Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can
be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes
round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.
Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery
furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded
young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking
sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches
himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship,
and in moody phrase ejaculates:--
"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young
philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient
"interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly
lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they
would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain;
those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect;
they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve?
They have left their opera-glasses at home.
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