Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corsairs Hook to Counties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spices; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks glasses! Of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent-up in lath and plaster— tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone?

Moby-Dick or