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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 down-town 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
*) click for cartoon
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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,
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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
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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 the 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 aint 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
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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 forecastle
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
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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.
THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE THE BOTTOM LINE