An oarsman
sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion.
Stubb longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade
of his every oar; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood,
the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation.
A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings:
the carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache:
the carpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench
bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow unmanageably winces
under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the handle of his
wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that,
if he would have him draw the tooth.
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent
and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory;
heads he deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held
for capstans. But while now upon so wide a field thus variously
accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too;
all this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence.
But not precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable,
than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say;
for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things,
that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole
visible world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes,
still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig
foundations for cathedrals.
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