200 
BIBBS IN A VILLAGE. 
ridge's wild rhyrne have had anght to do with 
those mystical impressions which were mine, when 
I saw the bird upon the deck. For neither had I 
then read the rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an 
albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly 
burnish a little .brighter the noble merits of the 
poem and the poet." 
Why, it may be asked, does the ordinary man 
kill without ruth this bird before which Herman 
Melville felt himself constrained to bow down, as 
Abraham before the angels — Melville, the seaman 
and whaler, who even in boyhood escaped from the 
" miserable warping memories of traditions and of 
towns," and was above his fellows in all virile quali- 
ties as well as in mental power ? It is common, as 
I have said, to use the long slender bones of those 
wonderful pinions for pipe stems. I have seen 
bundles of such bones brought home by gentlemen 
from voyagings on the seas which this bird in- 
habits. But it goes without saying that tobacco- 
smoke tastes just as agreeable to the smoker when 
drawn through a tube of wood, or clay, or amber, 
or some other material, as through bone. And 
what should we think of that inhuman tyrant who 
should select the most beautiful woman among his 
subjects, and put her to death for the pleasure and 
giory of using her bleached and polished skull as a 
drinking-cup ? 
