https://vegasharmon.com/authors/herman-melville/ Recent content in Herman Melville on Vegas Harmon Hugo en Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-face-blazing-like-christmas-coals/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-face-blazing-like-christmas-coals/ In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-name-that-rings-like-bullion/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-name-that-rings-like-bullion/ I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/at-the-third-summons/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/at-the-third-summons/ Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/byron-would-not-sit-with-bartleby/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/byron-would-not-sit-with-bartleby/ It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-courts-the-light/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-courts-the-light/ Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/like-a-plaster-bust-of-cicero/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/like-a-plaster-bust-of-cicero/ I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/pity-into-repulsion/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/pity-into-repulsion/ My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/prefer-not-to-be-a-little-reasonable/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/prefer-not-to-be-a-little-reasonable/ “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.