Quote 1
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some mason's discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and curled up about the toe like a bassoon. "Look—ha, ha, ha!" (29, 26)
Charlie has exactly no manners and a harsh sense of humor. Here he's pointing at an impoverished boy and laughing. Also jarring is that this moment is a random blip in a bigger conversation about laughter. Frank is making a case for the goodness of human kindness, seen through jokes and the joy of laughter. Cue Charlie's mean-spirited guffaw. Making a laughingstock of the poor? Not cool. Having an untrustworthy character trying to bond over laughing at the clothes poor people have to wear? That's just Melville's complex way of showing you what not to do.
"Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your cheek is not gaunt. Why talk of necessities when nakedness and starvation beget the only real necessities?"
"But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now conjure you to forget that I was ever your friend, while I apply to you only as a fellow-being, whom, surely, you will not turn away."
"That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to the ground, and supplicate an alms of me in the way of London streets, and you shall not be a sturdy beggar in vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for the honor of noble friendship, I turn stranger." (41, 10-12)
Hooooo, this is kind of a doozy, and it's a scary look into Egbert's mind. First off, we get his quick, appearance-based test of human need. A true sufferer of poverty must be malnourished and unclothed, he argues. When pressed for help "as a fellow-being," then he shares what he thinks is the appropriate dynamic between a stranger and a sufferer: beg me…on your knees. Plus, friendship and begging are mutually exclusive for this dude. It's worth pointing out that this means Egbert can't see himself ever being friends with a poor person.
"I ask? I ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under no circumstances would I accept a loan, though without asking pressed on me. The experience of China Aster might warn me."
"And what was that?"
"Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palace of moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palace vanished with it. I will tell you about China Aster. (39, 58-60)
Before Egbert tells the story of China Aster, he prefaces it with his criticism of the foolishness of borrowing funds from a friend. This criticism takes the form of a pretty but disparaging simile of a dreamer whose house is built on moonbeams. Clearly not a solid foundation for your palace, right? The deeper meaning is that if you're going the house-of-sand-and-fog route, you can't be bummed when your world comes crashing down.