIX. THE PROPHET . . . . . .115
XX. ALL ASTIR ....... 119
XXI. GOING ABOARD ...... 122
XXII. MERRY CHRISTMAS . . . . .126
XXIII. THE LEE SHORE . . . . . .132
XXIV. THE ADVOCATE . . . . . .134
XXV. POSTSCRIPT . . . . . 140
XXVI. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES . . . .141
XXVII. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES .... 145
XXVIII. AHAB ....... 151
vii
viii MOBY-DICK
CHAP. PAGE
XXIX. ENTER AHAB ; TO HIM, STUBB . . .156
XXX. THE PIPE ...... 160
XXXI. QUEEN MAB 161
XXXII. CETOLOGY . . . . . .164
XXXIII. THE SPECKS YNDER 180
XXXIV. THE CABIN -TABLE 184
XXXV. THE MAST-HEAD . . . . .191
XXXVI. THE QUARTER-DECK ..... 199
XXXVII. SUNSET . . . . . . . 209
XXXVIII. DUSK 211
XXXIX. FIRST NIGHT-WATCH . . . . .213
XL. MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE . . . .214
XLI. MOBY-DICK ...... 222
XLII. THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE . . 234
XLIII. HARK! 245
XLIV. THE CHART ...... 247
XLV. THE AFFIDAVIT ...... 254
XLVI. SURMISES 265
XLVII. THE MAT-MAKER 269
XLVIII. THE FIRST LOWERING . . . . . 273
XLIX. THE HYENA ...... 286
L. AHAB'S BOAT AND CREW. FED ALLAH . . 289
LI. THE SPIRIT-SPOUT 293
MI. THE ALBATROSS ...... 298
Mil. THE GAM 301
LIV. THE TOWN-HO'S STORY 306
LV. OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES . 331
LVI. OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES 337
LVII. OF WHALES IN PAINT, IN TEETH, ETC. . 342
LVIII. BRIT 346
LIX. SQUID 350
LX. THE LINE . 353
MOBY-DICK
OR
THE WHALE
ETYMOLOGY
(SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO
A GBAMMAB SCHOOL)
THE pale Usher threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain ;
I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and
grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished
with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.
He loved to dust his old grammars ; it somehow mildly
reminded him of his mortality.
ETYMOLOGY
' WHILE you take in hand to school others, and to teach
them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue,
leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost
alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver
that which is not true.' Hakluyt.
1 WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is
named from roundness or rolling ; for in Dan. hvalt is arched
or vaulted.' Webster's Dictionary.
' WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut.
and Ger. W alien ; A.S. Walw-ian y to roll, to wallow.'
Richardson's Dictionary.
Hebrew.
Greek.
Latin,
Anglo-Saxon.
Danish.
Dutch.
Swedish.
Icelandic.
English.
in,
CETUS,
WHCEL,
HVALT,
WAL,
HWAL,
WHALE,
WHALE,
BALEINE,
BALLENA,
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE,
French.
Spanish.
Feegee.
Erromangoan.
EXTRACTS
(SUPPLIED BY A SUB-SUB-LIBRARIAN)
IT will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and
grub -worm of a poor devil of a Sub -Sub appears to have gone
through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, pick-
ing up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways
find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore
you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy
whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for
veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the
ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing,
these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording
a glancing bird's-eye view of what has been promiscuously
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many
nations and generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commen-
tator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe
which no wine of this world will ever warm ; and for whom
even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong ; but with whom
one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too ; and
grow convivial upon tears ; and say to them bluntly with full
eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant
sadness Give it up, Sub-Subs ! For by how much the more
pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall
ye forever go thankless ! Would that I could clear out
Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye ! But gulp down
your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts ;
for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the
seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered
Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here
ye strike but splintered hearts together there, ye shall
strike unsplinterable glasses!
xii
EXTRACTS
' And God created great whales.'
Genesis.
* Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him ;
One would think the deep to be hoary.'
Job.
' Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up
Jonah.' Jonah.
' There go the ships ; there is that Leviathan whom thou
hast made to play therein.' Psalms.
' In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong
sword, shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even
Leviathan that crooked serpent ; and he shall slay the dragon
that is in the sea.' Isaiah.
* And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos
of this monster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it
goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and
perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.'
HollancFs Plutarch's Morals.
' The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes
that are : among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called
Balaene, take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of
land.' Holland's Pliny.
' Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when
about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of
the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most
monstrous size. * * * This came towards us, open-
mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea
before him into a foam.'
Tooke's Lucian. The True History.
xiii
xiv MOBY-DICK
' He visited this country also with a view of catching horse -
whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth,
of which he brought some to the king. * * * The best
whales were catched in his own country, of which some were
forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one
of six who had killed sixty in two days.'
Other or Octher's verbal narrative taken down
from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890.
1 And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel,
that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's)
mouth, are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-
gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there sleeps.'
Montaigne 1 s Apology for Eaimond Sebond.
' Let us fly, let us fly ! Old Nick take me if it is not
Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life
of patient Job.' Rabelais.
' This whale's liver was two cart-loads.'
Stowe's Annals.
1 The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like
boiling pan.' Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms.
' Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we
have received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat,
insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted
out of one whale.' Ibid. History of Life and Death.
1 The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an in-
ward bruise.' King Henry.
' Very like a whale.' Hamlet.
' Which to secure, no skill of leach's art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine.'
The Fairie Queen.
' Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can
in a peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.'
Sir William Davenant's Preface to Gondibert.
EXTRACTS xv
' What spermaceti! is, men might justly doubt, since the
learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly,
Nescio quid sit.'
Sir T. Browne's Of Sperma Ceti and the
Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V.E.
' Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
******
Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.'
Waller's Battle of the Summer Islands.
' By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Common-
wealth or State (in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial
man.' Opening sentence of Hobbes's Leviathan.
'Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had
been a sprat in the mouth of a whale.'
Pilgrim's Progress.
* That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.'
Paradise Lost.
4 There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land ; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.'
Ibid.
' The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and
have a sea of oil swimming in them.'
Fuller's Profane and Holy State.
' So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathans to attend their prey,
And give no chace, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.'
Dry den's Annus Mirabilis.
' While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they
cut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it
will come ; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet
water.'
Thomas Edge's Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas.
xvi MOBY-DICK
* In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean,
and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes
and vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders.'
Sir T. Herberts Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.
4 Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were
forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they
should run their ship upon them.'
Schouten's Sixth Circumnavigation.
* We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called
The Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * *
Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that is a
fable. * * *
They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they
can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his
pains. * * *
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above
a barrel of herrings in his belly. * * *
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a
whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.'
A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll.
' Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife). Anno
1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale -bone kind came
in, which, (as I was informed) besides a vast quantity of oil,
did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a
gate in the garden of Pitferren.'
Sibbald's Fife and Kinross.
4 Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill
this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that
sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and
swiftness.'
Richard Strafford's Letter from the Bermudas.
Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668.
' Whales in the sea
God's voice obey.'
N. E. Primer.
1 We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more
in those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one ;
than we have to the northward of us.'
Captain Cowley's Voyage round the Globe, A.D. 1729.
EXTRACTS xvii
****** an( j ^e breath of the whale is fre-
quently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to
bring on a disorder of the brain.'
Ulloa's South America.
1 To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.'
Rape of the Lock.
' If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with
those that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they
will appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale is
doubtless the largest animal in creation.'
Goldsmith's Nat. Hist.
' If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would
make them speak like great whales.'
Goldsmith to Johnson.
' In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock,
but it was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had
killed, and were then towing ashore. They seemed to en-
deavour to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to
avoid being seen by us.' Cook's Voyages.
' The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They
stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out at
sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry
dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of
the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent
their too near approach.'
Uno Von Troil's Letters on Banks' s and
Solander's Voyage to Iceland in 1772.
' The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is
an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and bold-
ness in the fishermen.'
Thomas Jefferson's Whale Memorial to the
French Minister in 1778.
1 And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it ? '
Edmund Burke's Reference in Parliament
to the Nantucket Whale Fishery.
VOL. I. b
xviii MOBY-DICK
' Spain a great whale stranded on. the shores of Europe.'
Edmund Burke. (Somewhere.}
' A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to
be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and pro-
tecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to
royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when
either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the pro-
perty of the king.' Blackstone.
c Soon to the sport of death the crews repair :
Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.'
Falconer's Shipwreck.
' Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven.
' So fire with water to compare,
The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
To express unwieldy joy.'
Cowper, On the Queen's Visit to London.
' Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart
at a stroke, with immense velocity.'
John Hunter's Account of the Dissection
of a Whale. (A small-sized one.)
' The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main
pipe of the water- works at London Bridge, and the water
roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus
and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's heart.'
Paley's Theology.
' The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.'
Baron Cuvier.
' In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did
not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered
with them.'
Colnett's Voyage for the Purpose of Extending
the Spermacetti Whale Fishery.
EXTRACTS xix
' In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind ;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen ; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave :
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.'
Montgomery' '<$ World before the Flood.
' lo ! Paean ! lo ! sing,
To the finny people's king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is ;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.'
CJiarles Lamb's Triumph of the Whale.
' In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing
the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one
observed ; there pointing to the sea is a green pasture
where our children's grand-children will go for bread.'
Obed Macy's History of Nantucket.
' I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway
in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw
bones.' Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.
' She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who
had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than
forty years ago.' Ibid.
' " No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom ; " I saw his
spout ; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian
would wish to look at. He 's a raal oil-butt, that fellow ! " '
Cooper's Pilot.
' The papers were brought in,, and we saw in the Berlin
Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.'
Eckermanris Conversations with Goethe.
xx MOBY-DICK
' " My God ! Mr. Chace, what is the matter ? " I answered,
" We have been stove by a whale." !
Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship
Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and
finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in
the Pacific Ocean. By Owen Chace of Nan-
tucket, first mate of said vessel. New York,
1821.
' A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
The wind was piping free ;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea.'
Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
' The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats
engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted alto-
gether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles. * * *
t Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the
air, which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of
three or four miles.' Scoresby.
1 Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks,
the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over ; he rears his
enormous head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at every-
thing around him ; he rushes at the boats with his head ;
they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and some-
times utterly destroyed.
* * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the
consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a com-
mercial point of view, of so important an animal (as the Sperm
Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have
excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of
them competent observers, that of late years must have
possessed the most abundant and the most convenient oppor-
tunities of witnessing their habitudes. 5
Thomas Beale's History of the Sperm Whale. 1839.
' The Cachalot ' (Sperm Whale) ' is not only better armed
than the True Whale ' (Greenland or Right Whale) ' in possess-
ing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body,
but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ
these weapons offensively, and in a manner at once so artful,
EXTRACTS xxi
bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the
most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the
whale tribe.'
Frederick Debell Bennett's Whaling Voyage
round the Globe. 1840.
' October 13. " There she blows," was sung out from the
mast-head.
" Where away ? " demanded the captain.
" Three points off the lee bow, sir."
" Raise up your wheel. Steady ! "
" Steady, sir."
" Mast-head ahoy ! Do you see that whale now ? "
" Ay, ay, sir ! A shoal of Sperm Whales ! There she
blows ! There she breaches ! "
" Sing out ! sing out every time ! "
" Ay, ay, sir ! There she blows ! there there thar she
blows bowes bo-o-o-s ! "
" How far off ? "
c< Two miles and a half."
" Thunder and lightning ! so near ! Call all hands ! "
J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a
Whaling Cruise. 1846.
4 The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred
the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to
the island of Nantucket.'
Narrative of the Globe Mutiny, by
Lay and Hussey, Survivors. A.D. 1828.
c Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded,
he parried the assault for some time with a lance ; but the
furious monster at length rushed on the boat ; himself and
comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water
when they saw the onset was inevitable. 5
Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett.
' Nantucket itself,' said Mr. Webster, ' is a very striking
and peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a
population of eight or nine thousand persons, living here
in the sea, adding largely every year to the National wealth
by the boldest and most persevering industry.'
Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the U.S.
Senate, on the Application for the Erection
of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828.
xxii . MOBY-DICK
' The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him
in a moment.'
The Whale and his Captors, or the Whale-
man's Adventures and the Whale's Bio-
graphy, gathered on the Homeward Cruise
of the Commodore Preble. By Rev. Henry
T. Cheever.
' " If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel,
" I will send you to hell." '
Life of Samuel Comstock (the Mutineer), by
his Brother, William Comstock. Another
Version of the Whale-ship Globe Narrative.
' The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern
Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it
to India, though they failed of their main object, laid open
the haunts of the whale.'
McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary.
4 These things are reciprocal ; the ball rebounds, only to
bound forward again ; for now in laying open the haunts
of the whale, the whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon
new clews to that same mystic North -West Passage.'
From ' Something ' unpublished.
4 It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean with-
out being struck by her near appearance. The vessel under
short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning
the wide expanse around them, has a totally different air
from those engaged in a regular voyage.'
Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex.
1 Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may
recollect having seen large curved bones set upright in the
earth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to
alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that these
were the ribs of whales.'
Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean.
' It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these
whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession
of the savages enrolled among the crew.'
Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking
of the Whale-ship Hobomack.
EXTRACTS xxiii
' It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling
vessels (American) few ever return in the ships on board of
which they departed.' Cruise in a Whale Boat.
1 Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and
shot up perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.'
Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman.
' The Whale is harpooned to be sure ; but bethink you,
how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the
mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.'
A Chapter on WJialing in Ribs and Trucks.
' On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales)
probably male and female, slowly swimming, one after the
other, within less than a stone's throw of the shore ' (Tierra
del Fuego), ' over which the beech tree extended its branches.'
Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist.
' " Stern all ! " exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his
head, he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale
close to the head of the boat, threatening it with instant
destruction ; " Stern all, for your lives ! "
Wharton the Whale Killer.
' So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale ! '
Nantucket Song.
' Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale,
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea.'
Whale Song.
MOBY-DICK
CHAPTER I
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 bring-
ing 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 toward 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 down -town is the
battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and