218 lines
13 KiB
HTML
218 lines
13 KiB
HTML
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<title>Moby Dick - Chapter 1. Loomings</title>
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</head>
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<h1>Moby Dick</h1>
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<h2>Chapter 1. Loomings</h2>
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<p>
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Call me Ishmael. <span>Some <span>years</span></span> ago—never mind how
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long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular
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to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the
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watery part 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 the
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mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
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myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the
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rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an
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upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me
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from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
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people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I
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can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical
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flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.
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There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in
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their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings
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towards the ocean with me.
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</p>
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<p>
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There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves
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as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf.
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Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is
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the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by
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breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the
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crowds of water-gazers there.
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</p>
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<p>
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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 do
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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 looking
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over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as
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if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all
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landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters,
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nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green
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fields gone? What do they here?
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</p>
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<p>
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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 as
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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,
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streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all
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unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses
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of all those ships attract them thither?
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</p>
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<p>
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Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
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almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale,
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and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let
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the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand
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that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead
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you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be
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athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan
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happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one
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knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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</p>
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<p>
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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 of
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the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees,
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each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and
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here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder
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cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way,
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reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.
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But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes
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down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain,
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unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go
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visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
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knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there
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is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would
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you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of
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Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate
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whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a
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pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy
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with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to
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sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such
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a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
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of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the
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Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this
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is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of
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Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he
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saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image,
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we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the
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ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
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</p>
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<p>
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Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to
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grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do
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not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to
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go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag
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unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow
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quarrelsome—don't sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves
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much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though
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I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a
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Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to
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those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honourable respectable
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toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as
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much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships,
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barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though
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I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of
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officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though
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once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered,
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there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say
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reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous
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dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse,
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that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the
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pyramids.
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</p>
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<p>
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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. True,
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they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like
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a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is
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unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you
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come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or
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Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting
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your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country
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schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition
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is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires
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a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear
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it. But even this wears off in time.
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</p>
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<p>
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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, I
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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 a
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slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me
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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 one
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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 passed
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round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be
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content.
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</p>
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<p>
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Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying
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me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I
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ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there
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is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act
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of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two
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orchard thieves entailed upon us. But <i>being paid</i>,—what will compare
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with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really
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marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root
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of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.
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Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
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</p>
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<p>
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Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise
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and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are
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far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate
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the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the
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quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the
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forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same
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way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same
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time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after
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having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it
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into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer
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of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs
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me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer
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than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed
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part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time
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ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more
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extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
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something like this:
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</p>
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<p>
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"<i>Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.</i>
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"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
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</p>
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<p>
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Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
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Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others
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were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy
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parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot
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tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I
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think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being
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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
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was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating
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judgment.
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</p>
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<p>
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Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
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himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.
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Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the
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undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending
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marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to
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my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been
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inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for
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things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous
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coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and
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could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is
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but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one
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lodges in.
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</p>
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<p>
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By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great
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flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that
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swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul,
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endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand
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hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
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</p>
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</body>
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</html>
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