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 surmise, which might tell eloquently
upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blame-worthy?
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
hairoil, 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 the 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!
