Moby Dick

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soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown,
and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship
at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even
granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery
decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those
battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies'
plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit
of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran
who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the
apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air
over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared
with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round
the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!