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CHAPTER 24 . The Advocate . As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling ; and as this business of whaling 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 whales . In the first place , it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact , that among people at large , the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions . 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 harpooneer , say ; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S . W . F . ( Sperm Whale Fishery ) to his visiting card , such a procedure would be deemed pre - eminently presuming and ridiculous . Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen , 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 honor . 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 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 ! But look at this matter in other lights ; weigh it in all sorts of scales ; see what we whalemen are , and have been .
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