Ch. 3 + The Spouter-Inn

" Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched."
-- Ishmael on a painting in the Spouter Inn

" "Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"
"That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked."
"With what?" shouted I.
"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?""
-- Ishmael and the Landlord discuss the mysterious harpooneer

"...to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin'
human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches."
-- sound advice from the Landlord

"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."
-- a classic line of Ishmael's
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