Introduction To The Edition Of 1892 - Page 2

and
sisters to the village of Lansingburg, on the Hudson River.
There Herman remained until 1835, when he attended the Albany
Classical School for some months. Dr. Charles E. West, the
well-known Brooklyn educator, was then in charge of the school,
and remembers the lad's deftness in English composition, and his
struggles with mathematics.

The following year was passed at Pittsfield, Mass., where he
engaged in work on his uncle's farm, long known as the 'Van
Schaack place.' This uncle was Thomas Melville, president of the
Berkshire Agricultural Society, and a successful gentleman
farmer.

Herman's roving disposition, and a desire to support himself
independently of family assistance, soon led him to ship as cabin
boy in a New York vessel bound for Liverpool. He made the
voyage, visited London, and returned in the same ship. 'Redburn:
His First Voyage,' published in 1849, is partly founded on the
experiences of this trip, which was undertaken with the full
consent of his relatives, and which seems to have satisfied his
nautical ambition for a time. As told in the book, Melville met
with more than the usual hardships of a sailor-boy's first
venture. It does not seem difficult in 'Redburn' to separate the
author's actual experiences from those invented by him, this
being the case in some of his other writings.

A good part of the succeeding three years, from 1837 to 1840, was
occupied with school-teaching. While so engaged at Greenbush,
now East Albany, N.Y., he received the munificent salary of 'six
dollars a quarter and board.' He taught for one term at
Pittsfield, Mass., 'boarding around' with the families of his
pupils, in true American fashion, and easily suppressing, on one
memorable occasion, the efforts of his larger scholars to
inaugurate a rebellion by physical force.

I fancy that it was the reading of Richard Henry Dana's 'Two
Years Before the Mast' which revived the spirit of adventure in
Melville's breast. That book was published in 1840, and was at
once talked of everywhere. Melville must have read it at the
time, mindful of his own experience as a sailor. At any rate, he
once more signed a ship's articles, and on January 1, 1841,
sailed from New Bedford harbour in the whaler Acushnet, bound for
the Pacific Ocean and the sperm fishery. He has left very little
direct information as to the events of this eighteen months'
cruise, although his whaling romance, 'Moby Dick; or, the Whale,'
probably gives many pictures of life on board the Acushnet. In
the present volume he confines himself to a general account of
the captain's bad treatment of the crew, and of his
non-fulfilment of agreements. Under these considerations,
Melville decided to abandon