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Message: <blockquote data-quote="svnmag" data-source="post: 51594" data-attributes="member: 330">Davey Crockett said: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<a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/hypos.htm" target="_blank">hypos</a> get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/methodically.htm" target="_blank">methodically</a> 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/insular.htm" target="_blank">insular</a> city of the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/manhattoes.htm" target="_blank">Manhattoes</a>, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—<a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/commerce.htm" target="_blank">commerce</a> surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/waterward.htm" target="_blank">waterward</a>. Its extreme downtown is the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/battery.htm" target="_blank">battery</a>, where that noble <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/mole.htm" target="_blank">mole</a> 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.<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td></td></tr></table><a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/circumambulate.htm" target="_blank">Circumambulate</a> 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/sentinels.htm" target="_blank">sentinels</a> all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/moby-dick-vocabulary-1.htm" target="_blank">reveries</a>. Some leaning against the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/spiles.htm" target="_blank">spiles</a>; some seated upon the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/pier-heads.htm" target="_blank">pier-heads</a>; some looking over the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/bulwarks.htm" target="_blank">bulwarks</a> of ships from China; some high aloft in the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/rigging.htm" target="_blank">rigging</a>, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/landsmen.htm" target="_blank">landsmen</a>; of week days pent up in <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/lath.htm" target="_blank">lath</a> and <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/plaster.htm" target="_blank">plaster</a>—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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/extremest.htm" target="_blank">extremest</a> limit of the land; <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/loitering.htm" target="_blank">loitering</a> under the shady <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/lee.htm" target="_blank">lee</a> of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/nigh.htm" target="_blank">nigh</a> the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—<a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/league.htm" target="_blank">leagues</a>. <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/inlanders.htm" target="_blank">Inlanders</a> all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/dale.htm" target="_blank">dale</a>, 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/reveries.htm" target="_blank">reveries</a>—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/infallibly.htm" target="_blank">infallibly</a> lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/athirst.htm" target="_blank">athirst</a> in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/metaphysical.htm" target="_blank">metaphysical</a> professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td></td></tr></table>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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/mazy.htm" target="_blank">mazy</a> way, reaching to overlapping <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/spurs.htm" target="_blank">spurs</a> of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/tranced.htm" target="_blank">tranced</a>, 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, 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/cataract.htm" target="_blank">cataract</a> 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/pedestrian.htm" target="_blank">pedestrian</a> trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every<a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/robust.htm" target="_blank">robust</a> 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/inferred.htm" target="_blank">inferred</a> 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 <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/salt.htm" target="_blank">salt</a>, 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<a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/abominate.htm" target="_blank">abominate</a> all honorable respectable toils, trials, and <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/tribulations.htm" target="_blank">tribulations</a> of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/barques.htm" target="_blank">barques</a>, <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/brigs.htm" target="_blank">brigs</a>, <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/schooners.htm" target="_blank">schooners</a>, 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, <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/judiciously.htm" target="_blank">judiciously</a> buttered, and <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/judgmatically.htm" target="_blank">judgmatically</a>salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/reverentially.htm" target="_blank">reverentially</a>, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/idolatrous.htm" target="_blank">idolatrous</a> <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/dotings.htm" target="_blank">dotings</a> of the old Egyptians upon broiled <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/ibis.htm" target="_blank">ibis</a> and roasted <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/river-horse.htm" target="_blank">river horse</a>, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge <a href="http://mobydickthewhale.com/moby-dick/word/bakehouses.htm" target="_blank">bakehouses</a> the pyramids.svnmag said:<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td>IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever. It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fir on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence. All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures- the creatures of this chronicle among the rest- along the roads that lay before them. </td></tr></table></blockquote>

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