And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was
very calm--frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which
the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is
growing now; this moment growing, and the heat must breed it; but no,
it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between
the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild
winds blow; they whip about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash
the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere
this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and
ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.
Out upon it!--it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such
a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink
there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever
conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run
tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that
strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow.
Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler thing than _that_. Would now the
wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and
outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as
objects, not as agents.
Pages:
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249