, I cannot say
much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified
his bringing his harpoon in to breakfast with him, and using it there without
ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many
heads, and grappling the beefsteaks toward him. But that was certainly very
coolly done by him, and everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do
anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
    We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed
coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done
rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the
public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting
and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.
 

                                   Chapter VI

                                   The Street

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an
individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilised town,
that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the
streets of New Bedford.
    In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently
offer to view the queerest-looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in
Broadway and Chestnut Streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the
affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at
Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New
Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you
see only sailors; but in New Bedford actual cannibals stand chatting at street
corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh.
It makes a stranger stare.
    But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatabooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and
Brighggians, and besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded
reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly
more comical. There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and
New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are
mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek
to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green
Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours
old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and
swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and a sheath-knife. Here comes
another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak