A DYING INDUSTRY 321 



knows its place and keeps it, to the very modem and vividly 

 real oil paintings by Clifford Ashley, of whaling as it actually 

 was, out of New Bedford in the days of her whaling glory. 



And as you go out of the library you will stop again, as you 

 did when you came in, beside the bronze statue of "The Whale- 

 man" in the bow of a whaleboat, iron in hand, watching for the 

 moment to strike. 



From the library it is only a few blocks to the Jonathan 

 Bourne Whaling Museum; and there is no part of a whaler's 

 life that cannot here be visualized. Here, as in the library, are 

 literally hundreds of log books and account books and a com- 

 plete file of the New Bedford Shipping List and Merchant's 

 Transcript; and on the walls, again as in the library, are pictures 

 of the vessels themselves. But far more than that — particularly 

 to the non-reader: here is the very daily life of the whaleman. 

 We begin with scrimshaws, the joy of many an idle hour at 

 sea. Here are whales' teeth with scenes from whaling life upon 

 them : men in a whaleboat, the whale's attack, and so on. Some 

 of the whalemen evidently preferred to think of better and 

 happier days on shore, for, according to the taste of the artist, 

 there are tropical islands and island beauties or the heads of 

 girls at home. There are the most elaborate of jagging wheels — 

 one entire case is given over to jagging wheels. Poor lads that 

 made them! It cannot have been a really intoxicating joy to 

 carve those beautiful wheels for marking the edges of pies 

 that the home folks would be eating while poor whalemen 

 struggled along on ship's bread and salt junk. In the same 

 room with all the scrimshaws is a stout old wooden door; the 

 door of the room where, the placard tells us, the mutineers on 

 board the ship Junior were locked up for the remainder of the 

 voyage! 



Several rooms completely outfitted in the furniture of some 

 generations ago show vividly the life which the earlier whalers 

 left behind them in New Bedford. One can imagine a boy in 

 his middle teens, sitting on the hard, narrow Quaker meeting- 

 house bench that is now in the upper hall there; wearied by the 

 sobriety of life in those long silences, or stung to remorse for 



