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Moby Dick: or, the White Whale by Herman Melville
page 67 of 786 (08%)
I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very
little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever;
appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances.
All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts,
there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some
twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--
which was the only way he could get there--thrown among people
as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet
he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity;
content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this
was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard
there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers,
we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving.
So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for
a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman,
he must have "broken his digester."

As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low,
in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air,
it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms
gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent,
solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells;
I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me.
No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against
the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it.
There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which
there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits.
Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel
myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things
that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets
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