>>394571 For my part, I abominate all
honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of
every kind whatsoever. It is qu
ite 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,
Moby Dick
somehow, I never fancied br
oiling fowls;—though once
broiled, judiciously buttered, and
judgmatically salted and
peppered, there is no one who will speak more
respectfully, not to say reveren
tially, 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 thos
e 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. An
d at first, this sort of
thing is unpleasant enough.
It touches one’s sense of
honour, particularly if you
come of an o
ld 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 sailo
r, and requires a strong
decoction of Seneca and the St
oics to enable you to grin
and bear it. But even this wears off in time.
