Melville on Vocation: You Are What You Do; or, Beware the Lonely Light-House Man

And now, by special engagement, a few choice excerpts from Herman Melville's "White-Jacket; or The World in a Man-of-War"! Today's selection is from Chapter 12 and concerns the author's theory of the effects of environment on one's attitude and outlook.

The truth seems to be, indeed, that all people should be very careful in selecting their callings and vocations; very careful in seeing to it, that they surround themselves by good-humored, pleasant-looking objects; and agreeable, temper-soothing sounds. Many an angelic disposition has had its even edge turned, and hacked like a saw; and many a sweet draught of piety has soured on the heart, from people's choosing ill-natured employments, and omitting to gather round them good-natured landscapes. Gardeners are almost always pleasant, affable people to converse with; but beware of quarter-gunners, keepers of arsenals, and lonely light-house men. And though you will generally observe, that people living in arsenals and light-houses endeavor to cultivate a few flowers in pots, and perhaps a few cabbages in patches, by way of keeping up, if possible, some gayety or spirits; yet, it will not do; their going among great guns and muskets, everlastingly mildews the blossoms of the one; and how can even cabbages thrive in a soil, whereunto the moldering keels of shipwrecked vessels have imparted the loam?

It would be advisable for any man, who from an unlikely choice of a profession, which it is too late to change for another, should find his temper souring, to endeavor to counteract that misfortune, by filling his private chamber with amiable, pleasurable sights and sounds. In summer time, an AEolian harp can be placed in your window at a very trifling expense; a conch-shell might stand on your mantel, to be taken up and held to the ear, that you may be soothed by its continual lulling sound, when you feel the blue fit stealing over you. For sights, a gay-painted punch-bowl, or Dutch tankard -- never mind about filling it -- might be recommended. It shold be placed on a bracket in the pier. Nor is an old-fashioned silver ladle, nor a chased dinner-castor, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor any thing, indeed, that savors of eating and drinking, bad to drive off the spleen. But perhaps the best of all is a shelf of merrily-bound books, containing comedies, farces, songs, and humorous novels. You need never open them; only have the titles in plain sight. For this purpose, Peregrine Pickle is a good book; so is Gil Blas; so is Goldsmith.

But of all chamber furniture in the world, best calculated to cure a bad temper, and breed a pleasant one, is the sight of a lovely wife. If you have children, however, that are teething, the nursery should be a good way up stairs; at sea, it ought to be in the mizzen-top. Indeed, teething children play the very deuce with a husband's temper. I have known three promising young husbands completely spoil on their wives' hands, by reason of a teething child, whose worrisomeness happened to be aggravated at the time by the summer-complaint. With a breaking heart, and my handkerchief to my eyes, I followed those three hapless young husbands, one after the other, to their premature graves.

Wow. Now that's literature. I won't even attempt to comment, other than to requote the last sentence of the first paragraph: "How can even cabbages thrive in a soil, whereunto the moldering keels of shipwrecked vessels have imparted the loam?" And to think I used to hate fiction!

Watch out for those lonely light-house men.