Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper,
till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes.
The area before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey
wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had
his account books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy
flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for,
till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some
fishermen's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants,
and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head,
looking very slipshod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey
concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about
to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm,
and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers.
"Why not? said I; "every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon--
but why not?" "Because it's dangerous," says she.
"Ever since young Stiggs coming from that unfort'nt v'y'ge of his,
when he was gone four years and a half, with only three barrels
of ile, was found dead in my first floor back, with his harpoon
in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to take sich
dangerous weepons in their rooms at night.
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