and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it! — it’s tainted. Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I’d crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind!

Who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! A coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing — a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There’s a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference!