In good time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines;
as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses;
in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk;
then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens;
our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage
of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary,
sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and
parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan
from his amorous errors.
Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so is
the lord and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster.
It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably satirical,
that after going to school himself, he should then go abroad
inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it.
His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from
the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised
that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale,
must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort
of a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days,
and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into
some of his pupils.
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