How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #7
In his tattered, single-breasted frock-coat, buttoned meagerly up to his chin, the shutter-brain made him a bow, which, for courtesy, would not have misbecome a viscount, then turned with silent appeal to the stranger. But the stranger sat more like a cold prism than ever, while an expression of keen Yankee cuteness, now replacing his former mystical one, lent added icicles to his aspect. His whole air said: "Nothing from me." The repulsed petitioner threw a look full of resentful pride and cracked disdain upon him, and went his way.
"Come, now," said the cosmopolitan, a little reproachfully, "you ought to have sympathized with that man; tell me, did you feel no fellow-feeling? Look at his tract here, quite in the transcendental vein."
"Excuse me," said the stranger, declining the tract, "I never patronize scoundrels."
"Scoundrels?"
"I detected in him, sir, a damning peep of sense—damning, I say; for sense in a seeming madman is scoundrelism. I take him for a cunning vagabond, who picks up a vagabond living by adroitly playing the madman. Did you not remark how he flinched under my eye?' (36, 45-49)
Talk about icing somebody out. Winsome gives zero cares for you if you're in need of money. He's also pretty suspicious of this poor man's mental state. He argues that since the dude isn't completely insane, he must be faking. We're starting to think Melville's trying to tell us it's a pitiless world out there.
Quote #8
"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.
Quote #9
He was a juvenile peddler, or marchand, as the polite French might have called him, of travelers' conveniences; and, having no allotted sleeping-place, had, in his wanderings about the boat, spied, through glass doors, the two in the cabin; and, late though it was, thought it might never be too much so for turning a penny. (45, 33)
Melville's littlest salesman is an opportunist. Seeing these two men up late on this very long April Fools' Day, he won't pass up a chance at making a sale. As in his naming of Fidèle, Melville drops another French term here, with a heads-up to how "the polite French" would have thought of this kid. Why the nod to this kind of micro-formality? Why bother musing about what the French would have thought? We can't be sure, but what we do know is that Melville likes to prime the reader. With this kid, we're given the idea of "little merchant" to cement the idea he means business. To highlight his poverty, though, we're told he's roaming the cabins because he doesn't have a sleeping place of his own.