Sticks and Tarnished Gold Lace

I’m enjoying Melville’s Omoo, and am now about one hundred twenty-five pages in. More story-like than Typee, it’s worth reading for its sailing and sea vocabulary alone. And it’s certainly not without its descriptive humor, as shown in the opening of the twenty-eighth chapter:

In a few moments, we were paraded in the frigate’s gangway; the first lieutenant — an elderly, yellow-faced officer, in an ill-cut coat and tarnished gold lace — coming up, and frowning upon us.

This gentleman’s head was a mere bald spot; his legs, sticks; in short his whole physical vigor seemed exhausted in the production of one enormous mustache . . .

Lots of fun — perhaps not as fun as riding my brothers’ creaking old three-speed bicycle all the way from our farm at the edge of town to the Roosevelt Park little league baseball field in the heat of a San Joaquin Valley early summer evening, but who can tell? I was twelve then, and I’m almost seventy now. Why measure? Why compare? Why not simply enjoy?

[ 2081 ]