Moby Dick

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 bakehouses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the fore-castle, 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