Monday, July 14, 2003 :::
 

What a striking evidence does this operation furnish of the wide
difference between the extreme of savage and civilized life. A
gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and
give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with
infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple
process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who
through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same
operation in one second, is put to his wit's end to provide for
his starving offspring that food which the children of a
Polynesian father, without troubling their parents, pluck from
the branches of every tree around them.

Melville commenting on the ironic differences between Europe and the south pacific after watching a Marquasan struggle to light a fire

Typee

::: posted by Mega at 5:31 AM

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