And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's
head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see.
The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an "Et
tu Brute!" expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him
with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way,
from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man
should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it
too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever
murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung;
and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would
have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does.
Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds
of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds.
Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw?
Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more
tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary
in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable
for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment,
than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest
geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers
in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
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