Moby Dick

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which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit
the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very
considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding
out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in
which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is
by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of
being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had
best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.



CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
Pictures of Whaling Scenes.


In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly
tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of