Moby Dick, Chapter 16: Captain Bildad

"Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn--all that had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all his immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabinboy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming a boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship-owner; Bildad as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income." (p. 76)