"—My dear fellow, tell me how I can serve you."
"By dispatching yourself, Mr. Popinjay-of-the-world, into the heart of the Lunar Mountains. You are another of them. Out of my sight!" (24,10-11)
Nothing like a shove-off when someone offers you his or her goodwill. Pitch is just not having a friendship with Frank. Worse, by telling Frank to go to the Lunar Mountains, Pitch is at once saying, "I want you as far away as outer space," and calling him a lunatic. How rude.
"Been eaves-dropping, eh?"
"Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be overheard, and without much reproach to the hearer." (24, 15-16)
You can't technically have isolation unless there's a crowd out there you're not a part of. Maybe. Anyway, here Pitch is rocking the Shakespearean soliloquizing aside. Thing is, people can still hear you when you're talking to yourself, so you may be "alone," but you're not invisible. On the other hand, if people know you're there, does this make you more or less alone?
Quote 3
"To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when a man begins to talk of his principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels, chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em." (22, 18)
These lines are actually kind of funny. We know Pitch isn't here to make friends, but even as he's putting in a plug for being a loner, he can't overcome the human desire to communicate. He calls the dude from the Philosophical Intelligence Office (PIO) back several times just to explain to him why he doesn't want his services. Translation: I will break through my isolation in order to tell you why isolation is the bee's knees.
Quote 4
"Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate me with a bosom-friend too, couldn't you? Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate: there's accommodation notes now, where one accommodates another with a loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly, accommodates him, with a chain to his foot. Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be accommodated." (22, 22)
Pitch balks at the notion that the PIO man wants to help him out. Here's the thing, though: PIO guy is offering help in getting Pitch a servant, but it's Pitch who brings up the notion of friendship when he says, Yeah, I bet you could even get me a bestie. What's up with that? Sure, Pitch is saying he needs a BFF like he needs a hefty loan that'll get him into debtor's prison (he doesn't), but why bother even bringing up friends at all? Pitch, is this a cry for company?
Quote 5
"No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours, the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill—does that ever steal my cider? My mowing-machine—does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My corn-husker—does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill, mowing-machine, corn-husker—all faithfully attend to their business. Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives long; shining examples that virtue is its own reward—the only practical Christians I know." (22, 22)
The PIO man wants to send Pitch a boy to help with his farm. Nothing doing—Pitch wants machines. Machines he can trust. Machines don't lie and steal from you. Machines are more Christian than people. Oof, that's some tough (lack of) love.
Quote 6
"Ah, sir, permit me—when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more than in nature herself."
"Well, really, now—really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those five and thirty boys of mine." (22, 104-105)
Poor Pitch. This lonely misanthrope is really just looking for a friend in the end. The PIO guy throws him off with this biting backhanded compliment. Basically, he says that even though Pitch's mind is as messed up as his clothes, both are just "worn," while his real essence is clearly superior. Uh, thanks, we guess. This comment certainly unsettles Pitch, who chooses to take it as a compliment.
Quote 7
"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"
"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the kind."
"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."
"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me. The innocence in me heals me."
"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man—a very queer and dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met." (21, 75-79)
The herb-doctor is up against another version of the rough-and-tumble woodsman, but this time it's with a man who's a bit sprightlier. What do we make of their interaction? Well, for one thing, we get specific value judgments from Pitch about what type of a man the herb-doctor is, and they're all negative. Contrasting the herb-doctor's more mannered tone against Pitch's volatile jibes, we learn that part of the reason Pitch distrusts the dude (besides the obvious shady medicine thing) is because he talks a good game.
Wait a minute—the herb-doctor's being dissed for being good with words? Well, yeah—he's too good with them. Like, politician-level good—which, as we all know, means that nothing he says can be trusted. Overall, Melville presents a complicated system of manhood in which there is both value and danger in being seen as smart and eloquent. Depending on who you're chatting up, brains can be a boon or, as this coon-hat wearing rustic argues, a sign that you've got no brawn. Even trickier is the fact that Pitch aligns the herb-doctor's talents with the ability to deceive, while the herb-doctor claims innocence and hopes to demonstrate this by keeping his cool—another "manly" trait in this text, but who's keeping track?.
"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with moroseness.
"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a fine fellow wears it."
"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat." (24, 1-3)
We learn in kindergarten that it's best to keep our hands to ourselves. Pitch really doesn't like it when Frank gets grabby with him—the familiarity is too much, and the text asks us to look at Pitch's "manly" discomfort against Frank's sensual appreciation of Pitch's clothing and body. Pitch responds to Frank's appreciation with disdain: he's not into Frank's "fancy" outfit, which makes him look like a painted bird, and he insults him with a pun on "fowl" by calling Frank's clothes "fine feathers on foul meat." Why is Frank fowl (foul?) to Pitch? Is it because he doesn't ascribe to serious, plain, and rough stereotypes of masculinity?
Quote 9
"Ah, you are a talking man—what I call a wordy man. You talk, talk."
"And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge, bishop or prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks. It is the peculiar vocation of a teacher to talk. What's wisdom itself but table-talk? The best wisdom in this world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?" (22, 89-90)
Pitch accuses the PIO man of being a talker. For Pitch, if you're talking up a storm, you're up to no good—but the PIO man turns things around on him…with talk…about talk. He's all, Remember oral tradition? Remember great philosophers? Remember basic education? Remember preachers? Heck, even the Bible is a record of what people said others said. Words have a lot of power, and the PIO man focuses on one of the biggies when he points to talking as teaching and learning.