Moby Dick
I recently revisited this Herman Melville classic and came across these two paragraphs that should delight some of our members:
"What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave peddlers, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face.You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent."
Classic. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Thanks for sharing man!
It was ten o'clock when I went out. Many of the shops were shut, and the town was dull. When I came to Omer and Joram's, I found the shutters up, but the shop door standing open. As I could obtain a perspective view of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by the parlour door, I entered, and asked him how he was.
'Why, bless my life and soul!' said Mr. Omer, 'how do you find yourself? Take a seat. - Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?'
'By no means,' said I. 'I like it - in somebody else's pipe.'
'What, not in your own, eh?' Mr. Omer returned, laughing. 'All the better, sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke, myself, for the asthma.'
Mr. Omer had made room for me, and placed a chair. He now sat down again very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply of that necessary, without which he must perish.
Lovely to know that pipe smoking combats asthma. Unless he's saying that he smokes to give himself asthma, which I have to say is my stupid thought of the day.
I read Moby-Dick a couple weeks ago. It was not an easy read, but I enjoyed it. Don't forget Ahab quit smoking his pipe on the same voyage.
Jack
Wonderful to read these passages, though. Great stuff!
Love a good book with a pipe-loving fellow!
I own a copy of Moby Dick, perhaps one of these days I'll manage to read it. I hear great things, and from what I can tell Ahab is my sort of character!
Please,
deliver me from such a sorry example of pipe smoking as it is explained from the eyes of a non-pipe smoker? I have never and I shall never smoke a short, black, stub of a pipe stuck in my mouth while packing my home on my back. That is not the way to enjoy a pipe, nor the way, to introduce pipe smoking to our fellow man.
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I really enjoyed that. Thanks.