Herman Melville - Mardi and a Voyage Thither

"Your pardon," said Mohi, "for beshrew me, they are not yet all cut.

At threescore and ten, here have I a new tooth coming now."

"Old man! it but clears the way for another. The teeth sown by the alphabet-founder, were eye-teeth, not yet all sprung from the soil.

Like spring-wheat, blade by blade, they break ground late; like spring-wheat, many seeds have perished in the hard winter glebe. Oh, my lord! though we galvanize corpses into St. Vitus' dances, we raise not the dead from their graves! Though we have discovered the circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray-loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve; laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen, defraud, fib, lie, beg, borrow, steal, hang, drown-as in the laughing and weeping, tricking and truckling, hanging and drowning times that have been. Nothing changes, though much be new-fashioned: new fashions but revivals of things previous. In the books of the past we learn naught but of the present; in those of the present, the past. All Mardi's history-beginning middle, and finis-was written out in capitals in the first page penned. The whole story is told in a titlepage. An exclamation point is entire Mardi's autobiography."

"Who speaks now?" said Media, Bardianna, Azzageddi, or Babbalanja?"

"All three: is it not a pleasant concert?"

"Very fine: very fine.-Go on; and tell us something of the future."

"I have never departed this life yet, my lord."

"But just now you said you were risen from the dead." "From the buried dead within me; not from myself, my lord."

"If you, then, know nothing of the future-did Bardianna?"

"If he did, naught did he reveal. I have ever observed, my lord, that even in their deepest lucubrations, the profoundest, frankest, ponderers always reserve a vast deal of precious thought for their own private behoof. They think, perhaps, that 'tis too good, or too bad; too wise, or too foolish, for the multitude. And this unpleasant vibration is ever consequent upon striking a new vein of ideas in the soul. As with buried treasures, the ground over them sounds strange and hollow. At any rate, the profoundest ponderer seldom tells us all he thinks; seldom reveals to us the ultimate, and the innermost; seldom makes us open our eyes under water; seldom throws open the totus-in-toto; and never carries us with him, to the unconsubsistent, the ideaimmanens, the super-essential, and the One."

Confusion! Remember the Quadammodatatives!"

"Ah!" said Braid-Beard, "that's the crack in his calabash, which all the Dicibles of Doxdox will not mend."

"And from that crazy calabash he gives us to drink, old Mohi."

"But never heed his leaky gourd nor its contents, my lord. Let these philosophers muddle themselves as they will, we wise ones refuse to partake."

"And fools like me drink till they reel," said Babbalanja. "But in these matters one's calabash must needs go round to keep afloat.

Fogle-orum!"

The day was waning. And, as after many a tale of ghosts, around their forest fire, Hungarian gipsies silent sit; watching the ruddy glow kindling each other's faces;-so, now we solemn sat; the crimson West our fire; all our faces flushed.

"Testators!" then cried Media, when your last wills are all round settled, speak, and make it known!"

"Mine, my lord, has long been fixed," said Babbalanja.

"And how runs it?"

"Fugle-fogle-"

"Hark ye, intruding Azzageddi! rejoin thy merry mates below;-go there, and wag thy saucy tail; or I will nail it to our bow, till ye roar for liberation. Begone, I say."

"Down, devil! deeper down!" rumbled Babbalanja.

"My lord, I think he's gone. And now, by your good leave, I'll repeat old Bardianna's Will. It's worth all Mardi's hearing; and I have so studied it, by rote I know it."

"Proceed then; but I mistrust that Azzageddi is not yet many thousand fathoms down."

"Attend my lord:-'Anno Mardis 50,000,000, o.s. I, Bardianna, of the island of Vamba, and village of the same name, having just risen from my yams, in high health, high spirits, and sound mind, do hereby cheerfully make and ordain this my last will and testament.

"'Imprimis:

"'All my kith and kin being well to do in Mardi, I wholly leave them out of this my will.

"'Item. Since, in divers ways, verbally and otherwise, my good friend Pondo has evinced a strong love for me, Bardianna, as the owner and proprietor of all that capital messuage with the appurtenances, in Vamba aforesaid, called 'The Lair,' wherein I now dwell; also for all my Bread-fruit orchards, Palm-groves, Banana-plantations, Taropatches, gardens, lawns, lanes, and hereditaments whatsoever, adjoining the aforesaid messuage;-I do hereby give and bequeath the same to Bomblum of the island of Adda; the aforesaid Bomblum having never expressed any regard for me, as a holder of real estate.

"'Item. My esteemed neighbor Lakreemo having since the last lunar eclipse called daily to inquire after the state of my health: and having nightly made tearful inquiries of my herb-doctor, concerning the state of my viscera;-I do hereby give and bequeath to the aforesaid Lakreemo all and sundry those vegetable pills, potions, powders, aperients, purgatives, expellatives, evacuatives, tonics, emetics, cathartics, clysters, injections, scarifiers, cataplasms, lenitives, lotions, decoctions, washes, gargles, and phlegmagogues; together with all the jars, calabashes, gourds, and galipots, thereunto pertaining; situate, lying, and being, in the west-by-north corner of my east-southeast crypt, in my aforesaid tenement known as 'The Lair.' "'Item. The woman Pesti; a native of Vamba, having oftentimes hinted that I, Bardianna, sorely needed a spouse, and having also intimated that she bore me a conjugal affection; I do hereby give and bequeath to the aforesaid Pesti:-my blessing; forasmuch, as by the time of the opening of this my last will and testament, I shall have been forever delivered from the aforesaid Pesti's persecutions.

"'Item. Having a high opinion of the probity of my worthy and excellent friend Bidiri, I do hereby entirely, and wholly, give, will, grant, bestow, devise, and utterly hand over unto the said Bidiri, all that tenement where my servant Oram now dwelleth; with all the lawns, meadows, uplands and lowlands, fields, groves, and gardens, thereunto belonging:-IN TRUST NEVERTHELESS to have and to hold the same for the sole use and benefit of Lanbranka Hohinna, spinster, now resident of the aforesaid island of Vamba.

"'Item. I give and bequeath my large carved drinking gourd to my good comrade Topo.

"'Item. My fast friend Doldrum having at sundry times, and in sundry places, uttered the prophecy, that upon my decease his sorrow would be great; I do hereby give and bequeath to the aforesaid Doldrum, ten yards of my best soft tappa, to be divided into handkerchiefs for his sole benefit and behoof.

"'Item. My sensible friend Solo having informed me, that he intended to remain a bachelor for life; I give and devise to the aforesaid Solo, the mat for one person, whereon I nightly repose.

"'Item. Concerning my private Arbor and Palm-groves, adjoining, lying, and being in the isle of Vamba, I give and devise the same, with all appurtenances whatsoever, to my friend Minta the Cynic, to have and to hold, in trust for the first through-and-through honest man, issue of my neighbor Mondi; and in default of such issue, for the first through-and-through honest man, issue of my neighbor Pendidda; and in default of such issue, for the first through-and-through honest man, issue of my neighbor Wynodo: and in default of such issue, to any through-and-through honest man, issue of any body, to be found through the length and breadth of Mardi.