Moby Dick

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discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an
intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the
saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at
him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence;
that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before
mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea,
and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever
murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if
he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and
he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market
of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the
long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of
the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will
be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in