chpt 24 The Advocate (amended for my ego... whats this have to do with me)

Given our discourse and mutual hatred concerning this word, this post is for you Mike...Enjoy

As Tyler Fey and I are now fairly embarked in this business of Fishing; and as this business of Fishing has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of fish.


In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of Fishing is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions ( doctors and layers and other folks). If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a Gillnetter, say; and if in emulation of the doctors and lawyers he should append the initials G.N .F(Gill Net Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.
("This is what happens, do you see what happens" Ive seen Odd shit)

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us fisherman, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the Commercial Fishing-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 Salmon-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 Berring Sea or the Johnson Hill Line. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

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The Fish has no famous author, and fishing no famous chronicler, you will say.

THE FISH NO FAMOUS AUTHOR, AND FISHING NO FAMOUS CHRONICLER? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!

True enough, but then fisherman themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins.



Good again; but then all confess that somehow fishing is not respectable.

Fishing NOT RESPECTABLE? It is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."*


And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to Fishing; for a Fishing Vessel was my Yale College and my Harvard...Kinda... thanks Melville!