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The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.* *The Roman philosopher, dramatist, and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65) was an adherent of Stoicism, a...

And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand in the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. Gabriel believed Moby Dick was his Shaker god.

It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hadicanutes. And miss out on Moby Dick? Surely not!

And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough.

True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. At least whale hunting is still illegal.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead.

It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

And as for going as cook, -- though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board -- yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls; -- though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak...

It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.

For my part, I abominate all honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever.

I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them.

Besides, passengers get sea-sick -- grow quarrelsome -- don't sleep of nights -- do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing; -- no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a cook.

For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans.

And still deeper the store of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned.

Surely all this is not without meaning.

Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity,* and own brother of Jove. *Poseidon.

Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy?