Discussions

For by the cart- load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:— the Snger it was meant for, per- haps, moulders in the grave; a bank- note sent in swiftest charity:— he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died sti^ed by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

1853

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids1

I. The Paradise of Bachelors

It lies not far from Temple- Bar.2 Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into

some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with the din and soiled with the mud of Fleet Street— where the

Benedick tradesmen are hurrying by, with ledger- lines ruled along their brows, thinking upon rise of bread and fall of babies— you adroitly turn a mystic corner— not a street— glide down a dim, monastic way, ^anked by dark, sedate, and solemn piles, and still wending on, give the whole care- worn world the slip, and, disentangled, stand beneath the quiet clois- ters of the Paradise of Bachelors.3

Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the isle- groves of August prai- ries; delectable pure faith amidst a thousand perSdies: but sweeter, still more charming, most delectable the dreamy Paradise of Bachelors, found in the stony heart of stunning London.

In mild meditation pace the cloisters; take your plea sure, sip your leisure, in the garden waterward; go linger in the ancient library; go worship in the sculptured chapel;4 but little have you seen, just nothing do you know, not the sweet kernel have you tasted, till you dine among the banded Bachelors, and see their convivial eyes and glasses sparkle. Not dine in bustling

1. The text is from the Srst publication in Harp- er’s New Monthly Magazine (April 1855). As the full- title running heads in Harper’s emphasized, this is a single story, each part of which— the “Paradise” of Part One and the “Tartarus” (the lowest region of the underworld in Greek mythol- ogy) of Part Two— yields its signiScance in the light of the other. The story derives from two epi- sodes in Melville’s life. In December 1849, after weeks of trying to Snd an En glish publisher for his novel White- Jacket (1850), Melville was feted by several acquaintances from the London liter- ary and legal community at Elm Court, Temple (a London building housing law ofSces and societ- ies). A little more than a year later, in December 1851, Melville traveled around Sve miles from his home in PittsSeld to purchase a sleigh- load of paper from Carson’s Mill in Dalton, Massachu- setts. What he saw there can be surmised by the

second half of the story. 2. Ornate stone gateway between Fleet Street and the Strand in London, built by the architect Christopher Wren (1632– 1723) in 1670. The Strand runs along the north bank of the Thames. Fleet Street had many literary associations for Melville, particularly with 18th- century writers, and was becoming an area for newspaper and publishing ofSces. 3. These cloisters are the four Inns of Court, inhabited by lawyers and legal students. “Benedick”: married men, especially newly mar- ried men who had previously resisted the state of matrimony; from Benedick, who at the end of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing surren- ders his cherished bachelorhood. 4. The chapel is “sculptured” with grotesque Sg- ures on columns but primarily by efSgies of knights lying prone on the ^oor.

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commons, during term- time, in the hall; but tranquilly, by private hint, at a private table; some Sne Templar’s5 hospitably invited guest.

Templar? That’s a romantic name. Let me see. Brian de Bois Gilbert6 was a Templar, I believe. Do we understand you to insinuate that those famous Templars still survive in modern London? May the ring of their armed heels be heard, and the rattle of their shields, as in mailed prayer the monk- knights kneel before the consecrated Host? Surely a monk- knight were a curious sight picking his way along the Strand, his gleaming corselet and snowy surcoat7 spattered by an omnibus. Long- bearded, too, according to his order’s rule; his face furry as a pard’s;8 how would the grim ghost look among the crop- haired, close- shaven citizens? We know indeed— sad his- tory recounts it— that a moral blight tainted at last this sacred Brother- hood. Though no sworded foe might outskill them in the fence, yet the worm of luxury crawled beneath their guard, gnawing the core of knightly troth, nibbling the monastic vow, till at last the monk’s austerity relaxed to wassail- ing,9 and the sworn knights- bachelors grew to be but hypocrites and rakes.

But for all this, quite unprepared were we to learn that Knights- Templars (if at all in being) were so entirely secularized as to be reduced from carving out immortal fame in glorious battling for the Holy Land, to the carving of roast- mutton at a dinner- board. Like Anacreon,1 do these degenerate Tem- plars now think it sweeter far to fall in banquet than in war? Or, indeed, how can there be any survival of that famous order? Templars in modern London! Templars in their red- cross mantles smoking cigars at the Divan!2 Templars crowded in a railway train, till, stacked with steel helmet, spear, and shield, the whole train looks like one elongated locomotive!

No. The genuine Templar is long since departed. Go view the wondrous tombs in the Temple Church;3 see there the rigidly- haughty forms stretched out, with crossed arms upon their stilly hearts, in everlasting and undream- ing rest. Like the years before the ^ood, the bold Knights- Templars are no more. Nevertheless, the name remains, and the nominal society, and the ancient grounds, and some of the ancient ediSces. But the iron heel is changed to a boot of patent- leather; the long two- handed sword to a one- handed quill, the monk- giver of gratuitous ghostly counsel now counsels for a fee; the defender of the sarcophagus (if in good practice with his weapon) now has more than one case to defend; the vowed opener and clearer of all highways leading to the Holy Sepulchre, now has it in par tic u lar charge to check, to clog, to hinder, and embarrass all the courts and avenues of Law; the knight- combatant of the Saracen, breasting spear- points at Acre, now Sghts law- points in Westminster Hall.4 The helmet is a wig. Struck by Time’s enchanter’s wand, the Templar is to- day a Lawyer.

5. Order of Catholic soldier- monks established in the 12th century to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. Henry I introduced the order to En gland; after it grew corrupt, it was dis- solved in 1312. 6. I.e., Brian de Bois- Guilbert, evil Knight Tem- plar in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819). 7. Outercoat, over armor. “Corselet”: body armor, such as a breastplate. 8. Leopard. 9. Drinking, carousing. 1. Greek poet (563?– 478? b.c.e.) known for songs celebrating wine and love.

2. Muslim council chamber. 3. The great Round Church, or Temple Church, was constructed in 1185 and belonged to two of the Inns of Court, the Inner Temple and the Mid- dle Temple. 4. A vestibule of the new houses of Parliament, part of the ancient Palace of Westminster founded by the Anglo- Saxon kings, used in Mel- ville’s time as a law court. The Holy Sepulchre is the Roman Catholic church at the supposed site of Jesus’s tomb in Jerusalem. “Saracen”: Muslim. “Acre”: seaport of Palestine, long held by Chris- tians during the Crusades.

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But, like many others tumbled from proud glory’s height— like the apple, hard on the bough but mellow on the ground— the Templar’s fall has but made him all the Sner fellow.

I dare say those old warrior- priests were but gruff and grouty at the best; cased in Birmingham5 hardware, how could their crimped arms give yours or mine a hearty shake? Their proud, ambitious, monkish souls clasped shut, like horn- book missals; their very faces clapped in bomb- shells;6 what sort of genial men were these? But best of comrades, most affable of hosts, capital diner is the modern Templar. His wit and wine are both of sparkling brands.

The church and cloisters, courts and vaults, lanes and passages, banquet- halls, refectories, libraries, terraces, gardens, broad walks, domicils, and dessert- rooms, covering a very large space of ground, and all grouped in central neighborhood, and quite sequestered from the old city’s surround- ing din; and every thing about the place being kept in most bachelor- like particularity, no part of London offers to a quiet wight so agreeable a refuge.

The Temple is, indeed, a city by itself. A city with all the best appurte- nances, as the above enumeration shows. A city with a park to it, and ^ower- beds, and a river- side—the Thames ^owing by as openly, in one part, as by Eden’s primal garden ^owed the mild Euphrates.7 In what is now the Temple Garden the old Crusaders used to exercise their steeds and lances; the mod- ern Templars now lounge on the benches beneath the trees, and, switching their patent- leather boots, in gay discourse exercise at repartee.

Long lines of stately portraits in the banquet halls, show what great men of mark— famous nobles, judges, and Lord Chancellors— have in their time been Templars. But all Templars are not known to universal fame; though, if the having warm hearts and warmer welcomes, full minds and fuller cellars, and giving good advice and glorious dinners, spiced with rare divertisements of fun and fancy, merit immortal mention, set down, ye muses, the names of R.F.C.8 and his imperial brother.

Though to be a Templar, in the one true sense, you must needs be a law- yer, or a student at the law, and be ceremoniously enrolled as member of the order, yet as many such, though Templars, do not reside within the Temple’s precincts, though they may have their ofSces there, just so, on the other hand, there are many residents of the hoary old domicils who are not admitted Templars. If being, say, a lounging gentleman and bachelor, or a quiet, unmarried, literary man, charmed with the soft seclusion of the spot, you much desire to pitch your shady tent among the rest in this serene encampment, then you must make some special friend among the order, and procure him to rent, in his name but at your charge, what ever vacant chamber you may Snd to suit.

Thus, I suppose, did Dr. Johnson,9 that nominal Benedick and widower but virtual bachelor, when for a space he resided here. So, too, did that undoubted

5. I.e., made in Birmingham, a west- central En glish industrial city. “Grouty”: sullen, cross. 6. Armored helmets. “Missals”: devotional books of parchment mounted on a board with a handle; here, made with covers protected by a thin layer of horn.

7. River in southwest Asia that some believed had nourished the Garden of Eden. 8. Robert Francis Cooke, who entertained in Elm Court, Temple, on December 19, 1849. 9. Samuel Johnson (1709– 1784), En glish writer and lexicographer.

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bachelor and rare good soul, Charles Lamb.1 And hundreds more, of sterling spirits, Brethren of the Order of Celibacy, from time to time have dined, and slept, and tabernacled here. Indeed, the place is all a honeycomb of ofSces and domicils. Like any cheese, it is quite perforated through and through in all directions with the snug cells of bachelors. Dear, delightful spot! Ah! when I bethink me of the sweet hours there passed, enjoying such genial hospitalities beneath those time- honored roofs, my heart only Snds due utterance through poetry; and, with a sigh, I softly sing, “Carry me back to old Virginny!”2

Such then, at large, is the Paradise of Bachelors. And such I found it one pleasant afternoon in the smiling month of May, when, sallying from my hotel in Trafalgar Square, I went to keep my dinner- appointment with that Sne Barrister, Bachelor, and Bencher,3 R.F.C. (he is the Srst and second, and should be the third; I hereby nominate him), whose card I kept fast pinched between my gloved foreSnger and thumb, and every now and then snatched still another look at the pleasant address inscribed beneath the name, “No.—, Elm Court, Temple.”

At the core he was a right bluff, care- free, right comfortable, and most companionable En glishman. If on a Srst acquaintance he seemed reserved, quite icy in his air— patience; this Champagne will thaw. And if it never do, better frozen Champagne than liquid vinegar.

There were nine gentlemen, all bachelors, at the dinner. One was from “No.—, King’s Bench Walk, Temple;” a second, third, and fourth, and Sfth, from various courts or passages christened with some similarly rich resound- ing syllables. It was indeed a sort of Senate of the Bachelors, sent to this dinner from widely- scattered districts, to represent the general celibacy of the Temple. Nay it was, by repre sen ta tion, a Grand Parliament of the best Bachelors in universal London; several of those present being from distant quarters of the town, noted immemorial seats of lawyers and un- married men— Lincoln’s Inn, Furnival’s Inn; and one gentleman, upon whom I looked with a sort of collateral awe, hailed from the spot where Lord Ver- ulam4 once abode a bachelor— Gray’s Inn.

The apartment was well up toward heaven. I know not how many strange old stairs I climbed to get to it. But a good dinner, with famous company, should be well earned. No doubt our host had his dining- room so high with a view to secure the prior exercise necessary to the due relishing and digest- ing of it.

The furniture was wonderfully unpretending, old, and snug. No new shin- ing mahogany, sticky with undried varnish; no uncomfortably luxurious otto- mans, and sofas too Sne to use, vexed you in this sedate apartment. It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible En glishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indis- pensable to domestic solacement. The American Benedick snatches, down-

1. En glish essayist (1775– 1834). 2. From a song of the same title by Edwin P. Christy (1847), not the still- familiar song with the line “old Virginny, the state where I was born.” 3. Judge. Trafalgar Square contains the column and statue erected in 1843 in honor of Lord Nel- son’s naval victory at Trafalgar in 1805 against the

combined French and Spanish ^eets. 4. Francis Bacon (1561– 1626), En glish writer and statesman. Lincoln’s Inn is one of the Inns of Court. Furnival’s Inn, a Gothic building, was for- merly an Inn of Chancery, which was destroyed after Melville saw it.

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town, a tough chop in a gilded show- box; the En glish bachelor leisurely dines at home on that incomparable South Down of his, off a plain deal board.5

The ceiling of the room was low. Who wants to dine under the dome of St. Peter’s?6 High ceilings! If that is your demand, and the higher the better, and you be so very tall, then go dine out with the topping giraffe in the open air.

In good time the nine gentlemen sat down to nine covers, and soon were fairly under way.

If I remember right, ox- tail soup inaugurated the affair. Of a rich russet hue, its agreeable ^avor dissipated my Srst confounding of its main ingredi- ent with teamster’s gads and the rawhides of ushers.7 (By way of interlude, we here drank a little claret.) Neptune’s was the next tribute rendered— turbot8 coming second; snowwhite, ^aky, and just gelatinous enough, not too turtleish in its unctuousness.

(At this point we refreshed ourselves with a glass of sherry.) After these light skirmishers had vanished, the heavy artillery of the feast marched in, led by that well- known En glish generalissimo, roast beef. For aids- de- camp we had a saddle of mutton, a fat turkey, a chicken- pie, and endless other savory things; while for avant- couriers came nine silver ^agons of hum- ming9 ale. This heavy ordnance1 having departed on the track of the light skirmishers, a picked brigade of game- fowl encamped upon the board, their campSres lit by the ruddiest of decanters.

Tarts and puddings followed, with innumerable niceties; then cheese and crackers. (By way of ceremony, simply, only to keep up good old fashions, we here each drank a glass of good old port.)

The cloth was now removed; and like Blucher’s2 army coming in at the death on the Seld of Waterloo, in marched a fresh detachment of bottles, dusty with their hurried march.

All these manœuvrings of the forces were superintended by a surprising old Seld- marshal (I can not school myself to call him by the inglorious name of waiter), with snowy hair and napkin, and a head like Socrates.3 Amidst all the hilarity of the feast, intent on important business, he dis- dained to smile. Venerable man!

I have above endeavored to give some slight schedule of the general plan of operations. But any one knows that a good, genial dinner is a sort of pell- mell, indiscriminate affair, quite baf^ing to detail in all particulars. Thus, I spoke of taking a glass of claret, and a glass of sherry, and a glass of port, and a mug of ale— all at certain speciSc periods and times. But those were merely the state bumpers,4 so to speak. Innumerable impromptu glasses were drained between the periods of those grand imposing ones.

5. Wooden platter. “South Down”: or Southdown, an En glish breed of sheep, i.e., mutton. 6. The basilica in Vatican City whose dome was constructed under the direction of Michelangelo. The Inns of Court are between the smaller- domed St. Paul’s and the Thames. 7. Assistant schoolteachers (especially old thick- skinned ones). “Gads”: goads (whips made from oxtails). 8. Eu ro pe an ^atSsh, in tribute to the god of the sea, Neptune.

9. Still effervescent. “Aids- de- camp”: i.e., aides- de- camp; military aides. “Avant- couriers”: i.e., avant- coureurs or avant- courriers; forerunners. 1. Artillery. 2. Gebhard von Blucher (1742– 1819), leader of Prus sian troops that helped in the defeat of Napo- leon at Waterloo in 1815. 3. Greek phi los o pher (470?– 399 b.c.e.). 4. Any large glass or mug with bulging sides, meant to be Slled to the brim for drinking toasts.

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The nine bachelors seemed to have the most tender concern for each oth- er’s health. All the time, in ^owing wine, they most earnestly expressed their sincerest wishes for the entire well- being and lasting hygiene of the gentle- men on the right and on the left. I noticed that when one of these kind bach- elors desired a little more wine ( just for his stomach’s sake, like Timothy5), he would not help himself to it unless some other bachelor would join him. It seemed held something indelicate, selSsh, and unfraternal, to be seen taking a lonely, unparticipated glass. Meantime, as the wine ran apace, the spirits of the company grew more and more to perfect genialness and unconstraint. They related all sort of pleasant stories. Choice experiences in their private lives were now brought out, like choice brands of Moselle or Rhenish,6 only kept for par tic u lar company. One told us how mellowly he lived when a stu- dent at Oxford; with various spicy anecdotes of most frank- hearted noble lords, his liberal companions. Another bachelor, a gray- headed man, with a sunny face, who, by his own account, embraced every opportunity of leisure to cross over into the Low Countries,7 on sudden tours of inspection of the Sne old Flemish architecture there— this learned, white- haired, sunny- faced old bachelor, excelled in his descriptions of the elaborate splendors of those old guild- halls, town- halls, and stadthold- houses, to be seen in the land of the ancient Flemings. A third was a great frequenter of the British Museum, and knew all about scores of wonderful antiquities, of Oriental manuscripts, and costly books without a duplicate. A fourth had lately returned from a trip to Old Granada, and, of course, was full of Saracenic scenery. A Sfth had a funny case in law to tell. A sixth was erudite in wines. A seventh had a strange characteristic anecdote of the private life of the Iron Duke,8 never printed, and never before announced in any public or private company. An eighth had lately been amusing his eve nings, now and then, with translating a comic poem of Pulci’s.9 He quoted for us the more amusing passages.

And so the eve ning slipped along, the hours told, not by a water- clock, like King Alfred’s, but a wine- chronometer.1 Meantime the table seemed a sort of Epsom Heath;2 a regular ring, where the decanters galloped round. For fear one decanter should not with sufScient speed reach his destination, another was sent express after him to hurry him; and then a third to hurry the second; and so on with a fourth and Sfth. And throughout all this noth- ing loud, nothing unmannerly, nothing turbulent. I am quite sure, from the scrupulous gravity and austerity of his air, that had Socrates, the Seld- marshal, perceived aught of indecorum in the company he served, he would have forthwith departed without giving warning. I afterward learned that, during the repast, an invalid bachelor in an adjoining chamber enjoyed his Srst sound refreshing slumber in three long, weary weeks.

5. Paul’s prescription in 1 Timothy 5.23: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stom- ach’s sake and thine often inSrmities.” 6. Wines from the Moselle or Rhenish River regions of Germany. 7. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, but the context suggests that Melville knew the bawdy play on “Low Countries” in, for instance, Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors (3.2), in which a kitchen maid is described according to the geography of Eu rope.

8. I.e., the duke of Wellington (1769– 1852), vic- tor over Napoleon at Waterloo (1815). 9. Luigi Pulci (1432– 1484), Florentine poet. 1. Alfred the Great (849– 899), king of Wessex, En gland, was thought to have designed a clock that mea sured time by the ^ow of water. This Sc- tional clock, or chronometer, would mea sure time by the ^ow of wine. 2. Racetrack in Epsom, Surrey, where the Derby has been run since 1780.

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It was the very perfection of quiet absorption of good living, good drinking, good feeling, and good talk. We were a band of brothers. Comfort— fraternal, house hold comfort, was the grand trait of the affair. Also, you could plainly see that these easy- hearted men had no wives or children to give an anxious thought. Almost all of them were travelers, too; for bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the Sreside.

The thing called pain, the bugbear styled trouble— those two legends seemed preposterous to their bachelor imaginations. How could men of lib- eral sense, ripe scholarship in the world, and capacious philosophical and convivial understandings— how could they suffer themselves to be imposed upon by such monkish fables? Pain! Trouble! As well talk of Catholic miracles. No such thing.— Pass the sherry, Sir.— Pooh, pooh! Can’t be!— The port, Sir, if you please. Nonsense; don’t tell me so.— The decanter stops with you, Sir, I believe.

And so it went. Not long after the cloth was drawn our host glanced signiScantly upon

Socrates, who, solemnly stepping to a stand, returned with an im mense convolved horn, a regular Jericho horn,3 mounted with polished silver, and otherwise chased and curiously enriched; not omitting two life- like goat’s heads, with four more horns of solid silver, projecting from opposite sides of the mouth of the noble main horn.

Not having heard that our host was a performer on the bugle, I was sur- prised to see him lift this horn from the table, as if he were about to blow an inspiring blast. But I was relieved from this and set quite right as touch- ing the purposes of the horn, by his now inserting his thumb and foreSnger into its mouth; whereupon a slight aroma was stirred up, and my nostrils were greeted with the smell of some choice Rappee.4 It was a mull5 of snuff. It went the rounds. Capital idea this, thought I, of taking snuff about this juncture. This goodly fashion must be introduced among my countrymen at home, further ruminated I.

The remarkable decorum of the nine bachelors— a decorum not to be affected by any quantity of wine— a decorum unassailable by any degree of mirthfulness— this was again set in a forcible light to me, by now observing that, though they took snuff very freely, yet not a man so far violated the proprieties, or so far molested the invalid bachelor in the adjoining room as to indulge himself in a sneeze. The snuff was snuffed silently, as if it had been some Sne innoxious6 powder brushed off the wings of butter^ies.

But Sne though they be, bachelors’ dinners, like bachelors’ lives, can not endure forever. The time came for breaking up. One by one the bache- lors took their hats, and two by two, and arm- in- arm they descended, still conversing, to the ^agging of the court; some going to their neighboring chambers to turn over the Decameron7 ere retiring for the night; some to smoke a cigar, promenading in the garden on the cool river- side; some to make for the street, call a hack, and be driven snugly to their distant lodgings.

3. In Joshua 6.1– 20, seven priests circled Jeri- cho making long blasts with rams’ horns until on the seventh day “the walls fell ^at” and Joshua took the city. 4. A strong, dark snuff.

5. A small, usually ornate box with an apparatus for pulverizing tobacco into snuff. 6. Harmless. 7. Bawdy tales by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313– 1375).

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I was the last lingerer. “Well,” said my smiling host, “what do you think of the Temple here, and

the sort of life we bachelors make out to live in it?” “Sir,” said I, with a burst of admiring candor—“Sir, this is the very Para-

dise of Bachelors!”

II. The Tartarus of Maids

It lies not far from Woedolor Mountain8 in New En gland. Turning to the east, right out from among bright farms and sunny meadows, nodding in early June with odorous grasses, you enter ascendingly among bleak hills. These gradually close in upon a dusky pass, which, from the violent Gulf Stream of air unceasingly diving between its cloven walls of haggard rock, as well as from the tradition of a crazy spinster’s hut having long ago stood somewhere hereabouts, is called the Mad Maid’s Bellows’- pipe.

Winding along at the bottom of the gorge is a dangerously narrow wheel- road, occupying the bed of a former torrent. Following this road to its high- est point, you stand as within a Dantean gateway.9 From the steepness of the walls here, their strangely ebon hue, and the sudden contraction of the gorge, this par tic u lar point is called the Black Notch. The ravine now expandingly descends into a great, purple, hopper- shaped hollow, far sunk among many Plutonian,1 shaggy- wooded mountains. By the country people this hollow is called the Dev il’s Dungeon. Sounds of torrents fall on all sides upon the ear. These rapid waters unite at last in one turbid brick- colored stream, boiling through a ^ume among enormous boulders. They call this strange- colored torrent Blood River. Gaining a dark precipice it wheels sud- denly to the west, and makes one maniac spring of sixty feet into the arms of a stunted wood of gray- haired pines, between which it thence eddies on its further way down to the invisible lowlands.

Conspicuously crowning a rocky bluff high to one side, at the cataract’s verge, is the ruin of an old saw- mill, built in those primitive times when vast pines and hemlocks superabounded throughout the neighboring region. The black- mossed bulk of those im mense, rough- hewn, and spike- knotted logs, here and there tumbled all together, in long abandonment and decay, or left in solitary, perilous projection over the cataract’s gloomy brink, impart to this rude wooden ruin not only much of the aspect of one of rough- quarried stone, but also a sort of feudal, Rhineland, and Thurmberg2 look, derived from the pinnacled wildness of the neighboring scenery.

Not far from the bottom of the Dungeon stands a large whitewashed build- ing, relieved, like some great whited sepulchre,3 against the sullen back- ground of mountain- side Srs, and other hardy evergreens, inaccessibly rising in grim terraces for some two thousand feet.

8. Probably modeled on Mount Greylock in the Berkshires, which Melville could see from his home in PittsSeld, Massachusetts. 9. Such as the entrance to hell the Italian poet Dante (1265– 1321) describes in the Inferno; over it is written: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” The contrast is with the beautiful Wren gateway, Temple Bar. 1. Ruled by the god of the underworld. “Hopper-

shaped”: funnel- shaped. 2. A 14th- century castle on the Rhine River in Germany. 3. A recollection of Jesus’s description of the Scribes and Pharisees as “whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matthew 23.27).

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The building is a paper- mill. Having embarked on a large scale in the seedsman’s business (so exten-

sively and broadcast, indeed, that at length my seeds were distributed through all the Eastern and Northern States, and even fell into the far soil of Mis- souri and the Carolinas), the demand for paper at my place became so great, that the expenditure soon amounted to a most important item in the general account. It need hardly be hinted how paper comes into use with seedsmen, as envelopes. These are mostly made of yellowish paper, folded square; and when Slled, are all but ^at, and being stamped, and superscribed with the nature of the seeds contained, assume not a little the appearance of business- letters ready for the mail. Of these small envelopes I used an incredible quantity— several hundreds of thousands in a year. For a time I had pur- chased my paper from the wholesale dealers in a neighboring town. For econ- omy’s sake, and partly for the adventure of the trip, I now resolved to cross the mountains, some sixty miles, and order my future paper at the Dev il’s Dungeon paper- mill.

The sleighing being uncommonly Sne toward the end of January, and prom- ising to hold so for no small period, in spite of the bitter cold I started one gray Friday noon in my pung,4 well Stted with buffalo and wolf robes; and, spend- ing one night on the road, next noon came in sight of Woedolor Mountain.

The far summit fairly smoked with frost; white vapors curled up from its white- wooded top, as from a chimney. The intense congelation made the whole country look like one petrifaction. The steel shoes of my pung craunched and gritted over the vitreous, chippy snow, as if it had been broken glass. The forests here and there skirting the route, feeling the same all- stiffening in^uence, their inmost Sbres penetrated with the cold, strangely groaned— not in the swaying branches merely, but likewise in the vertical trunk— as the Stful gusts remorselessly swept through them. Brittle with excessive frost, many colossal tough- grained maples, snapped in twain like pipe- stems, cumbered the unfeeling earth.

Flaked all over with frozen sweat, white as a milky ram, his nostrils at each breath sending forth two horn- shaped shoots of heated respiration, Black, my good horse, but six years old, started at a sudden turn, where, right across the track— not ten minutes fallen— an old distorted hemlock lay, darkly undula- tory as an anaconda.

Gaining the Bellows’- pipe, the violent blast, dead from behind, all but shoved my high- backed pung up- hill. The gust shrieked through the shivered pass, as if laden with lost spirits bound to the unhappy world. Ere gaining the summit, Black, my horse, as if exasperated by the cutting wind, slung out with his strong hind legs, tore the light pung straight up- hill, and sweeping grazingly through the narrow notch, sped downward madly past the ruined saw- mill. Into the Dev il’s Dungeon horse and cataract rushed together.

With might and main, quitting my seat and robes, and standing back- ward, with one foot braced against the dash- board, I rasped and churned the bit, and stopped him just in time to avoid collision, at a turn, with the bleak nozzle of a rock, couchant5 like a lion in the way— a road- side rock.

At Srst I could not discover the paper- mill.

4. Boxlike one- horse sleigh. 5. Crouching.

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The whole hollow gleamed with the white, except, here and there, where a pinnacle of granite showed one wind- swept angle bare. The mountains stood pinned in shrouds— a pass of Alpine corpses. Where stands the mill? Sud- denly a whirling, humming sound broke upon my ear. I looked, and there, like an arrested avalanche, lay the large whitewashed factory. It was subordi- nately surrounded by a cluster of other and smaller buildings, some of which, from their cheap, blank air, great length, gregarious windows, and comfort- less expression, no doubt were boarding- houses of the operatives.6 A snow- white hamlet amidst the snows. Various rude, irregular squares and courts resulted from the somewhat picturesque clusterings of these buildings, owing to the broken, rocky nature of the ground, which forbade all method in their relative arrangement. Several narrow lanes and alleys, too, partly blocked with snow fallen from the roof, cut up the hamlet in all directions.

When, turning from the traveled highway, jingling with bells of numer- ous farmers— who, availing themselves of the Sne sleighing, were dragging their wood to market— and frequently diversiSed with swift cutters dashing from inn to inn of the scattered villages— when, I say, turning from that bus- tling main- road, I by degrees wound into the Mad Maid’s Bellows’- pipe, and saw the grim Black Notch beyond, then something latent, as well as some- thing obvious in the time and scene, strangely brought back to my mind my Srst sight of dark and grimy Temple- Bar. And when Black, my horse, went darting through the Notch, perilously grazing its rocky wall, I remembered being in a runaway London omnibus, which in much the same sort of style, though by no means at an equal rate, dashed through the ancient arch of Wren.7 Though the two objects did by no means completely correspond, yet this partial inadequacy but served to tinge the similitude not less with the vividness than the disorder of a dream. So that, when upon reining up at the protruding rock I at last caught sight of the quaint groupings of the factory- buildings, and with the traveled highway and the Notch behind, found myself all alone, silently and privily stealing through deep- cloven passages into this sequestered spot, and saw the long, high- gabled main factory edi- Sce, with a rude tower— for hoisting8 heavy boxes— at one end, standing among its crowded outbuildings and boarding- houses, as the Temple Church amidst the surrounding ofSces and dormitories, and when the marvelous retirement of this mysterious mountain nook fastened its whole spell upon me, then, what memory lacked, all tributary imagination furnished, and I said to myself, “This is the very counterpart of the Paradise of Bachelors, but snowed upon, and frost- painted to a sepulchre.”

Dismounting, and warily picking my way down the dangerous declivity— horse and man both sliding now and then upon the icy ledges— at length I drove, or the blast drove me, into the largest square, before one side of the main ediSce. Piercingly and shrilly the shotted blast blew by the corner; and redly and demoniacally boiled Blood River at one side. A long woodpile, of many scores of cords, all glittering in mail of crusted ice, stood crosswise in the square. A row of horse- posts, their north sides plastered with adhesive snow, ^anked the factory wall. The bleak frost packed and paved the square as with some ringing metal.

6. Factory workers. 7. At Temple Bar (see n. 9, p. 1502).

8. I.e., with a pulley fastening to the outhanging structure.

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The inverted similitude recurred—“The sweet, tranquil Temple- garden, with the Thames bordering its green beds,” strangely meditated I.

But where are the gay bachelors? Then, as I and my horse stood shivering in the wind- spray, a girl ran from

a neighboring dormitory door, and throwing her thin apron over her bare head, made for the opposite building.

“One moment, my girl; is there no shed hereabouts which I may drive into?”

Pausing, she turned upon me a face pale with work, and blue with cold; an eye supernatural with unrelated misery.

“Nay,” faltered I, “I mistook you. Go on; I want nothing.” Leading my horse close to the door from which she had come, I knocked.

Another pale, blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to prevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.

“Nay, I mistake again. In God’s name shut the door. But hold, is there no man about?”

That moment a dark- complexioned well- wrapped personage passed, mak- ing for the factory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapidly closed the other one.

“Is there no horse- shed here, Sir?” “Yonder, to the wood- shed,” he replied, and disappeared inside the

factory. With much ado I managed to wedge in horse and pung between the scat-

tered piles of wood all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse, and pil- ing my buffalo on the blanket’s top, tucking in its edges well around the breast- hand and breeching, so that the wind might not strip him bare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the factory door, stiff with frost, and cumbered with my driver’s dreadnaught.9

Immediately I found myself standing in a spacious place, intolerably lighted by long rows of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene without.

At rows of blank- looking counters sat rows of blank- looking girls, with blank, white folders in the blank hands, all blankly folding blank paper.

In one corner stood some huge frame of ponderous iron, with a vertical thing like a piston periodically rising and falling upon a heavy wooden block. Before it— its tame minister— stood a tall girl, feeding the iron animal with half- quires1 of rose- hued note paper, which, at every downward dab of the piston- like machine, received in the corner the impress of a wreath of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the pallid cheek, but said nothing.

Seated before a long apparatus, strung with long, slender strings like any harp, another girl was feeding it with foolscap sheets,2 which, so soon as they curiously traveled from her on the cords, were withdrawn at the opposite end of the machine by a second girl. They came to the Srst girl blank; they went to the second girl ruled.

I looked upon the Srst girl’s brow, and saw it was young and fair; I looked upon the second girl’s brow, and saw it was ruled and wrinkled. Then, as I still looked, the two— for some small variety to the monotony— changed

9. Thick woolen coat. 1. Twelve sheets of paper.

2. Writing paper, usually about thirteen by sev- enteen inches.

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places; and where had stood the young, fair brow, now stood the ruled and wrinkled one.

Perched high upon a narrow platform, and still higher upon a high stool crowning it, sat another Sgure serving some other iron animal; while below the platform sat her mate in some sort of reciprocal attendance.

Not a syllable was breathed. Nothing was heard but the low, steady, over- ruling hum of the iron animals. The human voice was banished from the spot. Machinery— that vaunted slave of humanity— here stood menially served by human beings, who served mutely and cringingly as the slave serves the Sultan. The girls did not so much seem accessory wheels to the general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.

All this scene around me was instantaneously taken in at one sweeping glance— even before I had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet3 from around my neck. But as soon as this fell from me the dark- complexioned man, standing close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my arm, dragged me out into the open air, and without pausing for a word instantly caught up some congealed snow and began rubbing both my cheeks.

“Two white spots like the whites of your eyes,” he said; “man, your cheeks are frozen.”

“That may well be,” muttered I, “ ’tis some wonder the frost of the Dev il’s Dungeon strikes in no deeper. Rub away.”

Soon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my reviving cheeks. Two gaunt blood- hounds, one on each side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed Actæon.4

Presently, when all was over, I re- entered the factory, made known my business, concluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be conducted throughout the place to view it.

“Cupid is the boy for that,” said the dark- complexioned man. “Cupid!” and by this odd fancy- name calling a dimpled, red- cheeked, spirited- looking, for- ward little fellow, who was rather impudently, I thought, gliding about among the passive- looking girls— like a gold Ssh through hueless waves— yet doing nothing in par tic u lar that I could see, the man bade him lead the stranger through the ediSce.

“Come Srst and see the water- wheel,” said this lively lad, with the air of boyishly- brisk importance.

Quitting the folding- room, we crossed some damp, cold boards, and stood beneath a great wet shed, incessantly showering with foam, like the green barnacled bow of some East India- man5 in a gale. Round and round here went the enormous revolutions of the dark colossal water- wheel, grim with its one immutable purpose.

“This sets our whole machinery a-going, Sir; in every part of all these buildings; where the girls work and all.”

I looked, and saw that the turbid waters of Blood River had not changed their hue by coming under the use of man.

“You make only blank paper; no printing of any sort, I suppose? All blank paper, don’t you?”

“Certainly; what else should a paper- factory make?”

3. Muf^er. 4. In Greek mythology, the hunter who watched Diana (Artemis) bathing and was punished by being turned into a stag that was then torn apart

by his own dogs. 5. Enormous, many- sailed ship in the East India Company’s ^eet.

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6. Curved handle. 7. Livorno, port on the northwestern coast of Italy.

8. Pronounced batch. 9. I.e., the paleness characteristic of tuberculosis.

The lad here looked at me as if suspicious of my common- sense. “Oh, to be sure!” said I, confused and stammering; “it only struck me as

so strange that red waters should turn out pale chee— paper, I mean.” He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a great light room, furnished with

no visible thing but rude, manger- like receptacles running all round its sides; and up to these mangers, like so many mares haltered to the rack, stood rows of girls. Before each was vertically thrust up a long, glittering scythe, immov- ably Sxed at bottom to the manger- edge. The curve of the scythe, and its hav- ing no snath6 to it, made it look exactly like a sword. To and fro, across the sharp edge, the girls forever dragged long strips of rags, washed white, picked from baskets at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam, and converting the tatters almost into lint. The air swam with the Sne, poisonous particles, which from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sunbeams, into the lungs.

“This is the rag- room,” coughed the boy. “You Snd it rather sti^ing here,” coughed I, in answer; “but the girls don’t

cough.” “Oh, they are used to it.” “Where do you get such hosts of rags?” picking up a handful from a

basket. “Some from the country round about; some from far over sea— Leghorn7

and London.” “ ’Tis not unlikely, then,” murmured I, “that among these heaps of rags

there may be some old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the Paradise of Bachelors. But the buttons are all dropped off. Pray, my lad, do you ever Snd any bachelor’s buttons hereabouts?”

“None grow in this part of the country. The Dev il’s Dungeon is no place for ^owers.”

“Oh! you mean the #owers so called— the Bachelor’s Buttons?” “And was not that what you asked about? Or did you mean the gold

bosom- buttons of our boss, Old Bach,8 as our whispering girls all call him?” “The man, then, I saw below is a bachelor, is he?” “Oh, yes, he’s a Bach.” “The edges of those swords, they are turned outward from the girls, if

I see right; but their rags and Sngers ^y so, I can not distinctly see.” “Turned outward.” Yes, murmured I to myself; I see it now; turned outward; and each erected

sword is so borne, edge- outward, before each girl. If my reading fails me not, just so, of old, condemned state- prisoners went from the hall of judgment to their doom: an ofScer before, bearing a sword, its edge turned outward, in signiScance of their fatal sentence. So, through consumptive pallors9 of this blank, raggy life, go these white girls to death.

“Those scythes look very sharp,” again turning toward the boy. “Yes; they have to keep them so. Look!” That moment two of the girls, dropping their rags, plied each a whet-

stone up and down the sword- blade. My unaccustomed blood curdled at the sharp shriek of the tormented steel.

Their own executioners; themselves whetting the very swords that slay them; meditated I.

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“What makes those girls so sheet- white, my lad?” “Why”—with a ro guish twinkle, pure ignorant drollery, not knowing

heartlessness—“I suppose the handling of such white bits of sheets all the time makes them so sheety.”

“Let us leave the rag- room now, my lad.” More tragical and more inscrutably mysterious than any mystic sight,

human or machine, throughout the factory, was the strange innocence of cruel- heartedness in this usage- hardened boy.

“And now,” said he, cheerily, “I suppose you want to see our great machine, which cost us twelve thousand dollars only last autumn. That’s the machine that makes the paper, too. This way, Sir.”

Following him, I crossed a large, bespattered place, with two great round vats in it, full of a white, wet, woolly- looking stuff, not unlike the albumin- ous part of an egg, soft- boiled.

“There,” said Cupid, tapping the vats carelessly, “these are the Srst begin- nings of the paper; this white pulp you see. Look how it swims bubbling round and round, moved by the paddle here. From hence it pours from both vats into that one common channel yonder; and so goes, mixed up and lei- surely, to the great machine. And now for that.”

He led me into a room, sti^ing with a strange, blood- like, abdominal heat, as if here, true enough, were being Snally developed the germinous particles lately seen.

Before me, rolled out like some long Eastern manuscript, lay stretched one continuous length of iron frame- work—multitudinous and mystical, with all sorts of rollers, wheels, and cylinders, in slowly- measured and unceasing motion.

“Here Srst comes the pulp now,” said Cupid, pointing to the nighest end of the machine. “See; Srst it pours out and spreads itself upon this wide, sloping board; and then— look—slides, thin and quivering, beneath the Srst roller there. Follow on now, and see it as it slides from under that to the next cylinder. There; see how it has become just a very little less pulpy now. One step more, and it grows still more to some slight consistence. Sill another cylinder, and it is so knitted— though as yet mere dragon- ̂ y wing— that it forms an air- bridge here, like a suspended cobweb, between two more separated rollers; and ^owing over the last one, and under again, and doubling about there out of sight for a minute among all those mixed cylinders you indistinctly see, it reappears here, looking now at last a little less like pulp and more like paper, but still quite delicate and defective yet awhile. But— a little further onward, Sir, if you please— here now, at this further point, it puts on some- thing of a real look, as if it might turn out to be something you might possibly handle in the end. But it’s not yet done, Sir. Good way to travel yet, and plenty more of cylinders must roll it.”

“Bless my soul!” said I, amazed at the elongation, interminable convolu- tions, and deliberate slowness of the machine; “it must take a long time for the pulp to pass from end to end, and come out paper.”

“Oh! not so long,” smiled the precocious lad, with a superior and patroniz- ing air; “only nine minutes. But look; you may try it for yourself. Have you a bit of paper? Ah! here’s a bit on the ^oor. Now mark that with any word you please, and let me dab it on here, and we’ll see how long before it comes out at the other end.”

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“Well, let me see,” said I, taking out my pencil; “come, I’ll mark it with your name.”

Bidding me take out my watch, Cupid adroitly dropped the inscribed slip on an exposed part of the incipient mass.

Instantly my eye marked the second- hand on my dial- plate. Slowly I followed the slip, inch by inch; sometimes pausing for full half a

minute as it disappeared beneath inscrutable groups of the lower cylinders, but only gradually to emerge again; and so, on, and on, and on— inch by inch; now in open sight, sliding along like a freckle on the quivering sheet; and then again wholly vanished; and so, on, and on, and on— inch by inch; all the time the main sheet growing more and more to Snal Srmness— when, sud- denly, I saw a sort of paper- fall, not wholly unlike a water- fall; a scissory sound smote my ear, as of some cord being snapped; and down dropped an unfolded sheet of perfect foolscap, with my “Cupid” half faded out of it, and still moist and warm.

My travels were at an end, for here was the end of the machine. “Well, how long was it?” said Cupid. “Nine minutes to a second,” replied I, watch in hand. “I told you so.” For a moment a curious emotion Slled me, not wholly unlike that which

one might experience at the fulSllment of some mysterious prophecy. But how absurd, thought I again; the thing is a mere machine, the essence of which is unvarying punctuality and precision.

Previously absorbed by the wheels and cylinders, my attention was now directed to a sad- looking woman standing by.

“That is rather an el der ly person so silently tending the machine- end here. She would not seem wholly used to it either.”

“Oh,” knowingly whispered Cupid, through the din, “she only came last week. She was a nurse formerly. But the business is poor in these parts, and she’s left it. But look at the paper she is piling there.”

“Ay, foolscap,” handling the piles of moist, warm sheets, which continually were being delivered into the woman’s waiting hands. “Don’t you turn out any thing but foolscap at this machine?”

“Oh, sometimes, but not often, we turn out Sner work— creamlaid and royal sheets, we call them. But foolscap being in chief demand, we turn out foolscap most.”

It was very curious. Looking at that blank paper continually dropping, dropping, dropping, my mind ran on in wonderings of those strange uses to which those thousand sheets eventually would be put. All sorts of writings would be writ on those now vacant things— sermons, lawyers’ briefs, physi- cians’ prescriptions, love- letters, marriage certiScates, bills of divorce, reg- isters of births, death- warrants, and so on, without end. Then, recurring back to them as they here lay all blank, I could not but bethink me of that celebrated comparison of John Locke, who, in demonstration of his theory that man had no innate ideas, compared the human mind at birth to a sheet of blank paper;1 something destined to be scribbled on, but what sort of characters no soul might tell.

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1. Locke (1632– 1704), En glish phi los o pher, compared the mind of a newborn to a tabula rasa (Latin), or blank slate, in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).

2. Legendary woman who wiped the bleeding face of Jesus as he carried the cross to Calvary and then found that the handkerchief was imprinted with the image of his face.

Pacing slowly to and fro along the involved machine, still humming with its play, I was struck as well by the inevitability as the evolvement- power in all its motions.

“Does that thin cobweb there,” said I, pointing to the sheet in its more imperfect stage, “does that never tear or break? It is marvelous fragile, and yet this machine it passes through is so mighty.”

“It never is known to tear a hair’s point.” “Does it never stop— get clogged?” “No. It must go. The machinery makes it go just so; just that very way, and

at that very pace you there plainly see it go. The pulp can’t help going.” Something of awe now stole over me, as I gazed upon this in^exible iron

animal. Always, more or less, machinery of this ponderous, elaborate sort strikes, in some moods, strange dread into the human heart, as some living, panting Behemoth might. But what made the thing I saw so specially terrible to me was the metallic necessity, the unbudging fatality which governed it. Though, here and there, I could not follow the thin, gauzy vail of pulp in the course of its more mysterious or entirely invisible advance, yet it was indubi- table that, at those points where it eluded me, it still marched on in unvary- ing docility to the autocratic cunning of the machine. A fascination fastened on me. I stood spellbound and wandering in my soul. Before my eyes— there, passing in slow pro cession along the wheeling cylinders, I seemed to see, glued to the pallid incipience of the pulp, the yet more pallid faces of all the pallid girls, I had eyed that heavy day. Slowly, mournfully, beseechingly, yet unresistingly, they gleamed along, their agony dimly outlined on the imper- fect paper, like the print of the tormented face on the handkerchief of Saint Veronica.2

“Halloa! the heat of the room is too much for you,” cried Cupid, staring at me.

“No—I am rather chill, if any thing.” “Come out, Sir— out—out,” and, with the protecting air of a careful

father, the precocious lad hurried me outside. In a few moments, feeling revived a little, I went into the folding- room—

the Srst room I had entered, and where the desk for transacting business stood, surrounded by the blank counters and blank girls engaged at them.

“Cupid here has led me a strange tour,” said I to the dark- complexioned man before mentioned, whom I had ere this discovered not only to be an old bachelor, but also the principal proprietor. “Yours is a most wonderful fac- tory. Your great machine is a miracle of inscrutable intricacy.”

“Yes, all our visitors think it so. But we don’t have many. We are in a very out- of- the- way corner here. Few inhabitants, too. Most of our girls come from far- off villages.”

“The girls,” echoed I, glancing round at their silent forms. “Why is it, Sir, that in most factories, female operatives, of what ever age, are indiscrimi- nately called girls, never women?”

“Oh! as to that— why, I suppose, the fact of their being generally unmarried— that’s the reason, I should think. But it never struck me before.

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For our factory here, we will not have married women; they are apt to be off- and- on too much. We want none but steady workers: twelve hours to the day, day after day, through the three hundred and sixty- Sve days, excepting Sun- days, Thanksgiving, and Fastdays. That’s our rule. And so, having no married women, what females we have are rightly enough called girls.”

“Then these are all maids,” said I, while some pained homage to their pale virginity made me involuntarily bow.

“All maids.” Again the strange emotion Slled me. “Your cheeks look whitish yet, Sir,” said the man, gazing at me narrowly.

“You must be careful going home. Do they pain you at all now? It’s a bad sign, if they do.”

“No doubt, Sir,” answered I, “when once I have got out of the Dev il’s Dun- geon, I shall feel them mending.”

“Ah, yes; the winter air in valleys, or gorges, or any sunken place, is far colder and more bitter than elsewhere. You would hardly believe it now, but it is colder here than at the top of Woedolor Mountain.”

“I dare say it is, Sir. But time presses me; I must depart.” With that, remuf^ing myself in dread- naught and tippet, thrusting my

hands into my huge seal- skin mittens, I sallied out into the nipping air, and found poor Black, my horse, all cringing and doubled up with the cold.

Soon, wrapped in furs and meditations, I ascended from the Dev il’s Dungeon.

At the Black Notch I paused, and once more bethought me of Temple- Bar. Then, shooting through the pass, all alone with inscrutable nature, I exclaimed— Oh! Paradise of Bachelors! and oh! Tartarus of Maids!

1855

Benito Cereno1

In the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano, of Duxbury, in Massachusetts, commanding a large sealer and general trader, lay at anchor, with a valuable cargo, in the harbor of St. Maria— a small, desert, uninhabited island toward the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili. There he had touched for water.

On the second day, not long after dawn, while lying in his berth, his mate came below, informing him that a strange sail was coming into the bay. Ships were then not so plenty in those waters as now. He rose, dressed, and went on deck.

The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything gray. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells,

1. This text is based on the Srst printing, in Put- nam’s Monthly for October, November, and December 1855, but it also incorporates the many small revisions Melville made for its 1856 republi- cation in The Piazza Tales. Melville based his plot on a few narrative pages in chapter 18 of Captain Amasa Delano’s Narrative of Voyages and Travels

in the Northern and Southern Hemi spheres (1817). Melville’s “deposition” near the end of Benito Cereno is roughly half from Delano’s much longer section of documents, half his own writing. (A later relative of the real Delano [1763– 1823] was Franklin Delano Roo se velt.)

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