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Table of Contents
Chapter 25
POSTSCRIPT
In behalf of the dignity of
whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after
embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not
unreasonable ..
2 surmise, which might
tell eloquently upon his cause --such an advocate, would he not be
blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even
modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions
is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a
caster of state. How they use the salt, precisely --who knows? Certain I am,
however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a
head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making
its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here,
concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life
we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and
palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil,
unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality. But the only thing
to be considered here, is this --what kind of oil is used at coronations?
Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's
oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm
oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? Think
of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with
coronation stuff! ..
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