Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries -- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.

 

[Old Thunder]

Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor.

 

[Old Thunder]

Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.

 

[Old Thunder]

But here is an artist.

 

[Old Thunder]

He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of Saco.

 

[Old Thunder]

What is the chief element he employs?

 

[Old Thunder]

There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke.

 

[Old Thunder]

Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.

 

[Old Thunder]

But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepher'd eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him.

 

[Old Thunder]

Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies -- what is the one charm wanting? -- Water -- there is not a drop of water there!