Chapter 27.00: CHAPTER 25. Postscript.

**
CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
**

In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell
eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be
blameworthy?

It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern
ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is
gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be
a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows?
Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his
coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint
it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery?
Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this
regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and
contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that
anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally,
that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general
rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality.

But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil
is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar
oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil.
What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured,
unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! We whalemen supply your kings and queens
with coronation stuff!